Sirius XM on the iPhone Update #1

The wife and I loaded up the truck and headed out to Beverlee (actually, Toledo) last week. The DC-Toledo trip usually takes around 7 hours. Plenty of time to see how Sirius XM works as a service in and of itself, and especially how it works on the iPhone.

I figure two types of people from our audience here at RSG would use Sirius XM: road warriors and around-town drivers. Since I usually fall in the latter category, I was interested in the long-haul trip category. I was especially interested in seeing if the service was a viable alternative for listening to an iPod in the car, or seeking — usually in vain — decent stations to listen to as I drove along.

In short, Sirius XM worked pretty well. AT&T? Not so much.

There’s certainly enough programming on Sirius XM to keep most people happy on long trips … unless you’re a Howard Stern fan; like to listen to play-by-play for Major League Baseball, the NFL, or NASCAR; or want to listen to more esoteric genres of music (punk, goth, Gregorian chants, etc).

For our music tastes — pop, rock, 70’s and 80’s, and even some smooth jazz thrown in for effect — Sirius XM did the job, and did it pretty well. There’s lots of good music programming there, that’s for sure. We even caught some good talk radio, too, as sometimes on long trips you just want to hear people talk (besides your wife and the GPS voice, of course).

One annoying thing the app did was skip forward in some songs or other programming. No idea why, but it happened just often enough to be a pain.

The big problem, though, comes from AT&T’s network. On my trip from the DC area to Toledo, there’s four major metro areas you pass through: DC, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Toledo. In those areas, I had 3G service on my latest-version iPhone 3GS, so sound quality was excellent. Virtually no drop-outs, too. I was pleased with those segments of the trip.

Travel outside those areas, though, and you’re on AT&T’s Edge network. Which, in a word, blows. In two words: blows chunks. And I wish those chunks consisted of sweet, sweet bandwidth.

At its best, the quality of music on Edge was just okay. You could tell it was in stereo, but it didn’t sound anything like 3G. I could always tell when we made the switch from 3G t0 Edge. The bit rate (the amount of data the phone sucks down as a constant stream) varied greatly in the Edge areas.

The app itself automatically compensates for those bit-rate changes. But when the switch is made, the app produces a specific noise that’s somewhere between a needle scratch on an album (remember those?) and the sound of many cats having sex. Many, many cats. And they’re having a good time, believe me.

Unfortunately, there’s wide swaths of Edge coverage in our drive, with the two biggest being between DC and Pittsburgh, and between Cleveland and Toledo. In those areas, I had to switch over to my iPhone library of music to survive. I didn’t even check to see about local radio stations, because I know from other drives that the Edge wasteland doesn’t contain any real radio stations worth a listen. Not that radio overall nowadays is awash in quality programming, but that’s another subject for another day.

Actually, there’s two reasons why I switched over to iPod mode in the Edge wasteland, as the other problem with it is lots and lots of network drop-outs. Way too many to stand for, especially considering I have days and days of music on the iPod side of my iPhone.

Once I’m fully over this &%$#@ cold/flu/whatever, I’ll be able to better judge the service’s around-town’ed ness. From what I was able to listen to before the trip, though, let’s just say that around town is where the Sirius XM/iPhone combo may work the best — as long as you’re in an area that has access to AT&T’s 3G network. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself agreeing with the Verizon ad:

And if you want the full low-down on the AT&T v. Verizon advertising war, Slate has a pretty good story on it all. Just make sure you consume two or three Advil, Tylenol or (my favorite) single-malt scotches before you read it.

NOTE: This is the second part of a multi-part series on Sirius XM — both as a service in and of itself, and as an iPhone app. You can read the intro piece here.

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