But a performance gap remains. The handset, the A835 Motorola, has a battery life of just 135 minutes of 'talk time', 70 minutes of video time and 215 standby hours. By comparison, many 2G phones can provide six hours of talk time and 17 days of standby time.

Market watchers say lethargic battery performance and other factors - such as bulky handsets and poor network coverage - are limiting the uptake of 3G.

'I think the reality of the situation at the moment is the value proposition is not a good one. There's still some way to go,' Gartner Group analyst Nick Ingelbrecht said. 'We're really in a market-making phase.'

Group managing director Bruce Hicks at Sunday Communications, one Hong Kong's four 3G licence holders, said consumers would not be willing to adopt 3G en masse until it offers 2G-like performance.

'There are still a number of issues with 3G as there is with any new technology,' Mr Hicks said, comparing 3G's teething problems to the early days of GSM.

'We need to have handsets that are comparable with existing 2G handsets. In my opinion, the gap is too high.'

Handset manufacturers say battery life will improve with each new product generation.

'We obviously think that the talk time and the video time have room for improvement,' said Liew Sze Thai, director of Asia 3G business development at Motorola.

There are several reasons why 3G handsets are power hogs and 2G phones power misers. Consumption for colour displays is several times that of their monochrome counterparts. In addition, advanced handsets require greater processor muscle to run video and process images, increasing power needs.

Unfortunately, Moore's Law, which dictates ever more powerful chips every 18 months, does not apply to lithium ion batteries.

Instead, the development of 3G phones is following the same path of its 2G predecessor. Manufacturers are reducing power consumption by increasing integration of chips and other components inside the handset, improving performance.

Motorola plans to release two new 3G phones in the second half of the year - the A1000, which targets the personal digital assistant market, and the E1000, which will be as slim as most 2G phones.

'We're looking at anywhere between a 11/2 to two times improvement [in talk time],' Mr Liew said.

Mr Ingelbrecht said it would not be long before 3G handsets closed the gap with their 2G counterparts: 'I think we'll see convergence ... really being evident in 2005.'

Mr Liew was of the same mind, saying Motorola had a 'healthy portfolio' of products on the drawing board that would convert 2G users to 3G.

'We're going to get pretty close in terms of talk time and standby time ... We expect the gap to close between 3G and GSM products next year.'

According to Mr Ingelbrecht, history suggests the big investments Hong Kong mobile-phone operators are making in 3G will pay off.

He pointed to Japan's NTT DoCoMo, which has just reached three million subscribers for its Foma advanced data service. Foma is widely viewed as the world's test bed for 3G services.

When the service was first launched, its phones had just 55 hours of standby time compared with the 480 hours offered by DoCoMo's latest generation of handsets, the 900i series.

'That's where we're going to be in GSM markets in a year to 18 months,' Mr Ingelbrecht said.

Foma struggled for years with battery and other performance issues and it was not until September last year that it crossed the one million subscriber mark. At that time, its phones had a standby time of about 310 hours.

Most of its growth has come in the past six months. It hit three million subscribers on March 30, just two months after crossing the two million mark.

DoCoMo spokesman Susumu Takeuchi attributed the rapid growth to handset improvement but also to better network coverage and services. He said an operator needed 90 per cent to 95 per cent network coverage in populated areas to achieve mass consumer acceptance.

Other company executives have previously said 200 standby hours is the tipping point at which consumers begin to accept 3G handsets in large numbers but Mr Takeuchi said there was no absolute minimum threshold.

Generally speaking, '300 standby hours is level at which 3G customers are satisfied'.