iPhone reception is poor (it's actually NOT AT&T).... Hope Apple Reads This

Apple should have taken notice of motorola's blunder, I don't see who thought putting the antenna at the bottom of the phone where it is covered by your hand was a good idea.

I get the same thing as you. The iphone will be sitting there with nearly full signal. I get a message or call and I pick it up and drops to 1-2 bars or loses signal, this occurs anywhere I go. Outside, in my house, at work, in the car, and anywhere else. When I send a message before I hit send I have to move my hand to allow it to get the signal back and then send.

This is the first phone where I regularly use the headset to make calls or use the speaker phone because if I hold it like normal the phone will lose signal. I don't think it is AT&Ts fault, I get the same signal without it dropping this drastically on my old phone.

I have not heard of this. My iPhone has worked near flawlessly as far as reception. It even works in areas that used to have poor reception with my previous phone. I would highly recommend that you contact Apple directly.

I have the same problem over here. I had my phone replaced, had another issue as well before it was replaced. My husband says the iphone is a piece of ** because it drops calls alot, it can have full bars and when I talk over the phone it will loose 2-3 bars and will drop after a while of talking and it gets sooo annoying. I uslly text most of the time but I really wish apple can fix this problem soon, I thought it was at&t also but I came to realize its not. Well you know nothing is perfect. Hope an update comes soon to fix the problem!

Since switching to the iPhone I have had people tell me I am coming through all garbled or they ask me if I am on a speakerphone due to the low quality of the calls or when I leave someone a message they tell me they cant understand it as its all breaking up. I have given up even trying to use it in my house where all my BB's worked fine.

I have had more dropped called in the little time I have had the iPhone, couple months, than 10+ years with Verizon and 2 with Tmobile.

I always blamed ATT but according to the ATT maps I am in the best coverage area they offer.

They DO have multiple makes of version 1 of the iPhone out, some have different LCD numbers.

Only Apple have any real idea if there are different 'versions' of the iPhone which may explain why some work and some don't. Mine (for example) has somewhat fluctuating signal according to the display, but doesn't drop calls or suffer other problems I'd expect from low signal.

Some variability is bound to exist in the mass production of a device of this sort, so I would keep on plugging away at Apple until they replace your iPhone with one that doesn't have this problem, or admit to you that they can't because they all suffer it.

You paid for a working phone, and should have every right to expect Apple to provide one.

I had a samsung phone before (I had AT&T before iphone came out) and l got just as many dropped calls. And calls would drop when I had a full signal. Go to AT&T forums and type in "dropped". Just look at how many people are complaining with every kind of phone

derrickonline wrote:
Contact Apple directly?


I wish I had thought of that....actually I did. I contact them at least 4-5 times.

As stated previously I swapped SIM card, swapped phone, all to no avail.

Maybe I have another defective phone?

or

Maybe Apple realizes they had a defective phone and quietly replaced the defects (I've seen other companies do that before). Where they don't tell you that they fixed the hardware problem they just sort of start replacing with the new/corrected model.

I don't know but if they have phones that are "version 2" that work properly as far as reception I'd like to get one. Clearly some people have stated they have no service issues, but when I had 2 people come to my house with AT&T service and non-iphones...they have no issue.

I had mines replaced because of another issuse and now this one is giving me another problem, maybe they do resend out the defective ones.

My experience is exactly the opposite. I had a Motorola phone with Cingular service for the last two years and regularly experienced dropped calls. I began to wonder if there was some hidden 20 minute limit on talk time before calls are automatically dropped. I started each conversation with "I will call you back if we get disconnected."

With the iPhone I have now been using over a month I have experienced dropped calls only 4 times (yes, I've been counting).

I'm sorry you have had a bad experience, but I don't think it is indicative of a systemic problem or a phone design flaw.

Regards

My reception on my iphone is better than my motorola, nokia, pantech, and treo 650 and 680. In my house, I used to have to make clear calls in my living room; never in my bedroom in the back of the house. But with my iphone, I get great reception all over my house. It's the best phone with the clearest reception I've ever owned.

Hi Derrick,
Similar situation to you but..

I purchased yx500 cel single band (800 MHZ, that's the one iPhone uses at my location) actually 2 of them. Yeah I know alot of money to spend to get service at my house. But the 1st purchase was an absolute neccesity for my wife's iPhone. He phone is her ONLY phone for business and no service or 1 bar was not acceptable. The gain on the supplied base station omnidirectional antenna is only so so as the signal strength diminishes about 10 feet away from the base station. I tried the directional indoor base station antenna to get more distance from the base station, with no luck. So the 2nd purchase was another 500 cel for use in the other end of our downstairs, for me. 2 outdoor antennas on either end of the house.

The interesting part of this discussion is that my wife had Sprint previous to the iPhone and service was pretty much the same as it is now with ATT. Sprint's and ATT's towers are next to each other about 1 mile away, as the crow flies, from my house. I had and still have a Blackberry Pearl (now used as a backup phone just in case) and the service was the same as the iPhone. I had a friend over for dinner this weekend who just bought a Blackberry Curve (ATT) Same story with the service, 1 bar to no service. ATT's coverage map indicates (at street level) that we are in an excellent service area. I think our problem is that there are dense trees between us and the tower. Digital signals don't go through trees very well if at all.

For me and my wife the wi-ex product works although (and pertinent to your experience) occasionally the signal will drop inexplicably and dramatically.
On the road the iPhones work fine, and the very infrequent dropped calls are due to known (by me in my years of travelling) holes in the coverage area.

All of this stuff, unfortunately for people like us (at least for me), means that there are no definitive answers to the problem, and like you I have had to spend alot of money, and go through a long process of trial and error to maybe have an answer to the problem of service.

I'm traveling to Colorado, Denver in fact in a few weeks and will be very curious to see how service is there.

Will keep everyone posted.

CD3

there may be hope...
I also have this problem with the signal swinging from all to none and dropping calls but i do believe that it has to so with apples power management sw.
after all SJ didnt pull those extra hours of battery life out of thin air, his developers tweaked the power mgt software...

Hopefully they will see fit to modify the offending software so that the phone devotes a little more power to the cellular radio. if this is going to happen at all i would expect it with their first feature update (whenever that may be).

fingers crossed
JP

I had mines replaced because of another issuse and now this one is giving me another problem, maybe they do resend out the defective ones.

I read that astroturfers were going after the iPhone. The "tells" were very low post counts (hit and run), posts exclusively oriented around complaints, highly topical complaints, concocted sympathetic back-stories, cutesy names, and a combination of feigned ingornance and technological savvy.

I apologize if I've misjudged, but are you an astrosurfer? Recognizing them is a bit like fishing. Have I caught a fish?

TIA!

Derrickonline,

I have only had one (1), yes one dropped call since July 9, 2007! I am excited about that compared to my old Verizon, phone, many dropped calls throughout my area! Hope you all work it out!

N8