ATT Reception: iPhone vs others

AT&T is pretty horrible in the Worcester MA area (especially on WPI campus!)--T-Mobile was MUCH better...but I still like the phone--just wish it was on T-Mobile.

Bringing back the oldies -

I carried my old cellphone, a Samsung for weeks, and the signal was much stronger on the iPhone!
If you are in a poor signal area, it's not the iPhone. It would be nice if these cell towers shared with ALL cellphone companies. Though you would think since SBC, Cingular and AT&T are all one now that there would be NO weak areas. Solution? Verison and AT&T accounts?? Write the FCC.

Has anyone bought any of the signal boosters on the market to mitigate an area of weak AT&T coverage? And, if so, how did it work, what brand did you purchase or recommend and was it easy to install? I am a new iPhone owner and have gone from Verizon to AT&T. I love the iPhone but live in an area of weak signal from AT&T - one bar at most. I can make calls but have experienced some reception issues and a few lost calls.

This type of reception problem has been reported widely in the UK, since the iPhones release on Nov. 9 - see the *UK 02 poor signal strength/reception problems* thread. This may be because the UK markert is somewhat more demanding than the US market, having had better and more consistent mobile technology/reception for some time, and therefore more likely to note when deficiencies occur. Or maybe we are just a bunch of "whingeing poms"...

Recently someone who lives in the UK and has both a US bought iPhone and another UK bought iPhone, has noticed that the US one gets good reception in locations where the UK one gets poor reception. The most significant difference between them seems to be that the US one is running version 1.1.1, and the UK one, 1.1.2. There has been a suggestion that the firmware update was tweaked to give better battery life performance, at the possible expense of signal strength, perhaps by not boosting the signal as much in fringe or marginal reception areas.

As a variety of reports have been posted on this thread, some positive and some negative, it would be interesting to know whether those who experience no significant reception problems are running 1.1.1, and similarly, whether those who are having problems are running 1.1.2? In relation, whether anyone who has upgraded to 1.1.2 has better battery life than before?

For what it's worth, I had 3 phones side by side last night - a Nokia, a Sony Ericsson and an iPhone (1.1.2), all on the same carrier (02, broadcasting in the 900 MHz frequency band). Both the Nokia and SE gave 4-5 bars, whilst the iPhone sometimes gave 2-3 bars, but more often 1 bar, with intermittent loss of signal altogether. Clearly, the iPhone antenna is not as sensitive as the other phone's antennas, and is in dire need of signal boosting in some locations. Just for the record, the phones were not being held, therefore the antennas were not covered by my hand, which is another area where the iPhone signal reception suffers more than other handsets.

Message was edited by: jia10

You may have luck with the booster, unfortunately it didn't help our AT&T service. My husband is in the army, staying in our RV on post in Ft. Knox KY. He has no bars on his personal phone with AT&T. His work phone is with T Mobile but the service was sporadic. Since he has to be accessible by phone the army paid for a Wilson booster antenna, the kind the truckers use. It was pretty expensive but worked like a charm for his work phone. We had hoped that we could get a bar or two from AT&T with the booster but no such luck. Atleast he can call me from the comfort of the RV on his work phone rather than getting in the car and driving two miles to get an AT&T signal. I spend a good bit of time there and it is very frustrating that I can't use my beloved iPhone. The only thing that AT&T can tell us is that we SHOULD be able to get service there. Yeah, we think we should too since we are paying them a bunch of money for nothing. My iPhone reception is good in my apartment in Cleveland though, I had one day of many dropped calls but think it was weather related. In my case it's not the phone it's the carrier.

What's really frustrating is standing in a crowd of people using their cell phones on other services, and the iPhone says "no signal".

Happens in WV quite often, my previous Sprint footprint was better than AT&T here.