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

In my experience with two coworker's phones (a Sony Ericsson Z750a and a LG 3G phone), they show 3G all throughout our building whereas mine gets 1 bar at best, and usually on 2G (EDGE).

My dad has a Nokia 6555 and my friend has a N75. Each Nokia usually showed full bars around my house and in the downtown area, whereas my phone would show 1-2 bars of 3G at best downtown, often switching to 2G (EDGE) and at my house, it's never on 3G, even though the AT&T coverage map shows I should have 3G.

Additionally, at two AT&T stores, one in South Austin and one at Barton Creek Mall, I looked at the reception of all of the 3G phones and compared them to the iPhones on display as well as mine. at the South Austin store, there is a tower less than 1/2 a mile away. Every 3G phone other than the iPhone had a full signal. Each iPhone varied between 1 and 3 bars, at best. At the Barton Creek Mall, the iPhone on display went between 1 bar of 3G and 2G (full bars). The non-iPhones showed full signal in 3G...

The Apple store at Barton Creek Mall's iPhone 3G's on display all had between 1 and 3 bars, same as mine. My friend's Nokia N75 had full reception at the Apple Store.

Message was edited by: dcdttu

Thank you for posting the very interesting ATT tower info. +*Does that contain all towers or just ones with 3G?*+

According to the file, they put one antenna in a shockingly stupid location which, of course, is on the other side of a building from my office and the far side of the building. I get next to no 3G service even when standing on the 6th floor at windows closest to it. It's a 40' mast and not on the nearby hill. The other antenna is also in a questionable location. It sits on the other side of a ridge. Great for those on the highway but terrible coverage for lots of the southern metro Denver (Lone Tree). Strangely, antennasearch.com shows an ATT tower that doesn't appear in this list.

2G is fine. Thanks again for the info.

Has Apple responded to any of these threads?

There seems to be overwhelming evidence that there is a problem. I am having the same problem. My phone goes from full bars to 1 bars continuousaly. Almost like the phone is in some type of faulty scan loop. Phone is slow, locks up, etc. I just got my 3G yesterday.

Apple, if you are monitoring this thread, what is your official answer?

Dcdttu,

On either your Dad's phone or your friend's, can you turn on the field test and compare the reception numbers your iPhone and the Nokia are getting at the same spots?

I don't know if I'm the typical iPhone customer or the typical apple customer for that matter but here I am with my 3G iPhone that I purchased the Saturday after the launch after reading the hype and knowing a bit about the capabilities of the 3G networks. I appreciate peoples abilities to "Reset" or check out cell towers or do "hard resets" etc. But come on isn't the idea that when you buy a product from a reputable company that has been lauded in the press and is hooked into a network with "the most bars anywhere" that when you take it out of the box and you turn it on that its going to work without returning 2 or 3 times before you find a model that works appropriately. This is ridiculous discussion to be having after people have shelled out 200 and 300 dollars for a phone and committed to a 2 year contract for a service that they aern't getting and that will (in my estimation) will take at a minimum 6 months to officially address and remedy.

From reading the entire thread there is plenty of blame to go around. I for one have found that when I turn off 3G I get much better call quality in and around my area (which according to the at&t maps I am dead center of the best area). Now I don't know if thats a hardware or a network problem. at&t has bad coverage and they should thank god that apple went with them otherwise there wouldn't be one reason to go with them over verizon where I came from and didn't drop 5 calls in the two years I was there.

Whoever reads this thread from Apple or AT&T this is bad, real bad. Its a black eye for Apple. Without question they have at a minimum rolled out an inferior product that doesn't measure up to the Apple standard. For AT&T its one more in a long list of shortcomings that it seems most people are willing to look beyond in order to have a superior handset. Take a page from recent public problems Apple and get out in front of the problem rather then sit there and deny deny deny until there is a serious flood of returns and the press gets so bad that it becomes a storm. It doesn't matter whose fault it is just sort it out so the early adopters dont become early deserters.

Just my two cents.

If this were truely the case, and my 3G iPhone is very similar in db to a Nokia, why does my iPhone 3G stay in EDGE (2G) all of the time when my friend's Nokia is in 3G almost all of the time? I can't keep 3G hardly anywhere in the city, and my phone drops calls like they're hot potatoes!

Maybe a nice, good refresh of the way the iPhone 3G will fix all of this. I'd really like it if they were all in-fact fine reception-wise, and just needed a software tweak.

Course, mine is one of the white iPhones that has a cracked case.... so I'll have to return it anyway...

dcdttu,

I don't know if it's "truly the case" or not. I know very little about MobieTechReview and perhaps they made it up. All they appear to do is review wireless devices, so I took their tests at face value. However, if it is true that Nokia phones and the iPhone report bars differently relative to the -db numbers, then the only way to compare the actual reception of the two devices is to use -db numbers, not bars. That's all I'm saying in my post. I'm not at all questioning the reception issues you're having.

So, if we use the -db numbers rather than bars, we'll get a much more accurate picture of how much weaker the reception is on the iPhone in comparison to the Blacksungkia or whatever other 3G devices people have handy to test it against. I'd very much like to know and bars, if the article I linked to is accurate, won't give a meaningful result.

KBeat,

Keep in mind since 3G is communicating with multiple towers, you may only be look at the db for one tower.

Some phones, not the iPhone, report the best signal from a single tower in the bars. My personal understanding is the bars on the iPhone reflect all the towers it is communicating with for 3G.

Hope this helps,

Nathan C.

So I just spent the better part of 90 minutes working my way through Apple's support system where I spoke to a frontline technical support person, a escalation product specialist, and finally a customer relations person.

