iPhone 3G Reception Problems? You're Not Alone - Continued
This thread is a continuation of [iPhone 3G Reception Problems? You're Not Alone|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1602608] and [iPhone 3G Reception Problems? You're Not Alone - Continued|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1632695], which have been locked. The threads were too long and some browsers were timing out. The above links go back to the original threads.
Bars aren't a true measure of signal strength, and definitely not a measure of capacity on 3G. Signal strength just measures how strong the towers are sending out frequencies. On 3G this can be especially misleading as the tower will push people because of congestion, and push people onto EDGE or another 3G tower. This is where iPhones are potentially having problems is on that handoff. However, we should get all the facts straight. Also, measuring signal by the number of bars is definitely not an accurate measurement of true signal strength. Different vendors translate the true db measurements to different bars. It's been well documented that the iPhone actually has comparable signal pickup. It's the handoffs that are the true problem, and problem that I don't believe can be solely laid at feet of the iPhone. Service providers have huge impact by virtue of their network design. With the popularity of the iPhone, 3G towers that may have been previously enough may not be anymore.
My son has a 3G phone (NOT Apple's) on AT&T's network and it works flawlessly as it has for many months now. If I stand next to him my iPhone 3G it doesn't work...Hmmm must be a AT&T problem. Right on Apple!
Maybe I'm alone on this but I'm a little bit annoyed by people in this forum who try and rebuttal against the 3G having a problem by saying "bars are not an indication of how strong the signal is". APPARENTLY NONE OF YOU WHO SAY THIS HAVE TRIED TO ACCESS YOUR "MAPS" OR BROWSE THE INTERNET with your 3G iPhone when it has 1 bar (which is 90% of the time)!!! I'm sorry to disappoint all of you who seem to think you have the greater intellect but while my phone is sitting on 1 bar (which is always is I promise - not exaggerating), if i attempt to pull-up my current location using NAV, it will just sit there and spin and do nothing. Same with the web. If I walk-out on my porch or the balcony of my office building, it will suddenly jump to FIVE bars and everything begins to fly!!
To all who are reading this (especially you who like to play all wise and technical with the whole signal strength numbers reading).. the internal 3G antenna is faulty!!! Its NOT AT&T / it's NOT the fact that the bars "just aren't a good indicator of where your signal strength is" / it's NOT the fact that we just don't know how to use our phone / and it's CERTAINLY NOT that we just all like to gripe more than the average user!! One thing I WILL admit is that those of us who use our phones more extensively for business are NOTICING THIS AND SUFFERING MUCH MORE GREATLY than those of you who are just casual cell phone users.
When I am indoors (in any type of building), I am unable to even dial-out 30% of the time because it will just sit there connecting...and then it will just respond with "call failed - retry?" This isn't once a day!! It's at least 30% of the time.
I have studied this issue by searching ALL web resources about the issue, called every party involved and read all forums. This issue is real and we're all gonna hear what's really going on very soon.
For now - please refrain from responding and giving your 'two cents' with a bunch of technical numbers unless you are Steven Jobs or rub shoulders with him daily. As many problems as I'm having, I cannot even believe some of you are still acting as though you don't believe the issue exists. THIS IS REAL.
I love the phone - excellent concept and still very useful. It just needs to be resolved.
Regards,
JJD in SLC
The only thing that can be said against bars is that it's useless to compare bars between DIFFERENT phones. If you compare signal bars between two iphone 3Gs, it is an accurate representation of signal strength.
However, 3G dynamically allocates signal to each connection so it will fluctuate and as long as you have > -100db signal, it will be usable.
Now if you want to compare hard numbers between different phones, bring up the db level.
Dial (star)3001#12345#(star) on the iphone to see that.
If the iPhone is getting -95 in one spot where a Nokia is getting -80, then there is definitely a hardware problem with the iPhone. Phones in the same spot should have similar signal strength.
Sorry for the duplicate if this has been posted before...
I noticed something new after 2.0.2: when I have a marginal 3G signal paired with a so-so Edge signal, every time I open either SMS or the Phone app, the 3G signal jumps briefly to 5 bars before falling back down to 1. I don't notice Edge doing this - only 3G and only when there isn't a clear signal.
