AT&T Shuts Down 2G Network, Ends Cellular Connectivity For Original iPhone (macrumors.com) 128
ATT yesterday announced that its 2G wireless network was officially shut down on January 1, 2017. Since the network is no longer active, it means that, as the Verge points out, the original first-generation iPhone (also known as the iPhone 2G) will no longer receive cellular service from ATT's network. If you still happen to use an iPhone 2G, it may be time to upgrade or list it on eBay. Mac Rumors reports: Few people appear to have been using the original iPhone as there were no complaints from iPhone owners two weeks ago when the network was shuttered, but going forward, customers who keep the device as part of a collection will only be able to use it on WiFi. Originally released in June of 2007 and discontinued in 2008, the first iPhone was made obsolete by Apple back in 2013, and it has not received software updates since the 2009 release of iPhone OS 3, later renamed iOS 3. According to ATT, shutting down its 2G network frees up valuable spectrum for future network technologies, including 5G. ATT says the spectrum will be repurposed for LTE.
Leaf off the air too (Score:5, Interesting)
This same service was used for my Nissan Leaf. I can no longer pre-heat or check the charge status remotely without paying for a modem swap.
Dumb that cars that should be targeting a 15-20 year life span are larded up with the current flavor of the month that will be obsolete in a fraction of that. Wish it had WIFI so I could maintain the remote pre-heat functionality at home at least.
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Why is it that car manufacturers cannot do this type of technology? It should have been obvious that 2G would be shut down within a few years of the car's manufacture.
Last year, Nissan's "mobile app" stopped interacting with Pandora for months. It's crazy: a multi-billion dollar company can't keep an app updated so that it actually works. Also, who names their app: "Mobile App"? Really Nissan, there are apps that are not mobile? It's not even something like "Nissan Mobile".
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Re:Leaf off the air too (Score:4, Interesting)
At least you get Pandora, TripAdvisor, etc.. Us Infiniti owners just got a broken promise with our Q50s. The jack wipe managing the Airbiquity Choreo integration (branded InTouch) never bothered to turn on anything other than Facialbook and Google Search. I guess they prefer drivers to fumble with the phones they're streaming from via bluetooth instead.
As someone who just rented a car with Apple Carplay for the first time, I wish they would just STOP IT with the touchscreens and just have radios that pair quickly with bluetooth devices and can swap between devices without going 7 menus deep. Showing the currently playing song is plenty. I don't need any more information than that. My phone knows how to interrupt my Pandora music with Waze navigation prompts or any other notification. Even this basic function seemed too difficult for Carplay to do.
If they absolutely must have a touchscreen in the car, let it handle the car stuff and only the car stuff. I have never seen an phone-integrated car app system that worked well. And I travel roughly 75% of the time and cycle through a LOT of different rental cars of all makes and models. It's mostly all rubbish. The least annoying ones are the simplest ones which only handle basic bluetooth functions.
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Car makers need to stick to stuff that runs on the CAN, and well away from consumer electronics that get chucked in a year or two. Oddly enough one of the better audio heads I've used was the one on my Ford. It doesn't have a touch-screen display, but buttons and dials. However, Bluetooth works, and has worked with a large array of Apple, Motorola, and HTC phones. If I need navigation, that is what a suction cup holder, smartphone, and Siri can be used for. People made fun of Windows Automotive, but I
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If I need navigation, that is what a suction cup holder, smartphone, and Siri can be used for.
It's illegal to use a device suction-cupped to the windshield in California, although amusingly not radar detectors because you don't have to touch them, and they are permitted here. A decent bolt-in cellphone mount is upwards of a hundred bucks.
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Interesting... is attaching it to the window in the wording?
Yes. (Too lazy to look up the cite just now, but not too lazy to reply, hope that counts for something)
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The wording is to the effect that you're not allowed to have a video display visible to the driver in any way, with a specific exception for video displays specifically dedicated to navigation or vehicle information.
