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3G is now available in parts of LA (my 8525 is one of the few Cingular 3G phones). But in most parts of the city you're still on Edge or regular GPRS. I'm not sure why they didn't go 3G, although by June Cingular still won't have great 3G coverage. I'm sure v2 will have it, and in the meantime they are depending on 802.11 to cover most multimedia things. The initial scenario they are assuming is a user syncing with their home media library and view on the road as opposed to trying to stream or download away from an 802.11 signal.
Most US customers are not used to mobile media beyond mp3. Apple pretty much enable the transition from the clunky walkman to largescale mobile comsumption of music despite other mp3 players being on the market when the ipod first came out. I'm sure that Apple is looking at this phone to be somewhat the same change agent. Things like vCast have not taken off here, mostly due to the user (although the technology has some issues as well).
The US is a 3rd world country when it comes to cell phone issues.
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