iPhone 3G Reception Problems? You're Not Alone - Continued

I have been sitting on the sidelines watching the whole discussion here, but now I have decided to put my 2 cents in.

I waited 5 hrs in line on launch date to get the 3G iphone. I did not have a 2G iphone, because I thought the price was too high in addition to a 2 year contract requirement with AT&T.

A little trip down memory lane:

I3G was presented as a 3G enabled phone that will take advantage of the 3G speeds of the UMTS networks deployed in each market.

Mobile ME service was advertised as an 'exchange for the rest of us' type of service, which enables real time, over the air 'push' capabilities for Mail, Contacts, Calendars, etc.

Apple has miserably failed in both aspects of the Iphone 3G. They are not willing to accept it, which is very unsettling to a long term Apple user.

The Iphone3G is using chips from secondary tier manufacturers instead of using the trusted ones in the market for cellular communications.

The IPhone3G software is full bugs, keyboard freeze, unexpected application shutdown, complete freeze until re-tethering to name a few.

I will not go into the details of the Mobile ME issues, since they are well documented elsewhere.

Apple has also made the claim that the Iphone 3G will have a standby battery life of 5hrs and a talk time of 2hrs.

Again, that is extremely stretched, since during normal usage expectations, the batter life is significantly less. If I buy a 3G iphone with bluetooth and wi-fi capabilities, how can I utilize said capabilities, if I have to turn all of them off to achieve the stated battery life spans?

Needless to say my experience with the iphone 3G was horrible. I did try all the tricks I can find here and via Google. I did call AT&T (US Based customer), and I did try Apple Tech Support.

Well, guess what I have returned my iphone 3g; by last count have averted 4 more iphone 3g purchases, and happily have taken my business back to Sprint and using a trusted blackberry, that does have excellent signal, does work on EVDO, does have true push capability for email, calendar, contacts, etc.

I think Apple needs to realize that this is not an ipod we are talking about here, which had its share of issues, there were a capable of lawsuits regarding the ipod claims about the battery, the getting easily scratched issue, etc. When a company sells smartphones the consumer expectations are much higher, especially if Apple has aspirations to make inroads in the business arena for smartphones.

I love my macs and my operating system, which is the best system in the world. However, Apple has lost an iphone customer not only for the 3G, but for any subsequent versions, until I have ironclad proof via other consumer's experience that the Iphones work as advertised.

Bravo...well said.

thanks doug for your answer. that really gives me some hope that there will be a solution for all of us. thanks also for still following this thread.

my reception is still inacceptable (when I dare to switch on 3G that is). the best I can get is -79 dBm, even when I stand close to a cell tower ...

One more thing I want to add is that the best thing we can do as an apple community is vote with our wallets and feet. The iphone has a 30 day return period. Thus, any iphone consumer who is not receiving resolution with his iphone issues, should reset the device, port to another carrier, or to another ATT device, if ATT service is ok for your individual needs. If Apple gets hit with 250K returned Iphones, they will certainly get the message that they cannot be realizing devices to the consumer that are subpar.

Hello Again Taltal,

Sure wish I had the " solution" for everyone who is still having issues!!!!!!

I wish you the best of luck that you will be able to get a resolution from Apple or your carrier.

And I will continue to follow this thread.

Have a great night!

Thanks,
Doug

My experience with the iPhone 3G & MobileMe has been completely opposite of what most people have reported on this thread.

First of all I did not wait 5-10 hrs in a line. I just placed a direct fulfillment order with AT&T and got my phone delivered in 3 days.

The iPhone 3G has been everything that it was advertised to be and much more for me. I have excellent coverage where I live, 5 bars most of the time. 3 bars is the lowest it ever goes to. I rarely have to use WiFi. The phone is far better than my 1st gen iPhone. The screen is much brighter and sharper . The phone is speedier than the original iPhone. The App store is fantastic. The battery is not bad by any means. I get more than 24 hrs of standby with about 6-7 hrs of usage which includes checking mail, streaming podcasts, lots of browsing, listening to music, watching videos and running some apps (games mostly)

*Overall iPhone 3G is fantastic. I could not have asked for more.*

Same with MobileMe. Except for the first couple of days when there were server issues it has performed flawlessly for me. I love the interface. All my mail, contacts, calendar, photos & movies are synchronized. Push works great between my iPhone 3G, iPhone, iPod Touch, MobileMe, MacBook Pro and PC.

I have convinced 4 of my colleagues to drop their current Verizon and Sprint service and go with iPhone 3G & AT&T.

*Great job Apple!!!*

Squigles wrote:
Well according to 02 I'm supposed to be in a good G3 reception area. However whenever I turn 3G on the phone turns itself into a NO SERVICE brick!!

From my experience, it can take the phone a while to find the 3G signal after just turning on. Since you had 2G, it may be doing a full reset on the radios and favoring 3G so it shows no service instead of 2G.

Taltal,

Can you break down using the -db numbers how you'd rate reception quality? For example:

75-80: Good/Average/Poor.
80-85: Average/Poor

I'd read somewhere that 70-79 was very good reception, but reading your post I'd take it that you'd consider that average at best. I'm collecting a bunch of field test numbers around town, and I'd like a good frame of reference for what those numbers mean to most users.

