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

Add me to the long list. I live in Los Angeles, and you can be driving anywhere in this cite (Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Hollywood) and you will get slow connections on 3G or dropped connections all the time. Pull up Google maps and it will load as slow as the earlier version of the iPhone. The ads that Apple is showing about fast speeds is entirely misleading.

My two cents:

I live in Pasadena, CA and work on the lot at Universal Studios. First iPhone reception was good - not great like Verizon, but good. First two weeks of the 3G iPhone were quite problematic: reception was worse in my house, in my office, and EVERYWHERE IN BETWEEN. One day I switched back and forth between Edge and 3G all the way home - every time I went to 3G the bars went to 0 or half of the first bar max. When I went back to Edge I got the standard four bars.

So... I have now turned 3G off, and the phone works fine. Which is awfully ironic and pretty frustrating!

I don't think it's Apple, I think it's AT&T. They never expected there to be 1-2 million iPhones on 3G within 1 month, and their newtork just can't handle it.

If you remember, there were reports that AT&T was "improving" 3G before the new iPhone. This means they sent one guy to one tower to upgrade it (ha ha).

I think they can't handle it and the 3G network is new and not nearly as tested and proven as Edge (and that is pretty awful too,i.e. call quality, dropped calls) So imagine how bad an unproven overloaded new network is that they haven't figured out yet.

So I blame Apple for lowering their standards so low that they went with the worst carrier, AT&T.

Here's another Swedish Telia user with severe 3G reception problems. After a lot of dropped calls in the middle of Stockholm and frequent switching between Edge and 3G while using Safari in areas with excellent coverage I've now given up 3G.

You are 100% correct. One of my kids has an LG 3G phone on the AT&T network and it works great and NEVER DROPS CALLS.

I called AT&T who sent me to an Apple store. They will replace it when it comes back in stock. That is their official remedy.

iPhone:

Great 'i'
Poor 'Phone'

In DC, I get dropped calls all the time. I rarely have more than 2 bars. The service is deplorable compared to Verizon. In 1 month I've had more dropped calls and "can you hear me, now(s)" than I did in years with Verizon.

Count me in with this problem.

I'm in the DFW area near the airport and I have never had all my bars. The latest update didn't help.

I can barely use the phone at work because the person I'm talking to keeps cutting out and it's constantly dropping back down to EDGE. If I wanted to use EDGE all the time I would have just kept my old iPhone.

Because the 3G signal is so low my GPS navigation is pretty much useless because it takes too long to update the information.

at last:

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/08/12/some-customers-with-iphone-3g-connection-iss ues/

geez, read this thread! there are hundreds of people who don't live in the US and still have this problem with bad reception. this is worldwide! it IS the iPhone.

But then, not everyone in the world is reporting bad reception either. My two phones are fine here in Denver.

Got my iPhone yesterday. Tried 3G reception and its terrible. With my HTC TyTn II it works great (using T-Mobile). With my brand new iPhone it does not work / goes to 2.5G (which does'nt work good either).

Also my iPhone loses my carrier very often without any reason. Comes back within seconds but still I've lost connection AND have to 'click' on an error message.

(location: The Netherlands, 8GB iPhone 3G)

CNET posted a story today that the 3G problems may be due to the 3G chipset in the iPhone:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10015301-37.html

No other major phone manufacturer has this chipset. If this is true, then it may be a poor hardware quality issue that cannot be fixed without a replacement/ recall.

Way to go Apple.

My iPhone 3G exhibits the same issue yours does: Great 2G reception, but awful 3G reception in the exact same place.

I don't know what the cause is, but It doesn't seem to be a network issue. EDGE and 3G are both being delivered by the same AT&T tower, using the same 850/1900 frequencies. An educated guess would be the iPhone 3G's antenna as the culprit. I'm hoping this can be addressed in a firmware update, as a hardware replacement is the worst-case scenario.