I have recently inherited an iphone 3gs on vodafone.

phone and messaging works great everywhere but here in east lothian there is zero 3g signals, so we revert to 2g. THe iphone seems to have 3 internet settings.

3g
E
O (or some circle with a white splodge in the middle)

If I connect to 3g when in edinburgh all is great. Same with the splodge, but when I connect to E I get nothing. I'm led to believe that the E is a better signal that the splodge, but my experience refutes this.

Is there anyway I can tell the iphone to ignore the E internet and only connect to 3G or splodge (what is the correct term for splodge anyway?)

thanks

The 'splodge' you refer to is 2G internet, the slowest there is. 2G signal travels a lot further than 3G so quite often it will be received where 3G won't be. I believe if you turn off 3G in your settings then it will only use 2G and therefore you will only receive the 'splodge'. Remember to turn 3G back on in the city though or you'll not pick it up and it is much, much faster then 2G

Thanks. So the E is actually 3g then? Or am I not properly understanding you.

E is EDGE which is 2.5G. The "splodge" is GPRS which gives dialup like speeds.

THanks for the advice. I will try it out when back at work.

I believe that on some phones the E can also mean emergency. There doesn't appear to be a good distinction between Edge and Emergency on some phones...