iPhone 3G Reception Problems? You're Not Alone - Continued
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iPhone 3G Reception Problems? You're Not Alone, which has been locked. The thread was too long and some browsers were timing out. The above link goes back to the original thread.
As of yeaterday afternoon my phone started the slow speed on full bars of 3G. Toayd still doing the same ting after hard reset, reset network settings, and reset all. I'm doing the "erase all contents" right now.
For the guys in the Pocket/Greenheaven area, 3g blows big time in and around the Lakecrest Shopping center.
It appears the Sacramento area is having issues with 3G. Since yesterday afternoon the 3G download speeds are really slow (10-75kbps) or worse. There are a few periodic spurts of the usual 300-500kbps, but in general very slow. When I switch to EDGE, I have faster speeds. I'm experiencing this in multiple areas around the city with good 3G coverage. Normally I get good download speeds in all these areas. Definitely appears to be an AT&T issue since others are reporting the same issue. Anyone else having 3G issues in the Sacramento area. The Sacramento area experienced a 3G outage about a week ago for almost 24hrs. AT&T really needs to get their act together.
Just got off the phone with AT&T. This is a known issue in the Sacramento area. This issue is still ongoing and it started Thursday afternoon. Over 24hrs and it is still not resolved.
It's not a iPhone problem in my opinion. I've had identical coverage problems with Cingular and that was with a completely different phone about 7 years ago... you'd think they'd upgrade a little in that time.
I find the ATT coverage to be total crap and borderline fraud. My street is in the middle of silicon valley. The ATT coverage map shows the entire neighborhood/town to be completely red ("BEST", "sufficient for most in-building coverage") but it's barely 2 bars when I'm standing in the middle of the street and forget being in the house... I barely get 1 bar when I'm standing on my roof.
It's true that the breadth and depth of AT&T's coverage leaves something to be desired. It's crap compared with Verizon. Yet poster after poster on this thread have indicated that both here in the US and abroad, their other 3G phones can maintain a signal, do not drop calls like the iPhone 3G, and have measured superior data throughput compared to their Apple iPhone 3G... the same location at the same time.
A Nokia N95 can make and receive a phone call in my apartment building in Manhattan while an iPhone 3G cannot on the same network, at the same time. In fact this rudimentary test has been performed with 3 different iPhone 3G's and each time, the result has been the same.
The problem has been reported worldwide, and yet AT&T is not the carrier.
I think its been clearly established that AT&T is contributing to a poor experience by many. I think it's also clear that many, many iPhone 3G's have a significant problem.
Well I thought I'd chime in here after reading through the old thread and this one. I bought the 3G phone in Cleveland a little over a week ago (two actually). I owned the 1st gen iPhone and had great coverage everywhere I went, and never had dropped calls.
3G reception has been great in some places, but horrible in other places. Places like home, where I used to have good reception, are now showing 1 or two bars...often 'No Service'. I had to keep 3G off just to get 1 bar on Edge at home. It was pitiful. My wife's phone on average had one more bar than mine at any given time, but was still lacking. We both have the white 16g.
Then I read this thread and took both of our phones to the AT&T store near us. They swapped out our SIM cards and now I'm home again. I had full 3G coverage the whole way home, and here at the house it's 3 bars. Edge is also 3 bars, where two hours ago it was 1 bar. So as far as I can tell this fixed my problem. I'll post back if anything changes drastically, but I'm hoping this will fix the call dropping issues I've had with the 3G iPhone.
I am in Akron, a little over a mile from the Summit Mall area. Got mine on launch, returned it 9 days later. Of course that was after, 3 trips to AT&T, 3 trips to Apple Legacy Village and numerous phone calls to both. Apple did exchange my phone but it didn't work any better than the first one. I did restores, reboots, field tests and everything else that has been mentioned here on both phones, nadda. Forget about 3g, I was getting -101db on EDGE, on a good day it was -97db.
I too had switched from Verizon and went back. I probably would have hung on to the iPhone a little longer if I could receive decent EDGE signals, I did love the feel of the phone in my hand and ease of use. But when 7 out of 9 phone calls would go directly to voicemail, and the other 2 would get dropped....... I did get good signals (both EDGE and 3g) in some places but unless I wanted to live in my car at Summit Mall, it wasn't worth it.