Here are the facts:

-The technical support person was not aware of the particular issue.
-The product specialist was not aware of the particular issue.
-The customer relations person was not aware of the particular issue.

Wow, they seem to have that answer down. What does that mean?

The closest I could get to an answer from the customer relations person was that usually when an issue gets this much traffic engineering is aware of it (I am paraphrasing). I got her committment that she will forward the issue. To who? I don't know. I expect that Apple is aware of the issue and is not officially commenting on the issue which is real worrisome to me.

I made a point to the customer relations person that you have threads with thousands of posts being made. Seems like Occam's razor applies here. Yeh, you have an issue. In fact, your employee had to lock the original thread and start a new one because so many customers were posting the same issue. The new thread is timing out browsers now.

Hello? Are you listening Apple? One of your flagship products has a serious issue and your loyal customers want an answer, not this canned stuff your support and customer relations people are forced to say.

I am off to contact a number of my friends in the media about my experience with names of people that I talked to see if anyone cares in media. I think it is possibly a stock moving issue that and maybe they will be......

Wan Chai Man wrote:
+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.

It is supposed to switch between but it's doing horribly. I'd rather get my voice networking from 2G and my data from 3G. Even if the 3G network is poor, it does better and handles the dropouts/bursty signal/etc rather well.

I couldn't understand the other person on the phone yesterday around 3pm as 3G was so lousy. I moved to a point in the office with the highest signal seen and it was still lousy. I'm sure it was good enough for data though which means that with my proposal, data would flow while I was on the phone with 2G. Another data point (Google earth stats unless stated): I was out in an open area this morning (8am) walking to the train. Two towers (based on the file) would have served that location best. The one with the better chance of line of sight is 4mi away at 64' high though likely with a few buildings in the way. At 3.68mi away there's a tower with the antenna at 5700' (per file). With the hill in between at 5693' and me at 5639', line of sight is again not good (presumably scraping the ground). AT&T 2G coverage states "Best." I have no idea how critical it is to have actual line of sight or if it can be close.

I do think everybody needs to calm down a bit. Don't get me wrong, I'm having the exact same problem. I'm dropping about 3-4 calls a day AT LEAST. Ha, I even just dropped the call while I was talking to Apple Support. I am going in today to have a genius bar rep take a look at the phone. The Apple Support rep said I was justified in doing so.

As far as the rant & rave on demanding an answer from Apple, relax. Obviously, if they had an answer, they would give it to you. It would cause serious problems if they told everybody there was a problem and have everyone try to exchange the phone at the same time when it could just be a simple software fix. Use some of the work-arounds for the time being, (yes I know you are paying for 3G and you should be able to use it.) But what's the alternative?

If you are having the same problems, POST! The more people having the issue, undoubtedly the quicker Apple will press the issue to get it repaired.

Hello Jwm1969,

*Boy, I sure understand... and " feel" your frustrations!* Keep in mind that Apple needs time to sort through all of the bugs in the new iPhone 3G. And this is just one of them.

I agree with everyone... that Apple should have made some kind of an announcement. Even something like +*"We understand that some users are reporting 3G reception issues, and we are looking into this"*+. Something??? Anything!!!

Hopefully, Apple is working with AT&T, and the other carriers World-Wide in an attempt to fix this issue via software or firmware? And its taking a lot more time than expected.

But, wait... why else would Apple remain so quiet about this? Which is what also makes me wonder if it's a deeper more serious issue (like poor manufacturing, poor quality control, something not soldered properly, bad batch of antenna's, bad batch of chips, etc). Otherwise, why would some iPhones work and some not? Some were fixed via new SIM cards, doing hard re-sets, etc, etc, etc? Strange, very strange. Oh, and many users are reporting they are now getting better 3G reception... so is it Apple or the carrier?

Look how quickly Apple came out and admitted problems with MobileMe!
Why... because they knew they could fix it... and quickly.

I guess we are lucky, we still have excellent 3G reception (in 3G coverage areas). But again, I have switched to 2G, and only use 3G when needed. Hopefully they can tweak the battery to help extend the life. Trust me, after they get the 3G issue fixed, the battery life will be the next huge hurdle to address. And these boards will light up with battery life issues (more than what appear now)

Take care -- and lets hope the next firmware/software release fixes everyones 3G reception issues!!!!

Doug

<Edited by Moderator>

So in Houston you had good reception, but in Austin you don't? Sounds like my experience in San Antonio vs. Austin. I, though, believe fully that it is the phone and not the network.

In Houston or San Antonio, the network is very strong, making all 3G phones work well, including the 3G iPhone. But in Austin, where the network isn't as strong (I don't know why, maybe because it is hilly?) all 3G phones behave well, except the iPhone. This just shows that the iPhone 3G doesn't hold onto a 3G signal near as well as its competition.

Yes, if you had a cellular tower every 500 feet, all phones would behave great.

That doesn't make me thing it's the network. It just shows how weak the phone's reception is.

Hey all-
I was having the same problem with my Iphone 3G, bad reception, no 3G reception, so on and so fourth. BUT I went back to the Apple store not even 5 days after buying the Iphone 3G to exchange it for a new one and they actually exchanged it with no problems and said that several people were having the same problems with their phone and that they think there is a "bad batch" of phones out there. My new Iphone 3G works great with no problems in the reception or 3G department so may all everyone needs to do is just exchange their models...after all something that was produced in such mass quantities is bound to have several bad models.

Alex, the iPhone 3G has a 14-day return policy, not 30. FYI.

http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/iphone-faqs.jsp - head to the bottom of the link.