AT&T signal strength issues after update...

Count me in on the ones who have seen a decrease in service availablity. When I first received my phone I would get 1-2 bars at my home. After the update it shows no bars but still says ATT service although I can't make a call. It just sits there, I don't get a call failed just nothing. Analogous to this issue is one with the phone finding service. If I leave my home and drive to my office, my reception is the same as my house, ZERO. However if I turn the phone and back on, I get 5 bars just like I should. Seems like Apple has done something to stop the phone from searching for the strongest network. Perhaps to extend battery life. It does seem that my battery has improved with the 1.1.1 update.

I too have lost connections after 1.1.1. where I used to be fine. I can't seem to use the phone in my home and voice mails are taking hrs. if not days to get to me. I was completely satisfied with the coverage and it is now unacceptable. I am counting on Apple to do another update soon. I would surely sacrifice ringtones for phone service..
I have had complaints of my phone going to voicemail while I am sitting waiting for a call with several bars showing?

I was on the phone with Apple and AT&T for over an hour today. I went thru a battery of tests on the phone and finally AT&T said that for some reason my phone was switching over to T-Mobile's tower. So he knocked me off their tower and put me back on AT&T. Nevertheless the problem is still continuing. Not only on my phone, but my husbands Iphone too. This is sooo frustrating, so once again I will be so glad when this issue is resolved, because I am really ready to go back to T-mobile and my Blackberry.

It's really odd - I hope Apple is looking at this. I have my iPhone as well as maintain 5 others in my office for a variety of staff. In the last week they have all come to me and complained about signal strength.

We've all had phones since June 29th and have had very little reception problems until the update (or around the time of the update).

Literally when I started typing this I had 5 full bars, I just looked at my phone again, it has not moved from the dock on my desk and I'm down to 1!

(2 min. pass)

Now it's at 3 bars....Apple HELP!

definite single issues since the new firmware update. I called apple they said its a att problem I called them they said everything is working ok and its not a problem from their end. Still days later noticed a much weaker signal so I called att again and had them send me a new update. I power cycled ice and now I'll see what happens?

We purchased our phone and had nothing but trouble with reception and strength since the update. I was nearly ready to send back to apple when it was suggested to me to have the phone re-activated and reset to original firmware. So far whatever apple did when reactivating the phone has worked. I am not going to update the firmware until I know there is no issues. ATT even was on the phone with Apple tech to solve the issue.

How's the signal strength since you've gone back to the old firmware???
Maybe I will do that as well. Let me know....

I live in Chapel Hill NC and the signal around my house is weak, rendering the phone almost unusable. In my case, it is not related to the update, because it sucked before, too. Just hoping ATT gets serious about improving their network vs Verizon.

Its easy to work out if its a phone problem or a cell problem.

Power from a cell site reduces dramatically over distance. It obeys something call the inverse square law, in other words, of you double the distance from the cell, the signal from the cell picked up by your iphone will reduce by four times, double it again and the power will fall by a factor of 16 and so on and so on.

People think that if they are right on top of a cell, they will get a good signal which is not true, where i live i get naff all from the cell next to me.

If cell site is 15 meters high from the ground, from the base anywhere out to a distanceof 50 meters and you stand their and wave you iphone about you will get very poor signal (the most your iphone will pick us is <0.003 W(watts)/m2, the best signal you will get is if you wave your iphone around at about 127 meters from the cell where you will get a signal power of <0.054 W/m2 200 meters from the cell and you will get <0.031 W/m2, 300 meters <0.009 W?m2 and at 500meters <0.002 w/m2

So to work out if your iphone has a problem, find a home network cell, make sure its a macrocell (a big base station, if it looks little which tend to be in built up areas, these are microcells and work on different power values to macrocells). on a microcell, the optimum signal from a micro cell is a distance 60 meters, anything before that will give a poor signal and anything other will also give a poor signal.

As cell sites all over lap each other to give perfect coverage, from anywhere within the cell should give you coverage of some sort.

