Not so fast, 3G

You can't miss the slogan--it's plastered everywhere. "Twice as fast. Half the price." Just this morning, in fact, Apple posted a bunch of new ads that repeatedly drive the point home about the 3G wireless speeds of the iPhone 3G as surely as if we were all strapped to that chair from A Clockwork Orange.

While there's been no end to the dispute over the true cost of the iPhone 3G when you factor in the monthly service charges you'll be handing over to AT&T (along with your firstborn child), less attention has been given to actual wireless data speeds of the iPhone 3Gs versus the original iPhone. Our fearless leader, Jason Snell, did run some speed tests in the course of reviewing the iPhone 3G, we wanted to look a little further into the matter and find out if the iPhone 3G really twice is as fast as its predecessor.

The answer? I'll have to say definitely maybe, if you can excuse the reference to the recent Ryan Reynolds weeper. We were spurred to action by an e-mail from reader Jeff F. of the great Metro-Boston realm, who said the speeds he was getting on his iPhone 3G were a mere shadow of those that AT&T and Apple were touting; he also pointed us to a MacRumors forum thread of people having similar problems. So, we decided to do a little informal testing of our own.

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