iPhone 4 reception IS better then 3GS

Coincidentally, my wife and I both picked up our iPhone 4s today from Best Buy. No pre-order, they had 6 in stock when we got there so we lucked out. We live in Los Angeles so AT&T takes a beating out here. We have had the iPhone 3G since launch in July '08 so I think we have a really good idea by now where 3G is good, bad, and mediocre.

3G signal is definitely much more robust on the iPhone 4 than on the iPhone 3G. My in-laws live in an area that is a cellular black hole for AT&T and Verizon....I rarely got 3G service there and I kept 2 bars on the iPhone 4. I death gripped the phone and it dropped back to Edge with one bar--about the same as with the iPhone 3G give or take.

Now that I have the phone in my hand, I cannot understand for the life of me what everyone was so worked up about. The reception is excellent for us, certainly better than I would've guessed.

There are a lot more people out there that have the same results except you get one person to put a video up about the death grip and then everyone thinks they have a problem with their phone. There is an antenna issue but not as bad as some here think. Yes the signal drops but it does the same thing on my son's 3G when I give it the deathgrip like any other cell phone with internal antennas. Yes I do get reception in places I could not before and I have not had one dropped call yet due to the antenna.

I have had one but it was AT&T because they had a tower today that kept going in and out of service with the phone sitting on my desk. I verified it was AT&T because 2 of my co-workers have iphone 3g and 3GS. They both were going in and out of service as well as no data for a few hours today.

Point is AT&T id dodging a lot of flak about their crappy service and you haven't heard them defending apple one bit. Wonder why? Apple brings in more revenue for AT&T than any other phone they sell and that is all they do is stay quiet about the iphone antenna issues. I believe it actually is a combination of both causing the problem but apple is the only one taking all the heat.

Coming from a BlackBerry Bold 9700 I can tell you the iPhone 4 performs better.

Death grip? lol, everyone took that one to the hill.

I wish I could say my iPhone 4 was better than my iPhone 3G but it's not. My 4 frequently randomly drops calls and gets call fails. This is very rare to get on the 3G. Its frustrating as I really do like the 4 as its alot faster and looks better.

Than get your iPhone 4 replaced as it's probably defective.

A good way to check if an iPhone 4 is normally affected or excessively affected by the antenna issue, is to update it to iOS 4.0.1 and get in a place where you have 4-5 bars (i.e: 5 weak bars), and death grip it.

If you are able to go from 5 weak bars to No Service, than your iPhone 4 is defective, a normally working iPhone 4 should not be affected by the antenna attenuation more than 25dBm, which makes impossible to go from 5 bars to No Service when running iOS 4.0.1, as it requires at least 45dBm of attenuation to do that, so the 25dBm attenuation of normally working iPhone 4 is not enough and so it's totally abnormal to go from 5 bars to No Service with an iPhone 4 with iOS 4.0.1.

ray mazeika wrote:
My wife & I are in Wisconsin. Her 3GS says no service. My iPhone 4 has 1 bar and I'm sending and receiving texts. I love my iPhone 4 and would never go back. It does everything better then the previous iPhones. The the display is just awesome.

Yes, I have a similar story. My wife has the 3GS and son has the 3G. My iP4 can make calls and surf the net when theirs can do nothing in very low signal areas.

Tom

Same here. Been posting about the better reception on my iPhone 4 vs my 3GS for a while now. I think you'd find a lot more people slowly coming out and sharing their success with the iPhone 4 once this "Death Grip" hype dies down a bit. Right now most are probably scared they will be called stupid, ignorant, in denial, or Apple Fanboys for saying anything positive about the iPhone 4's signal reception. I do believe there is a detuning problem with the exposed antennas, but my solution that worked for me was to simply NOT detune the antenna.

@CK6Speed

Agreed. However, I think it is important that those of us who are not having issues do not want to take away from anyone who is truly having a problem with their iP4. As we have seen, there is a difference between people who are having problems with their iPhone, and those who don't own an iPhone but want to muddy the water and kick up sand. I feel sorry for them since they are clearly trying to poke people in the ribs for nothing more than their own amusement. We had a name for them in grammar school--bullies.

Today, my wife and I went to downtown Los Angeles for some good Mexican food, we took our iPhone 4s with us and had excellent 3G signal all over the place (esp. at Olvera St.). I did try to "death grip" my iPhone to see if I ever once lost signal and I didn't. I dropped 1-3 bars, sometimes the bars even came back up. I think anyone who gets an iPhone 4 will inevitably try the death grip just for their own curiosity but it isn't anything to truly worry about--I've not had any problems making calls, even in LA! In fact, I would argue that the calls seem clearer and more crisp than they did on my old iPhone 3G or Nokia 2320 (backup phone). The noise canceling was very obvious when talking to family and they said I was crystal clear on the other end. Again, this is in LA--probably one of the most congested areas in the USA. No dropped calls either, very impressed.

