3G Is Shutting Down. I Brought My iPhone 4 Back to Life to Say Goodbye. | WSJ

Starting in February, U.S. cellular carriers will begin to shut down 3G. WSJ’s Joanna Stern got an old iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 working on the old network, in order to remember all it did to shape the smartphone revolution. Photo illustration: Preston Jessee for The Wall Street Journal

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[pieceofshitzu]

I didn't realize until now that things weren't necessarily fast back then, we just had more patience.

[dj_laundry_list]

This was mostly about how your deprecated iOS apps no longer work, rather than actually being about 3G

[flizzycat]

3G is still more than usable today. I literally watched this video in 1080p over 3g H+. The issues you had are because of the obsolete phone, not because od 3G

[theoonesite]

This raised an important topic but addressed it very poorly. Instead of speaking of the software obsolescence of an iPhone 4, you should've brought up upcoming issues with 3G remote medical devices and emergency systems, home alarms, GPS trackers, remote weather stations, car communications systems (OnStar etc.) and many other things!

[yashgandhi]

She didn't really need old iPhone to use 3G. You can lock newer iPhones to 3G from network settings.

[alxcia]

I wonder why 3G is so different in America. In Europe my iPhone 12 is constantly swtching between 3G, 4G and 5G and for most day-to-day tasks, you cannot tell the difference. I’m literally watching this video on 3G and it loads in HD without a hitch. Another thing is that the approach of this video is based on old only-3G smartphones, so I wonder if a better comparison would be to simply disable 4G and 5G on a new smartphone and see how much you can do on 3G.

[yourfriend]

Well i don't think this is about the 3G not allowing apps to work properly, rather on companies stopping supporting old phons and old OS.

[alexkoch]

Joanna is honestly one of the best underrated tech reviews on YouTube

[PackardKotch]

3G itself isn’t as outdated as it looked in this video. It’s capable of a theoretical max download speed of 7.2mbps on the iPhone 4 and 14.4 mbps on the iPhone 4s, which while not blazing fast, is still absolutely enough for normal phone usage. I do find it weird that they’re shutting down 3G networks in the YSA, as where I live, despite introducing 5G, some more remote places still rely on 3G for any sort of normal coverage, infact the network sometimes drops down to 2G if the connection is bad enough.

[Srij]

iPhone 4 was my first iPhone that i owned. Got it on contract on UK’s 3 network & there was nothing like this phone on the market at that time. It was a stunning device & was a work of art from design perspective. It was really fast back then in 2010. And sad to say that all other iPhone models that i owned after that just didn’t excite me much.

[Johanneslol]

I still love my iPhone 4. This was my first smartphone I ever owned. Now I have a S21 ultra now. The screen on this phone is bigger then the entire iPhone 4 lol

[aaroninclub]

This is a slightly awkward video because… well… Can’t ALL iPhones use 3G if you choose it? Or, do all 5G iPhones have 3G taken away as an option?

[easyabe]

I think this is more testing software and hardware sustainability than network functionality

[LNCRFT]

3G itself isn’t the issue for the long loading times. The real problem was the old iPhone. 3G nowadays is fast enough to load a 4K30 video with no issues. They should rather shut down 2G as it’s more than useless for modern day usage. Just phone calls and SMS doesn’t cut it nowadays anymore and 2G can just do that reliably.

[wolfcoool]

Modern iPhones locked to 3g aren’t that slow. I’m sad to see it go, as someone who lives in a rural area, 3g went father and was decently fast.

[TechOutAdam]

The fact that these phones are still fully functional is very impressive. Makes me wonder how long an iPhone 13 will last.

[HidrogenoyMau]

We still have very spotty 4g in my area so I’m on 3g around half of the time, most of the problems in this video are due to the iPhones being old, no because of 3g not having enough bandwidth.

[Mohammed-zznx]

I'm from Iraq and I watch the video laughing because I'm watching this video with 3G😂😂😁

[fzcastell]

This video is about an old iPhone with unsupported apps and not about 3G. I'm posting this comment using a modern phone on a 3G network with no problem.

[tgreen]

I think it would've made more sense to use 3G on your modern device instead of on the old devices. Then you would have actually seen it load modern apps and sites correctly, to see how slow it is on today's internet. Ex. a prepaid carrier like US Mobile (Verizon) will allow you to select 3G manually as your data.