I upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0 last week (awesome — cut and paste be praised), and just early this week upgraded from the iPhone 3G to the 3Gs. Part of the OS / iPhone updates was internet tethering. Using tethering allows you to use your cell phone’s data connection to wirelessly connect to the internet from anywhere, it made my commute on the GO train every morning that much more productive. Note: in Europe this is very common, not as common here (yet).
I’ve been messing around with Ruby on Rails of all things (insert geek jabs here) and have decided to do a setup with Apache/MySQL/Rails(Passenger). Basically a lot of geek talk meaning I’ve been spending the week in a command line console typing things like:
sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install mysql -- \
--with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql --with-mysql-lib=/usr/local/mysql/lib \
--with-mysql-include=/usr/local/mysql/include
Exciting, no? Well in any case…I needed to download a 60MB package from http://www.mysql.com, and I wanted to see how fast the connection really was so I downloaded it on the train. Much to my surprise (and delight) the speed was increadibly fast considering I am connecting to my phone via bluetooth, then over a cellular network and then out to the internet. What kind of speeds did I get? well take a look for yourself:
183KB/Sec…That’s almost as fast as my cable connection at home. I have been finding that download speeds average between 70KB/Sec and 183KB/sec (this is the highest I have seen so far). What does that mean you may (or may not) ask?
a) I better make sure I stay under my 6GB data limit or I’m going to pay a #$#@ load of data charges for overages
b) the iPhone although amazing IMO still can’t do everything my laptop can for now, until now my laptop lacked mobile internet…
c) more games on the go, start work earlier, less need to work at home.
d) I am officially the biggest nerd on the train
e) I can laugh at Scott Kosman and his HTC Nokia phone in Amsterdam and lack of iPhone and lack of tethering.
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