AT&T might not be perfect but I'm not having any problems with them at the moment. Maybe some are and would like to complain, fine, but don't call people who are having not problems "fanboys" or "apologists."

As an outside observer following the situation trying to decide whether to upgrade to the 4, I have to say that what I've seen here has been the exact opposite of what you describe.

There's been plenty of attitude on both sides, but I honestly can't believe how quickly people are dismissed if they post about a problem - especially the antenna.

CK6Speed wrote:
Same here. Been posting about the better reception on my iPhone 4 vs my 3GS for a while now. I think you'd find a lot more people slowly coming out and sharing their success with the iPhone 4 once this "Death Grip" hype dies down a bit. Right now most are probably scared they will be called stupid, ignorant, in denial, or Apple Fanboys for saying anything positive about the iPhone 4's signal reception. I do believe there is a detuning problem with the exposed antennas, but my solution that worked for me was to simply NOT detune the antenna.

Agreed. Anyone brave enough to post about problems is quickly dismissed, told to replace it, or challenged. Too bad really. If you post a feel-goodery comment -- no worries... but heaven help you ask for help, or bring up calls dropping or other problems that the iPhone 4 has.

Glad it worked out for you.

I waiting overnight for the iphone and got it. It had the WORST reception of any phone I've ever owned. I dropped so many calls, conversations were constantly "can you hear me' types and to top it off, I had major proximity issues. I went through 3 iphone 4's before I was forced to return it and go back to my 3G. My 3G is SO much more reliable, but is also dreadfully slow compared to the 4.

Frustrated with the iPhone 4 dropped call like myself and millions of other. Here's what I found and trying it out. http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/07/24/samsung.replacing.iphones/index.html?h pt=C2

I compared speed tests in the same spot just after picking up my wife's iPhone 4.

Hers got 4mbps down and about 1mbps up.
Mine got about half of that. (I have a 3GS)

This is 3G speed tests, not wifi.

Proof:
http://www.speedtest.net/iphone/47324350.png

John P. wrote:
3G signal is definitely much more robust on the iPhone 4 than on the iPhone 3G.

Exactly my experience but here in NYC and around. Not only I basically don't get any dropped calls anymore and data speeds are faster and more stable but I also now can use my new iP4 in dead zones where my old iP3G will always loose a signal. Overblown death grip issue totally doesn't bother me.

ray mazeika wrote:
My wife & I are in Wisconsin. Her 3GS says no service. My iPhone 4 has 1 bar and I'm sending and receiving texts. I love my iPhone 4 and would never go back. It does everything better then the previous iPhones. The the display is just awesome.
ray mazeika wrote:
My wife & I are in Wisconsin. Her 3GS says no service. My iPhone 4 has 1 bar and I'm sending and receiving texts. I love my iPhone 4 and would never go back. It does everything better then the previous iPhones. The the display is just awesome.

My iPhone 4 has been the best iPhone yet for me and I've had them all. Just as many of you have said, in areas that I would have a problem making a call or sending a text with my previous phones I can do both easily with this phone. The antenna business has really been overblown. When Nokia tried to get on that bandwagon against the 4 they got slammed by their own customers posting YouTube videos showing their signals dropping the same way when holding the phone in that way. Several other manufacturers got caught that way also. This really isn't an iPhone issue. If you cover the antenna area of any phone in a weak signal area you will have problems. I believe if I work hard enough I could get any phone to drop a call, I just have better things to do with my time.

What gets me is that if someone refuses to use a case just how difficult is it to hold the phone by your fingers instead of cupping it with your palm?!!! With the revised signal bar display it should be easier to see when the signal is weak so just hold it by your fingers. I could understand all this angst if a majority of customers had had their fingers amputated but really!!! Now the proximity sensor issue, that's a real problem and I would be upset if I were experiencing that. Jobs said they were working on a software fix for that and many people posted that the 4.0.1 update fixed it for them. So hopefully that will be a nonissue soon.

Even with Consumer Reports decision to say " Not Recommended" at the same time they concluded that it was the best smartphone out there. So if anyone is really that bothered by maybe having to hold the phone a little differently on occasion just return it and go get one of the inferior smartphones and be happy! Maybe I'll get to buy it for my wife when it comes back as a refurb!

Message was edited by: Pappasbike