The question of how well the iPhone 3G may (or may not) access and maintain a wireless connection to a 3G network remains open. Be that as it may, when you do connect to the Web or e-mail via a high-speed 3G connection, the results are impressive, blowing away - for the most part - the original iPhone's EDGE-only cellular-wireless connectivity. The problem is 3G takes a toll on the iPhone 3G's battery life. A toll that can be pretty frustrating when you go to make a phone call or are waiting to receive one, only to discover there's very little, if any, juice left to keep you going.

There are several settings you can turn off in the iPhone 3G to maximize battery life. These range from Bluetooth to GPS to Wi-Fi to...3G connectivity. How important you find any of these features depends on your personal preferences. (See here for a full list of suggestions on "The Art of iPhone Battery Life.")

Notwithstanding Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, turning off 3G is the one that should have the most immediate impact on the length of time between charges. Especially for someone - like me - who uses the iPhone primarily as an Internet-access device.

Sure, the toll on cellular-wireless data performance is going to be great. However, the more iPhone-optimized sites you access, and there are more all the time, the less noticeable the difference between EDGE and 3G.

Anyway, if you're one the people who feel they've been experiencing the 3G network performance issues with their iPhone 3G, going with EDGE exclusively may not be such a bad thing to do until the problem's been fully resolved.

See how to disable 3G in the iPhone 3G after the jump.

All this begs the question: Is an iPhone 3G without 3G still an iPhone 3G?

Without 3G your iPhone 3G would still be a little thinner and lighter than the original iPhone. It'll also have all the advantages of iPhone 2.0, such as the App Store and Exchange support. But then again so does the first iPhone with 2.0 firmware update installed.

What about GPS? Yep, that'll still be in the iPhone 3G, unless you disable it. But then again, for some folks GPS wouldn’t be missed, as the location-aware cell phone tower triangulation used in iPhone mach one works just fine.