New iPhone Firmware Beta Has a 3G On/Off Switch: I Wish It Was Automatic

The iPhone’s recently released firmware 2.0 Beta 5 has a 3G on off switch for users. Underneath, there’s a warning that 3G browsing will kill your battery faster. While that’s more proof of the upgraded hardware we already expect, what I find most interesting is the manual control. It’s not too late to change it, but I was hoping that Apple would approach the 3G/2G power consumption and speed tradeoffs by having an automatic toggle for 2G and 3G:

It could have a smart mode that would turn 3G off to save battery for background email downloading, weather checking and standby; and then turn it on for YouTube, maps, web browsing and iTunes music store downloading. Wouldn’t that make a lot of sense? P.S. Apple, you can have this idea for free in trade for some copy and paste action in the next beta. [Chronic Dev via Apple Insider]