Any simple interpretation about 3G

Question

Can anyone explain 3G technology from a programmer's perspective? I am a little bit confused. For instance, if I develop a mobile application with Android or IPhone SDK. Shall I concern about the network I used? Or the SDK has a same interface for all those different network(3G,GPRS,CDMA). Moreover, is 3G a specific technology or a set of communication technology？ Is it just same as WCDMA?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You do not need to care about the specific protocol, but you may very well want to distinguish between WiFi and 3G, and have your program behave differently according to what is available, because WiFi is faster and cheaper. In case of the iPhone, there are even explicit agreements that certain heavy-data activities must only take place over WiFi.

Another idea would be to detect if roaming is active and warn the user about it (even though the phone should already be doing that).