Down at the Mobile Mart where I pick up my sodas every morning before work, I'm getting -62 to -65 readings. Up here at my office (a mile away, but up a steep hill toward a mountain), just before the iPhone switches over to Edge, I'm seeing -105 to -113.

Thanks!

swisskiltbear wrote:
Here in Switzerland, it's definitely not a provider issue, as only the iPhone 3G gets very crappy 3G reception and no other 3G handsets in the same location at the same time with the same SIM card.

A friend here in the US who works for the carrier (AT&T) said the SIM cards are provisioned differently for the iPhone so swapping them should behave differently leading to a possibly invalid test. He's in sales so his knowledge is questionable. He did say that their 3G coverage is spotty and my experience bears that out.

hello kbeat.

there's a company that have tested mobile reception with a programm that runs on WM mobile phones. they say that

o -50 to -88 is excellent to good signal strength, i.e. you shouldn't have any problem to make/receive calls.

o -89 to -100 is poor signal, meaning that you may have bad voice quality, or sometimes dropped calls

o -101 and lower: it is likely that your calls will drop, or that your phone may lose 3g signal.

Source (in German): http://www.cm-networks.de/nettrack.htm

I know that the next thing that will happen is: there will be a lot of people who will tell me that this isn't the way to read these figures. And it's true: I'm not an expert on 3G.

And actually, I don't care about the figures. I want this thing to work. And I get about -95 to -113 at home and in the office, and even outside never better than -70 dbm. When I'm trying to make a phone call the signal quickly drops and the phone switches to 2G, and sometimes fails to switch.

from my experience, the iPhone 3G only gets good coverage very close to a cell tower. if I enter a park (e.g. Englischer Garten, Munich's Central Park) my dbm values will quickly drop - though the park is flat as earth can be.

so from my understanding if you get -60 something in the mart this is good.

What I'd be interested to learn: Why do 3G phones show bars anyway (if they don't mean anything as has been argued elsewhere)?

thanks

taltal

Thanks Taltal, that's helpful.

I guess bars would mean something if there was an agreed upon standard among all phone manufacturers on how the numbers translate to bars, but unfortunately there is not. Since that's true, I guess -db numbers are the only meaningful way to do a comparison. Problem is, unless someone knows how, I can't capture the -db reading and still show where I am on a map. Anyone know if this is possible?

What I'd like to be able to do, since I don't know anyone personally with a 3G iPhone that's giving them problems, is post my -db numbers in common locations around my location. Colorado Blvd. and Orange Grove in Pasadena, for example (if you've ever watched the Rose Parade on TV, you've seen this spot many times). Someone else on the forum who has what they consider to be a bad iPhone 3G could go to the same spot and see the numbers he/she is getting.

Message was edited by: KBeat to fix typo, added some more info.

I've looked at what Apple writes about this: they agree that bars are an indicator of signal conditions:

+Q: When on a call, why does my iPhone 3G work better at 1 bar than an original iPhone?+

(that's true - only that the 2g iPhone did not have 1 bar ALL OF THE TIME!)

+A: This is because when on a 3G network, you can communicate with more than one cell tower at a time. By design, 3G is supposed to work better that 2G in weak signal conditions. Signal bars for 2G are not directly comparable to 3G bars. The bars an estimate of how good the signal conditions are.+

meaning: if you get one bar, signal conditions ARE bad. but the iPhone 3g should be able to COPE with it better, being a 3g phone.

BUT: signal conditions ARE NOT bad where I live, nor where I work, nor in most places I go (and get bad signal).

the issue is: as soon as there's anything in the way between the iphone and the cell tower the signal drops rapidly. it's a shame i work in an office, and live in a house made of stone.

Noting the db values is a good start!

They can be an indicator on your phone of signal conditions, but they can't be used to compare phones from different makers. [MobileTechReview|http://www.mobiletechreview.com/phones/iPhone-3G.htm] compared the Nokia N95 to the iPhone 3G using the field test numbers in their recent review. When both phones were pulling -94 to -101db numbers, the Nokia showed 5 bars while the iPhone showed 2. No way to compare those by bars alone. With that in mind, I guess the only way to compare reception on two different brands of phones on the same network is with the -db numbers.

dcdttu wrote:
To others, this might seem that the Austin network is to blame, but not me. In San Antonio, where coverage is at least double what Austin has, seemingly, the iPhone 3G does fine. But when you go to Austin, where the coverage isn't as redundant, the iPhone 3G suffers when other phones do not.

Other 3G phones do not? What are the other AT&T 3G phones doing? Are they sitting pretty in Austin on 3G or hunting between the two networks? Since Austin is hilly and I'm guessing San Antonio is rather flat like Houston, that will have an impact on the signal (it's line of sight). It's rather obvious to me there are far more tower transceivers for 2G than 3G so 2G will do better blanketing the valleys. Now, if another 3G phone on AT&T isn't having problems, what's its signal (in dBm as bars are meaningless between mfr's) like?

My iPhone gives me up to 5 bars around Denver metro but it varies a lot. Here at my desk, it goes from 3 to zero which might be due to the cell "breathing" which supposedly is a feature. I'm sticking with it (for the US at least) being spotty coverage from ATT and poor software handling signal drops (Apple). Apple's battery management could also be to blame but I'm not sure. Your San Antonio experience bears that out too in that if there's plenty of signal, it's fine.

thanks for the link about the optimistic bars, kbeat.

yes, let's collect dbm values!