Do you WiFi (on your phone)?

Wifi_logoThe official announcement of the Blackberry Storm for the Verizon and Vodafone networks confirmed the phone’s lack of WiFi.  This has some folks condemning RIM’s decision to exclude WiFi as a connectivity option on the phone with some even saying it’s a deal-breaker.  This got me to thinking about WiFi on phones in general and the more I evaluated my own usage patterns the more I came to realize that I don’t really care about WiFi on the Storm, or any other phone for that matter.

Don’t get me wrong, I too think that the more options for getting online that a phone has the better.  In this day and age mobile web usage is rampant and the easier to do that the better.  But I came to realize that I have been using a number of phones the past couple of years that do in fact have WiFi integrated but I also realize that I rarely use it.  Phones with true 3G connectivity provide bandwidth that is good enough for me and as a result I find I rarely enable the WiFi.  WiFi is a big battery drain on phones and with 3G speeds being what they are I have always found that they are quite good enough.

Having WiFi on the iPhone is certainly a good thing, when I first got it I had it turned on all the time.  This was due to the 3G problems that the iPhone 3G had when released as I found out when Apple updated the firmware.  Now I find that 3G connectivity is seamless and I rarely turn WiFi on as a result.  So for me at least I don’t find the lack of WiFi on the Storm to be that big of a deal.  Verizon’s EV-DO Rev. A network is blazing fast and I’m confident that this is as good as WiFi for most people in a coverage area.  The lack of WiFI will certainly play a role for those in areas lacking 3G coverage but for me that’s not the case.

So do you use WiFi on your phone?  If so why?  Would you forego it if you had good 3G coverage?  Bear in mind that 3G connectivity is much safer from a security standpoint than most public hotspots.

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