Find a big cell on its own, and try the distance, walk from the base out and watch it go from no signal (being right under the cell) to great signal (either 127 ish meters on a macro or 60 ish from a micro) then the further you get away, the less signal to the point you will walk into the path of a new cell)

If you have a nokia phone, they have hidden menus you can unlock that will show you the details from the cell site your on and what the power the signal from the cell is to your phone at the location your at. The phone I use is a nokia 8210, you can do a google to find out how to unlock the field test service menu)

I've always had signal strength issues at my house--Nowhere else. When I go into Field Test Mode 3001*12345# and look at the cell towers, there are eight showing, sometimes all of them are at&t (410), but not always. Mostly there are a handful of others (255). I've NEVER seen better than -89 on the RX, and it is usually -100 or worse. Yesterday I left it in field test mode for 45 minutes just watching it refresh every few seconds.

I have the jumping around bar issue, too. It seems that my phone cannot lock onto the strongest at&t tower and stay there. Do you suppose this is a firmware issue with my phone? I hate to think about exchanging it, because I have had NONE of the other problems I read about here in this forum.

If you have a nokia phone, they have hidden menus you can unlock that will show you the details from the cell site your on,,,,

So does the iPhone. dial 3001#12345# and you get into the field test diagnostics. Useful stuff if you know what it all means!

You say you have jumping signal problems, this may answer the reason as to why you have poor signal.

I have cut and pasted this from a post i made today in another thread, It might make you understand why the signal might be low / dropping.

Every few seconds, your phone sends out a heartbeat to the network to let it know where you are. Thats so when someone calls you, the network will route the call to the cell that picked up your heartbeat.

Depending on the settings on your phone, your phone will look for one of 2 things, again, on the setting, it could be set to look for either your home network 1st or the strongest signal from whatever cell is near to you.

If it cant pick up your home signal, most networks will allow your phone to tap onto their signal and it will still show as your on your home network, where if you where in another country, it would show as you roaming.

In a perfect world, your phones heartbeat would be picked up by 3 of your home cells that are close to you (triangleation).

If your not in range of your home network, chances are your phone will tap onto another networks signal, if thats the case, your phone will drop while it makes a connection with the other surpliers network. While your phone is on the non home network, it will carry on sending out a heartbeat to your home network and if your phone gets a slight whiff of your home network while being on another network, it will always try and get back onto your home network, so again, the signal will drop while it tries to get back to your home network.

All networks "share" and allow other phones to connect to their networks, it happens but you the user are unaware of it.

Another reason also, is people think a mobile phone mast can handle hundreds of calls at a time and that their signal reaches miles and miles, sadly they dont, most macrocell basestations (really big cell sites) can only handle tens of calls at a time and most only have a range of 500 meters, and microcell basestations are smaller, and handle less calls than a macrocell but have the same range. If your phone is out of range of a macrocell and it is connected to a microcell, your iphone will have to lock onto the microcell which then beams the signal back to a macrocell.

Also, if your on your homenetwork and the cell your phone is locked onto becomes busy dealing with other "live calls" the cell will tell your phone to look else where because i am busy, so your phone will start to sniff out another cell close to you thats not busy.

Basically I could go on and on but their is lots of reasons why the signal could keep dropping, its hard to put blame on either your phone or the network, it could be a number of factors."

While this can account for people getting dropping signal, it can also account for low / poor signal quality.

Your phones aim is to get a steady solid signal using as little power it can (for battery reasons). You would be amazed at just what your little phone does just get stay connected to the network.

I just got my 3rd phone from apple. The other two had major problems all starting after the new update. My phone works great now because I have not loaded the 1.1 version to my phone. I don't think I will. Problem solved

Me too. After 1.1.1, less consistent signal strength, longer to regain signal after going in an elevator or emerging from a parking garage, for example, on average fewer bars.

Perhaps Apple is struggling to find the right balance between battery life and how much power is used for the radio.

Battery life is totally acceptable for me. I'd trade 5% for better signal.

I couldn't agree more...I can always charge the phone more but I can't do ANYTHING about this crazy signal thing.

I REALLY do think this has to do with the update somehow - the six phones I updated in my office are all now behaving this way. The 7th which was not behaving this way was not updated and is fine. We updated it today and sure enough...the problem arises.

HELP APPLE!