I haven't been able to catch this in test mode, so I don't know if the signal is actually briefly improving, or it's only the display of the bars that changes.
people were not, I think, saying bars were no guide, but they were saying that when (as many have) iPhone bars are compared with (say) Nokia bars, side by side, the iPhone shows fewer bars for the same signal strength on the same network - must say, we get good operation with two bars or more - things get dodgy when it gets to just one bar - sometimes OK, sometimes not
this afternoon, I was working just outside (no-service, due to being on the wrong side of the road) of the 3G coverage area for O2 - my iPhone was mostly showing 1 bar (occasionally two, sometimes dropping to 2G), and surfing was hit & miss, and frustrating ... in field test mode, with 1 bar, the signal level measured -103 to -107dBM, depending on exactly where I stood & pointed ...
incidentally, since we can't tether the iPhone, we've just contracted for a Mobile Broadband USB stick from Hutchison 3 (rather than iPhone's O2), for use with our laptops and (via Wi-Fi) desktops ... this evening (in a good 3G area) it's been giving very speedy surfing - it's also dropped the connection a few times
Yeah - I got my iPhone on launch day, used it for exactly one month to attempt to trudge through the issues just to get an accurate long-term gauge of the issue.
Then I took my phone back to the Apple store in downtown SLC and got a replacement.
(the 'AppleGenius' did NOT hesitate to grab a new one - which I was quite shocked by [considering the cost and value of these things] and quickly set me up with the new one -- all he would come-out and say was "yeah there's a chance that some of the first batch could have some reception issues just like any product".
RESULT: DID NOT HELP AT ALL. For the first day, i had placebo effect where i was all excited because it seemed MUCH more responsive at switching between 3G / Edge but after about 2 hours of phone time and about 24 hours, i realized it was exhibiting the same behavior as my original (minus the scratched apple on the back plate of my original 😉
Second question I wanted to answer was that I DO INDEED notice that when i initially bring-up the screen to send a text or make a phone call, the phone will suddenly show 5 bars for a couple seconds before immediately plummeting to 1 bar (that tiny little bump that's supposed to be a bar 😉.. My business partner's 3G iphone does the same thing. I think they all have this behavior as I've read countless forums where this is referred to as "bouncing bars". Granted, I have had several 3G phones over the past 5 years since it was launched in Salt Lake and they've all had a certain amount of this bouncing effect when you first access something that asks the phone to use signal (gives full bars and then drops to show the true level).
I think the main illustration to sum-up the 3G iPhone issue is that it quickly gets so weak when obstructed by being indoors or drops-off TOO quickly when driving away from a 3G tower.
AGAIN - NOT TO BEAT A DEAD HORSE - just pointing out my experience and description.
Regards,
JJD in SLC
I'll give 100 bucks to anyone who can open apple.com in 5 minutes at Byrant Park on 40th St. on 6th Ave, Manhattan at lunch time about 1pm.
I go there every day for lunch and my iphone always shows 5 bars even when it's on 3G but it will never load one single web page on 3G during lunch time. and you get about 30 per cent dropped calls or call failures.
If you dont believe me go try it yourself tomorrow.
Thanks, TheSasquatch! It's good to know I'm not imagining the "bouncing bars"!
I also notice that I get and excellent Edge signal here inside my house as long as the iPhone is in its cradle. Alas, as soon as I take it out of the cradle to actually use it, the signal drops immediately.
Hi I'm in Phoenix, My phone cuts off constantly =] I just wanted to air! This service is horrible, I love the phone but most of the time it's frozen! Att has one of the worst services out there! I switched from verizon and i think it's the biggest mistake of my life... i miss my great service but the phones su*ck! Thanks for listening... apple recall the phones, change the chips and hook it up man... thanks.
No, It's not data congestion, it's not signal strength, it's not network congestions. It's the iPhone.
If any of those coverage, weak network and congestion claims had any merit at all, all other 3G devices (phones, cards, sticks) would exhibit the same problems, which they just simply don't.
If you have 20 to 30 dBm LESS signal strength on 3G iPhones than on any other 3G stick, handset and even calibrated field test equipment (see my earlier post) the point of network and signal quality is moot.
As for data congestion, the swisscom engineer and I tried a speed test beween an USB stick and iPhone on an internal swisscom speedtest site that CAN handle up to 25 20,000 Kbit ADSL connections simultaneously and noone else was using it AND both devices were connected to the same 3G base station/tower (verfiied by swisscom speed test equipment) the USB stick pulled the full 1.5 mbps, while the iPhones that had a network at all (only 3 out of 5 did) were struggling at 60 to 80 kpbs. Any questions?
When we were doing the tests, only three devices, the iPhone, the comparison equipment (e.g other 3G handset or USB stick) and the field test equipment were connected to the same base station.
Again, all other 3G devices were registering signal strengths in the mid to low 70s while those iPhones that did get a 3G network always showed values of -101 and -106 dBm.
The attempts to explain the iPhone 3Gs obvious hardware issues with carrier problems, bad coverage, network congestions and other far fetched explanations are getting rather tedious by now. Those iPhones that do have issues ( I have yet to see one here that doesn't) have them on strong, uncongested 3G networks with excellent signal strength and coverage.
