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

Expect to be beaten to death by irate colleagues, some of whom will undoubtedly be unable to place or receive a call shortly.

There are just 5 known owners of the iPhone 3G in my circle, and not one of us will remain owners of it by this weekend.

We each have had a desultory experience with iPhone 3G in Manhattan (and Brooklyn). We love the browser, iPod, some of the apps, the GUI (when they are not crashing incessantly), but the iPhone 3G has failed us miserably in its primary function of serving us as a phone.

It seems it works well for many, not for us, and not for many others it seems. At this stage, its just pure speculation on how extensive the problem actually is, or when Apple might be bothered to acknowledge the problem's existence, and then fix it. Frankly, I don't really care any more and neither, apparently, does Apple as they have yet to acknowledge any problem with the iPhone 3G while continuing to struggle to satisfy the significant demand for it. Quite simply, people like us have a choice, and we need to exercise it.

So, Apple may actually have pay a very small price for this. While I have been able to dissuade many people from buying this product, and my experiences have led our IT group to remove it from consideration as an approved device, its a mere pittance compared to the thousands lining up to buy it and the seemingly quite limited damage to Apple's reputation. In addition, many disatififeid owners of the iPhone continue to be persuaded that Apple will acknowledge and resolve the problem imminently. Again, that's their choice and good luck to them.

KBeat wrote:

Airlancer wrote:

Has anyone who had reception problems when they first got the iPhone seen any improvement?

Rollercoaster still. It just seems to depend a lot on the time of day. Upon release, I wasn't looking into call performance, but Net speed. It was abysmal but became excellent in a day or two. Now it just failed to download the payload test (via dslr) and declares my network unstable (yup!). It is rush hour here (5:30p).

The perfect short-term solution would be to optionally lock the phone to 2G for voice and use 3G for everything else when present. Not sure if the hardware (incl battery) could support that.

+The perfect short-term solution would be to optionally lock the phone to 2G for voice and use 3G for everything else when present.+

Isn't this supposed to be automatic.

Okay.. I can see the point in turning wifi off if you are not near a hotspot.... but the cell radio? That should switch back and forth automatically surely.

I just want to vent!!! I am very disappointed with the iPhone 3G for one reason and only one reason!!! My RECEPTION *****!!! When I turn 3G off I get perfect receptions, but in the same room, when I have 3G on, it has one bar!!! I upgraded my old iPhone for the 3G iPhone thinking about how much faster its going to be when I am out and about!!! But no, I am stuck using Edge just so my reception doesn't drop!!!! sigh!!!!! I just hope either ATT or Apple come out with a fix quick because I, like many of you, am starting to regret my purchase..... Let alone starting my 2 year contract over!!!!

+when I turn 3G off I get perfect receptions, but in the same room, when I have 3G on, it has one bar!!!+

Sorry to hear that

Do you get good 3G reception anywhere?

At home I get 1-2 bars, but everywhere else it seems like 3 -5 (and mostly 5...).

What firmware are you using? Have you tried a restore?

i'm in australia, and know of at least 40 other people on the optus network 2100mhz having similar issues (did a survey - lol)

my phone will be going back next wednesday. i may buy one again if they sort all this out.

i have told at least 10 people to avoid the iphone for the time being.

Sacramento, CA 95831 Area. Today was the second day where I had no problems with dropping calls. I was in the area of 95819, inside of a building and everything was working slicker than snot!

Doug wrote a comment about keeping the phone in 2G most of the time and to conserve the battery. Sounds good to me and when I need to get on the internet, download, etc. & etc., I can just kick it up to 3G.

I'll update when I travel to different areas, or if things go down the toilet again, you will here from me.

Joe

I was in Houston for the past three days where I had really good 3G reception, now I'm back in Austin and it's crap again. This makes me lean toward the network theory as opposed to the iPhone theory.

Hello everyone:

I have had my iPhone 3G for about 4 days now. I am outside of all 3G areas so I am using Edge. My problem is that I can only make call to everyone on any network but I only receive calls from AT&T customers from any geographic location. Do any of you have this problem? As it appears that all of you are trying to us 3G only.

Please let me know your thoughts.

-mrmacman08

I have used my iPhone 3G extensively in Manhattan (mid-town near 45th, Financial District and Battery Park City) without any issues with regard to call quality. It also works quite well (maybe better) than the original iPhone out in Nassau/Suffolk.

Seems you have an axe to grind.

I am in Huntington with no problems at all. Manhattan and Nassau County as well.

Hey,

I have been following this forum since I got my iphone on the day after launch. I have had ok reception (though a lot of dropped calls anyways somehow) in some "golden spots", but rediculously poor reception on both 3g and EDGE in my home and at work or in many buildings. Bad enough that I would place my iphone by a window and wait for it to come back to reception to send a text message... that it would just leave reception and say error and i would have to start over. My home and my work on my old phone with at&t had about 2 bars (sony ericsson), with never any problems.

Anyways, I tried everything I could from this page, including getting a new sim, but to no avail. Finally i made my appointment with the genious bar for this morning. The guy said he had not seen many iphone 3g's with problems, but that, after taking one apart before, he said it could be easy to not properly attach the antennea to the circuit, or for that cord to break during assembly. It was out of return date but still under warrenty so they gave me a new iphone 3g to try out.

MUCH better. I havent gone to work with it, but i now get usually 2 to 3 bars 3g reception in my home (remember my old phone only got 2, so it's not that easy to get signal in my home). Sometimes drops down to one, but only momentarily. I havent seen no service again. No more errors sending text messages due to no signal. Just thought i'd let you all know that there is a strong chance that a hardware issue IS a problem with some of the phones, and that switching it out worked for me. Good luck all.

+We love the browser, iPod, some of the apps, the GUI (when they are not crashing incessantly), but the iPhone 3G has failed us miserably in its primary function of serving us as a phone.+

That's exactly how I feel about this. I learned that for me the core requirement of a mobile phone is: reliability. The biggest promise of the mobile phone is that you can reached whenever you need to be - and this is what this phone just can't provide.

Unfortunately, it seems to be 1 in 3 iPhones bought in the original batch are faulty...
Mine is 1 of them and im not to happy.
Apple sent me a new one today but i wasn't home so i have to re-organize delivery...