Very disappointed in Apple/AT&T not speaking up about this. I am a real Apple product/OS supporter but my non-Apple friends are having a good laugh with this one.
our proper SIMs came-through yesterday, so we're on our way ... found we had to update the OS on our desk-top / two lap-tops first (700MB at 50KB/s via our old Nokia', so many many hours) ... got my wife's iPhone intialised before breakfast ... she's all-but a novice on PCs & Macs, having very little experience of either ... but she'd worked-out enough to start calling, checking the weather, and share-prices, and reading SMS messages, in just a minute or two ...
the 3G signal breathes, but down-load speeds are OK (animated Met.Office radar-map soon in-view, Google Maps aerial views of various familiar places around the country well-explored in a jiff) ... the user interface is totally brilliant, and the management of connections via Wi-Fi & 3G & Edge & 2G is pretty smart (OK, maybe the switching between them can be a little slow, as we walk about) ...
later in the day, we were in a marginal area (marginal for 2G & 3G), and found ourselves having to walk about for best-signal ... indoors, there, there was a problem (thick stone walls, lots of concrete & steel), but while the O2 connection was a lot better than our T-Mobile one, the iPhone had to be right-up against the glass of a window to get anything like a useful signal (ie: 2G & sometimes Edge, never 3G) ...
later still, she'd checked e-mails & started her contact list, customised ring-tones, and used the iPhone camera to add photo's ... all with just a few minutes of novice-effort ...
very impressed, so far, but 3G is 3G, it would seem ... and if anyone has a way to improve signals indoors, to allow useful downloads, I'm sure we'd all like to hear of it !!
When I did the hard reset, I held down the home key at the same time I also held down the power key for about 6 seconds. After that, the i-phone went blank, and then the apple icon appeared. I let it boot up for a bit and then we did some tests where Apple called me, and I then made some calls from within my residence. ZERO Problems! It worked slicker than Sh--! So far everything has been working great. I did take Doug's Clement's suggestion of keeping the i-phone in 2G mode until I need to get online. This would help in saving power.
I can add that there was a definite action on my iPhone that caused my problems to start happening.....
We're in Sydney, Australia using the Optus network and we expected to have bad reception at our home coz we're in a bit of a black spot. So we just lived with the settings set to 3G on and WiFi on for use in the house. Going elsewhere the 3G seemed to work fine - for instance when doing demos to work colleagues where there is 100% 3G reception.
But....
A couple of days ago I decided to turn the 3G off to try and get phone calls at home working better - and sure on 2G/GSM the calls were less flaky, though our black spot still causes issues.
The problems came when I went to turn 3G back on (eg. at work) and I then started having problems getting any 3G connection for both data & voice even in a previously mentioned place where there is 100% signal. The symptoms vary a little but basically the phone is refusing to establish a proper handshake with the 3G network. So at the moment 3G is unusable on my phone.
I haven't gone through the complete list of resets yet - though I've reset Network settings several times. Will continue down the chain of those and I'll also have to try and compare with my partner's iPhone (when I can prise it out of her possession) which was bought at the same time.
Graham
Model: MB496X
Serial: 85828FV...
Modem firmware: 01.45.00
Doh! Of course just after sending this previous post I run though the various resets again and I find that the "home/power button for 10 secs" reset has got me a 3G signal connection back again. Of course it is still weak - but I'm happier now!
I'm heading to the Apple Store tomorrow for a Genius Bar Appointment to examine my phone. I'm not sure what I expect to get from my trip but I will report back anything good that comes of it ... as it stands my phone is gets pathetic reception in 3G with the exception of 1 stretch of road in Fontana, CA
Park S. wrote:
This makes me lean toward the network theory as opposed to the iPhone theory.
Leaving aside the issues reported by people on many other networks...
The network theory doesn't explain why I could stand next to an Apple employee at the back of the Boylston Street store and watch my reception bounce from 1-3 bars while his bounced from 3-5 bars. And that store apparently has a microcell in the basement!
Furthermore, my GPS no longer gets a "blue ball" fix, and my desk hasn't moved, nor has my house been modified. It does get a fix outside, but I'm pretty sure it got that same fix inside a few days ago. I had hoped this was bad assistance data, but if that's the case, nobody has bothered to fix it.
Needless to say, I'm planning to see a Genius for a warranty replacement. The only question is when, since we have no idea whether Apple has found and repaired the problem.
