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

Can someone post once again the process to go to the Field Test the unit so that I can get the dBm #'s

Really? Did Apple pay you to post that? I know several iPhone 3G customers that I am responsible for their purchase, that are totally disappointed in many aspects of iPhone 3G - primarily battery life and 3G reception.

Yes Apple paid me to post that. What are you going to do about it??

And how much Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry, LG & Verizon pay you to write bad about the iPhone on this forum.

Just because you and a few others have a problem does not mean everyone has a problem with it.
There are many people on this forum who have posted positive experience with their iPhones.

If you and the people you know are so disappointed with your iPhone experience go and return the phone. Don't try to downplay my positive experience.

Hello Anilsudhakaran,

anilsudhakaran wrote:
If you and the people you know are so disappointed with your iPhone experience go and return the phone. Don't try to downplay my positive experience.

That's a good reply.

We all have 30 days to "test drive" the iPhone 3G. If you are not happy... simply, take it back.

And... then what do you buy?

Thanks,
Doug

Hey KBeat,

Nice find!

Doug

That's why I say forego the bars entirely and just watch the phone's as they switch from 3G to 2G. My iPhone switches all over the place in Austin, and my friend's Nokia never does....

Bars, db, whatever you want to call it... the Nokia has 3G all the time and my iPhone has it about 20% of the time.

dcdttu wrote:
That's why I say forego the bars entirely

You are decidedly in the minority. Bars, bars, bars is all people talk about on the forums. AT&T with their "More bars in more places" doesn't help. However, many of the posters in this thread seem a great deal more savvy about the relative meaning of bars to actual reception and, in particular, how it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer.

I agree with you 100%; sorry if I missed your point. In our office we call the bars on phones fake indicators because they don't really tell you much. As you said, there is no industry standard, so phone manufacturers are free to use the convention they best see fit. Apple has chosen to use a very low bar to dBm value, so a lot of people's complaints are just based on what they see on the top left of their phones.
In 3G, the signal indicator is even worse because having a signal does not mean you are going to get a decent call or data rate. Since 3G is based on CDMA technology (similar to Verizon and Sprint but off course incompatible... go figure) what really matters is the ratio between signal and interference. If you have a good signal indicator but have a lot of users around you, your call may get blocked, dropped or your data session may be as slow as EGDE.

No problem RF, I appreciate your posts. I've learned quite a bit from them.

Doug,

I've followed your messages in this thread and I have no reason not to believe my problem is a SIM card since I have the old model as you noted earlier. I'm a "why" kind of person, however. Maybe I'm missing something. Why would one SIM not give me the reception and a new one give me better reception for 3G? I had 3G reception on the first day at my house and outside, then the next day nothing until I'm 1/2 mile from my house.

I thought the SIM card just told the network you were authorized to use it. Is there a simple answer why the changed SIM card is working for those of you that have had them switched out? Just wondering because if I go this route, I don't want to be standing at AT&T with a dumb look on my face when they say "why do you think a new SIM card will solve this problem?"

I have no doubt it will solve most of the problems folks are having. I'm just curious why.

Thanks for all your help!

Easy Josh,

No need to get snarky simply because your experience has not been as good as others.

While I have had some moments of "***?" over the course of the last 3 weeks with my iPhone 3G 16g Black, (mostly getting used to the iTunes interface and syncing with MobileMe) I will not go back to any other SmartPhone that is out there.

As the old saying goes: "Your results may vary"

OK, so here's something, about posting here in general, that IS getting on my nerves.

Why can I scroll the entire thread, and see replies properly indented, when I am NOT logged in, but the moment I DO log in it becomes a multipage, no indent collage of multiple pages?

"Enquiring" minds want to know....

KBeat, I just want to say thank you for posting that. Very useful.

Once logged in, you can change this behavior by clicking on "My Settings."

I bought an iPhone last week. My phone is also having both 2G and 3G reception problems. The problem is nots only isolated to data but even when I turn 3G off I have poor 2G voice reception in many places. I really like the iPhone for many reasons. When 3G works it really is fast for web browsing, as fast as 1.4 Mbps but it is not consistent. When the voice reception is working the iPhone is very clear even better than my Razr on Verizon but again it is not consistently good voice quality. I have no idea if these problems are the iPhone or the carrier. I've tried resetting the phone as suggested in a post but the problems remain. I'll try to go to AT&T to get the SIM card swapped to see it if it helps. I'll also try to get a replacement phone but I am not very hopeful that will help after reading this forum. I haven't had time to read all these posts, since there are so many. Are there any other suggestions that I missed that I should try to fix the reception problems? I still have time to return it so hopefully apple will release a firmware update before my time is up because I really don't want to return it. Thanks for any help.