I'm also too lazy to look it up but that's what I remember.
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Touch screens in cars are the dumbest fucking idea that has ever been. There is no tactile feedback, so you have to take your eyes off the road to use the fucking thing. Every time.
I have no idea how they are legal, other than the stupid message that comes up every time you start the car that basically says "don't use this unless you are pulled over and parked." Which nobody does.
BMW spent over a decade to get their iDrive (now ConnectedDrive) system to be what it is today, and it's probably the best-of-
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The only app that I have that works is Pandora. Google search doesn't work and I don't have any of the other apps on my phone.
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Re: Leaf off the air too (Score:1)
I'm sure the car use GSM 2G in part because AT&T sales pushed it as a cost saving competitive advantage. ~4 years ago we had an AT&T sales woman at work giving us a presentation. At the time AT&T was pushing M2M devices to use GSM as the payloads were small and the monthly cost was cheap. (Interestingly the T-Mobile material we got was much more focused on their 3G and HSPA offerings.)
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Because 2G service was cheap as shit, and when the car manufacturer is footing the bill, they're not going to pick the UltiBest(tm) service.
It's Nissan, not Mercedes.
For what it's worth, BMW has been using 3G for their car connectivity for like a decade now.
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This is why I like to buy used rental cars - in addition to not having leather seats (I prefer cloth, especially on a hot day), they typically have very simple stereos and lack a lot of the bells and whistles that often break or become obsolete. I'd much rather clip my smartphone into a holder and have the very latest nav technology, up to date maps, and entertainment options.
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Re:Leaf off the air too (Score:5, Insightful)
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> Dumb that cars that should be targeting a 15-20 year life span are larded up with the current flavor of the month that will be obsolete in a fraction of that.
To add to certsoft's comment: EDGE was first deployed by AT&T in 2003. GSM was deployed _much_ earlier.
Not only does 14+ years for a tech meet your lifespan criteria, drop-in replacement modems are provided -gratis- for two-year-old Leafs, available for ~$200 for older Leafs, and have been available for at least six months. What's more, there
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They add these features because there are indeed customers who are swayed by them. So who is dumber, the auto maker or the auto customer? And believe me, there are customers out there right now thinking "2G was a dumb choice, but at least 4G won't go obsolete in 15 years."
Of course you should expect *some* years out of the service at least. I bought a new phone once and a few months later they started transitioning to GSM and connectivity on it started getting worse and worse. All the while I would get
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Of course both industries still try to get their customers into the tightest upgrade cycle they can manage, but that result is much different between cars and phones. I agree
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In the USA, the average term of a car loan currently exceeds 60 months (5+ years).
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T-Mobile seems willing to help you for now. [t-mobile.com]
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You should wish for a car with modular systems, that way you can swap out the radio. But a lot of 2G gear is still out there, alarm systems, remote controllers for all sorts of stuff, scientific and other telemetry, iPhones were some of the older 2G devices, 2G was commonplace in Androids up until only a few years ago.
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I'm happier without touchscreen controls in my car. All that stuff is going to age terribly and from the complaints posted here work stops when the car ships. You still can't beat tactile knobs and switches for control.
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You still can't beat tactile knobs and switches for control.
Good voice control works better still, for navigation and phone calls anyway. I love Android Auto, but I hate having to use touch for anything more than extremely basic control.
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I'm willing to bet that the original Nook e-reader used it too - the non-WiFi eInk version.
Dated it may be, but the battery life is a lot better than on tablet Nooks.
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You're wrong. The version of the original Nook with cellular connectivity used AT&T 3G service - in other words, HSDPA. I don't know exact details, but they're unlikely to implement the higher speed HSPA+ modes. That was the only Nook device with cellular data capability.
The first two models of the Kindle and the original Kindle DX used CDMA2000 3G connectivity from Sprint. All later models with cellular capability use 3G from AT&T.
US is not the world? (Score:1)
I just wanted to say that Nissan is a Global/Japanese/French car brand and the US is just one country, a huge one but with its idiosyncrasies.
In most countries approximately 100% of mobile phones support GSM, I never heard of 2G being phased out as every operator supports it and I thought it's what regular calls / SMS use. Dumb phones still are widely available. This would be about as dumb as proposals to turn off FM radio, perhaps worse as many rely on being able to be called by a temporary job agency for
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This would be about as dumb as proposals to turn off FM radio
You mean like Norway [phys.org]?
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Dumb that cars that should be targeting a 15-20 year life span are larded up with the current flavor of the month that will be obsolete in a fraction of that. Wish it had WIFI so I could maintain the remote pre-heat functionality at home at least.
I agree. I had a Nissan Leaf on a lease and I liked the car, but life changes made me need to get to one car and with distant relatives I need to visit I couldn't really make the Leaf work for me as an only vehicle. My lease ended with 2G still working, but a co-worker recently had his modem replaced. I think there was some charge for labor for doing the work. The problem is that AT&T has done this kind of thing before and businesses go with it because it's cheap with no long term thought that AT
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Dumb that cars that should be targeting a 15-20 year
The average car in North America is on the road about 10 years. That being said, the tech should not be incrusted into the car. They should drive that tech off smart phones which appear to remain backwards compatible for years. The worst case is that it doesn't support a newer version of the app but at least remains supported with the old app.
The car company in this case was dumb to only include a 2G modem (cost savings I guess). At the time of release of the vehicle, the tech was already on it's way out.
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Someone needs a nap.
Good! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)
Washing & reusing Ziploc baggies (Score:5, Funny)
Originally released in June of 2007 and discontinued in 2008
If you're still using a phone you've had for 9.5 years, my hat's off to you, you thrifty bastard.
Re:Washing & reusing Ziploc baggies (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm one of those thrifty bastards...almost.
I have a Sanyo Katana LX, purchased in January 2009. It still makes phone calls, it still sends and receives texts, and its battery lasts a week with the light use I give it.
I avoid upgrading for four reasons: 1) It's no longer subsidized by the major players. 2) Even a new flip phone costs a minimum of $100. 3) Both my wife and my brother-in-law gave me their old phones, so if mine is lost or broken, I have spares. and 4) I dislike the disposable culture of today, given that we cannot infinitely replace old electronics with a finite supply of building materials.
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I dislike the disposable culture of today, given that we cannot infinitely replace old electronics with a finite supply of building materials.
As long as you can live with the knowledge that your miserly tendencies are cheating a 25th Century landfill miner out of rare earth elements. [pbs.org]
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I'm one of those thrifty bastards...almost.
I have a Sanyo Katana LX, purchased in January 2009. It still makes phone calls, it still sends and receives texts, and its battery lasts a week with the light use I give it.
I was in the same boat. Up until last month I was using a Nokia 6030 (so, 2005 vintage) as my cell phone. I didn't own a single handset for 10 years continuously, because there was a couple times I had to replace it for something actually not working on the one I had -- but I'd just go on eBay and buy another of the exact model. I'd disable the internal memory so all my contacts would save to the SIM by default, and I could just move it to a new one, taking everything with me if I needed to. Battery lasted
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Too bad it doesn't support USB 2.0 : it takes 8GB or 32GB SD cards, but the slow transfer speed makes it about unusable except in emergencies (wow, since it's USB mass storage you can boot a laptop from it! but that's usable for memtest only, perhaps DOS)
The Puppy Linux variants (with GUI) are under 500 MB. If they can load all their resources into a RAM disk that would get around the slow USB transfer speeds.
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Where are you shopping for flip phones? Dollar General sells them and even Android phones for like $40.
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Where are you shopping for flip phones? Dollar General sells them and even Android phones for like $40.
But they also tell a bunch of toxic plastic shit and burns my nose, and probably has lead paint on it to boot. I won't even go in that shithole, it literally gives me a headache.
flip phone 100 bucks@!?#! (Score:2)
how about 20-30 bucks?
christssakes, even nokia x (an android nokia) was 80 bucks _new_ couple of years ago.
there's many unsubsidized smartphones you can choose for under 100 bucks. many, many MANY.
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My first smartphone of any sort was a company issued iPhone 4. I remember that the first version of iOS I couldn't install was chock full of important security patches. I had a 1st Gen iPad, same situation. Apple only updates the latest version of iOS, and everyone else can go fuck themselves. [profanit
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My phone is from 2002. Still in use in UK. Phones ok, texts ok. Nothing more required.
iPhones just one affected component (Score:2, Interesting)
I realize that was a consumer-level link, but still... I expect better from Slashdot.
There are plenty of other devices out there that are still liable to use 2G that are now effectively bricked. The iPhone is probably the least likely of them to cause a real concern for people. (Though, hell, until 2 years ago my parents were still on 2G PCS phones (not through AT&T though).)
How is rural 3G coverage these days? I remember when the analog shut down happened, there were folks out there who needed lots of
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a ham auto-patch is not a substitute for a cell phone. you are not allowed to conduct commercial business on amateur radio and that includes ordering a pizza or calling the water company.
if you use your cell phone only for calling dear aunt bessy, and you and everyone in your house who might use that radio is a licensed ham, fine.
Re: iPhones just one affected component (Score:3)
Ironically, 3G coverage can be *better*, or at least be made usable at greater distance with a bigger antenna. 2G-GSM has a timing-imposed hard limit of approximately 25 miles, regardless of signal strength. 3G-GSM is basically CDMA2000-1xRTT data, with wider channels (using VoIP instead of circuit-switching). That's why Australian & Canadian CDMA carriers used to be popular with remote users, and why they were able to switch to UMTS/HSPA("3G") with minimal drama... 2G-GSM was unsuitable for service in
Re: iPhones just one affected component (Score:4, Informative)
There is no "3G-GSM" in the proper sense, the successor to GSM voice is UMTS, which is _not_ VOIP, it's circuit switched vocoder based like GSM was, just much more spectrally efficient because it uses CDMA on the air interface. (that's not the same as CDMA2000)
Not Bricked (Score:2)
Why can no one use this term correctly? Bricked means the device is dead and can't be powered up without reflashing firmware. Bricked does not mean it can't connect to a 2G network.
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If a 2G-only smartphone can't connect to 2G anymore, it is "effectively bricked," if not outright, 100%, truly, completely and entirely bricked.
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A smartphone might be a marginally-useful-over-WiFi paperweight, but any non-smartphone 2G phone (i.e., any 2G-only phone other than the iPhone) might as well be bricked unless someone's putting some major effort in.
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I don't disagree that "regular" phones are still useful -- but they're not useful if there's no network available to it. They also for the most part don't have the flexibility of using side-loaded apps for fancy things like independent mesh antennaes. As I said: a lot of effort.
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more important than iPhone (Score:2)
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Yeah, the company that I work for made a wireless temperature monitoring solution that reported to us using the old AT&T GPRS network.
If our customers haven't upgraded their units last year, they wouldn't have known if their freezers filled with thousands of dollars of meat would have failed.That's probably more important than those 20 or so people who were actually still using their original iPhone to make phone calls.
Just a thought (Score:3, Insightful)
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Today's iPhones might not have cellular connectivity by 2027. Just a thought to ponder...
Duh, Skynet will have us all in the dark long before then, so of course! I mean, with the implants and whatnot we'll forget cellular anyway, but you know.
translation– (Score:2)
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AT&T is turning iPhones into iPods at the push of a button.
Now seriously, if you want an iPod, then a used iPhone from eBay is the cheapest way to go.
T-Mobile (Score:5, Insightful)
I really fucking hope that T-Mobile doesn't follow in AT&Ts footsteps with this one. This isn't just about old phones. With my Galaxy S5, I will sometimes force it into 2G only mode? "WHY?" might you ask. Well, let me tell ya somethin. Try going to PAX Prime/East, and look at how many high-end cell phones there are in such a small space, all being constantly used by tech savy and data hungry users. 3G/4G networks become extremely unreliable at events like this. However, practically nobody is on the 2G network. Yes, it is slow. But when all you need to do is push out SMS messages to meet up with friends in person, it is seriously a life saver.
Another reason is this. When traveling the country side, there are places that ONLY have 2G networks available, because they're literally in the middle of fucking nowhere. In rural America, 2G antennas are set to their maximum operating distance, because there are no other network towers to compete with. The "cells" become their maximum size. The furthest I've been away from a cell tower and still had 2G coverage was 20 miles up in the Rocky Mountains. These places are too difficult to run wiring to. Entire communities rely upon 2G connectivity for the most basic levels of outside communication, myself being one of them when I lived up there temporarily for a few months.
Good ol "PROGRESS"!
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Meanwhile, the remaining 2G spectrum can be re-purposed to LTE, which offers a vastly increased amount of data transferred per second per Hz, thereby increasing the amount of bandwidth available to everyone.
An idle network with dedicated spectrum is wasted spectru
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I really fucking hope that T-Mobile doesn't follow in AT&Ts footsteps with this one.
Actually, they are doing the opposite.
They're giving users with non-phone devices FREE 2G service for the next year. [t-mobile.com]
Most dual-SIM phones also affected (Score:2)
Four years without updates? Does Apple hate us? (Score:3)
What does it mean? Apple left users without security updates to a device that contains the keys to a user's life for four years before informing them they needed to replace it. If you can't afford to replace your phone every other year, Apple is going to give you the finger and leave you vulnerable.
That is some piss-poor behavior.
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If Apple says the first iPhone was obsolete in 2013, why did they stop updating it four years before that?
Apple pushes updates to old phones for precisely one reason, to make them slower. They don't actually give a shit about those users, they only care about users who buy new devices. That's why they always try to weasel out of fixing their hardware problems. Buy a new ATA card to get around data corruption on your B&W G3. You're holding it wrong. The cube is cracking because you're abusing it. The list goes on and on and on forever.
When the majority of users have moved off the platform, they can stop push
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Affects San Francisco public transit too (Score:2)
Forced phone swap (Score:1)
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In my experience when I messed up and went over 5 GB, I was still connected via LTE. My connection was getting like 64 kbps (or something like that, it was one month over a year ago, so I don't exactly remember the exact speed), though.
Re: MVNO??? (Score:1)
exactly its throttled not using the older spec.
Re:MVNO??? (Score:4, Informative)
Seeing as Straight Talk and similar providers merely piggyback on AT&T's towers if AT&T no longer accept 2G connections that would also cut off carriers like Straight Talk. Interestingly T-Mobile has offered 2G AT&T customers a home until 2020. https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/... [t-mobile.com]
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On StraightTalk's website they have everything asterisked where they say you will drop to 2G. In the footnotes it then says 2G speeds. No legal issues there...
Re:Nobody is using original iPhone (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, no, my original iPhone still works just fine on its original battery. I used it until I got my iPhone 5, and up until a few months ago, I still kept it powered, up until the original charger started malfunctioning and shutting off power randomly, causing it to buzz over and over. I decided it wasn't worth buying a new charger to keep it charged up.
At last check, it still worked correctly on the T-Mobile network with my OneSim.
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Yeah, my old iPhone 3G from 2008 somehow still holds a charge. I stopped using it as a phone a long time ago, but it still works as an MP3 player for the clock radio.
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By contrast, I replaced my iPhone 5 battery after only about three years because it had swelled up like someone with a peanut allergy on a Planters factory tour.
Re: Nobody is using original iPhone (Score:2)
And reference to original is more an example than specific device.
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I wasn't trying to refute that claim—just the claim that they were all incapable of being used.