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

I went to the Apple Store (the first one in Germany has just opened), and the Genius checked the phone. He said it had slightly higher call drop values than average. He then exchanged the phone.

The new one is a refurb, but seems to show slightly better signal stickiness. I.e. when it drops to 2G it stays there (the old one kept switching between the networks).

It's still not good, but I think I can live with it now.

A colleague of mine has a new iphone, and his shows worse dmb and signal stickiness values. From what I can see, there seem to be relatively significant differences between the devices (5-10 dbm).

Anybody want to buy a slightly used iPhone 3G?

Seriously, I've had it replaced, replaced the SIM card, blah blah blah ad infinitum.

Life is too short to mess around trying to get it working properly. I live in Columbus OH on the w/e's and work in downtown Chicago during the week. Since I fly, I'm always turning the phone off and back on so that takes care of ATT's advice to always turn the phone off and back on when traveling any distance. Seems to me the technology should not require the user to do that to maintain good network connectivity.

So now I've got a crappy LG CU515 but at least I can make and receive phone calls without constantly getting them dropped.

Maybe I'll revisit the iPhone in a year or so but it just isn't worth the hassle right now.

Im having issues as well.

Just bought the phone last weekend.
3g works quite well when out of the house, however on occasions that it has fallen back to gprs, i find it difficult to get the phone to revert 3g automatically.

For instance. I have pretty shonkey reception in my room, yet if i go out side i have full strength 3g signal. Occasionally the phone reverts to gprs whilst in the house yet sometimes when i leave the house i find that the phone refuses to auto connect back to 3g unless i use airplane mode, toggle 3g on/off or restart the phone. Once i do that i have full strength 3g signal.

Whats going on?

I did a full restore via itunes the other day and chose not to restore from backup (clean install) and it was working fine for about 3 days.
Last night i decided to put some of my apps back on and today the problem returned.

Maybe its to do with a bad install? or a piece of software it self?

The iPhone tends to not update its signal type indicator (3G,E,GPRS) very fast. In some ways this is a good thing for battery life, you don't want your phone polling rapidly running the battery down.

Some times it indicates 3G and then drops to edge. This is probably because the indicator hasn't updated since you left a 3G area.

I will keep an eye out the next time it happens.
What would you say a decent time would be for the the phone to automatically swap over to 3g again once in a 3g area.

Like i said. Last week i did a full restore without restoring from a back up. I found that when it did revert to gprs when in my home that it would then swap back to 3g within 2 minutes of going out into the street.

I found today that it was about 10 minutes and was still showing gprs.

How long would you say you would expect the phone to search again and pick up the signal so that i can test it out by waiting to see if it auto connects up again.

Thanks again mate.
Im loving the phone but this problem is doing my head in.

Just got off yet another 2 hour call with AT&T, now they are telling me I should turn of WiFi and that will solve my dropped call problem. Had the phone replaced 3 times, sim card replaced, had a network ticket opened for my line with AT&T, still not solved, we'll see if turning off the wifi makes any difference...

I've had my 3G for a little over 6 months. No problems early on and until about 3 weeks ago then suddenly I started to get 1 or 2 dropped calls during that first week. A few more the following week... Now I'm up to several dropped calls a day.

All of this is in working from the same location where my phone shows 5 bars. I've tried 3G on and off. Just 10 minutes ago I got a call from my boss while my phone registered 5 bars with 3G off. His first 10 words were perfect then a garbled mess. I had to call him back on the land line.

I did a network reset and a phone reset just about 1/2 hour ago. Right after both the phone was sitting on the desk with 5 bars then suddenly it would say "searching..." few seconds later 5 bars again. It did this twice.

Is this a phone problem? I have apple care on it. What should I do?

Hello all,
I live in Indonesia and I got problem with 3G receptions too. The operator here is Telkomsel and I have been using their service since very long and no problems whatsoever.

My husband bought iPhone 3G 16gigs white for me just 2 months ago. And I got a lots of problem connecting to the internet with 3G network.

So many times it switched to GPRS and never back to 3G. Than after that the connection always lost, cannot connect, and I have to reset the iPhone (turn off and on, reset network, sleep button + home button combination).

I've tried to return the device asking for repairs, but they said there's no problem with the device. (no Apple Store here)

This is soo annoying and frustrating. And since I still had my old M600i, and compared to it, I don't have any problem connecting to 3G (using the same operator and the same SIM card). In fact, my husband tethered the M600i to his MacBook Pro and share it's network over Wi-Fi. So I can connect to internet.

That's weird. Now my ~USD 1100 iPhone 3G is become iPod Touch connected over wifi using my iPhone data plan!

Tried to be patient and waiting for updates from Apple. And just yesterday Apple release OS 3.0, my husband immediately updated my iPhone 3G. And guess what, the iPhone's 3G receptions are STILL buggy.

We don't know what to do.

Today Apple release iPhone 3G [S], and sure it adds some pain to my already hurt feelings.

Apple, please please at least look at the problems with your (statistically) 2% of iPhone 3G users. (and some other issues like battery life, drop calls, heats, etc).

Best Regards..

Noby,

I am sure this will not make you feel any better about your iPhone 3G, but the new 3GS seems to have the same (or worse) poor signal strength.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2048701&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2049109&tstart=0

My reception on my new 3Gs is terrible. Some say it's the overloaded network. I was in Newport, RI over the 4th of July holiday. Had my phone the entire time and it never rang yet I got 16 missed called notices and 14 voice mails. What's up with that.

I live in Fredericksburg, VA and commute daily to DC, and have been having problems in both places. Lately I have been having internet connection issues even though I have full bars. I've been turning off the phone and turning it on again and this has been working, but not so much anymore. I have to do it four or five times before I can even check my e-mail. I could understand it if I had no bars, but when I have full bars can't connect? It's really frustrating!

This is in Central NJ - i have full 5 bars 3G at work - but the connection is so intermittent - one moment the connection is so fast that internet pages open with no issues at all - and the next moment safari cribs - "server cannot be found - please make sure airplane mode is not active" - this is really bad ....
Oh BTW - 16gb Black 3GS here...bought on launch day..

My first original iphone was great. I could make and receive calls with no failures. Now that everyone in the world (lots of kids for some reason) have iphones and can't seem to put the **** things down for 5 minutes. I have NO SERVICE ANYWHERE.. Tried 3 phones and still FAIL. LAS VEGAS NEEDS HELP. Service is terrible. I cant make a simple call. Even it it finally rings it drops after they answer. What are we in THE STONE AGE??? Too many people using the same service and AT&T refuses to do anything about it.. I have called them and complained and they don't care. I can't count the number of times I heard an AT&T rep say. "It not our problem..." HELLO AT&T - --- IT IS YOUR PROBLEM... They say it because I am in a bad area. Funny since the tower is a block away and it has a 3 mile radius. AND WHAT ABOUT this new faster service that I was promised with the NEW 3Gs (remember the "s"). Ya well it is just as bad If not worse. PLEASE AT&T. Oh and just wait till Friday Sept 25. FFFFF----AAAAAA---IIIIIII---LLLLLLL Fail all over. They are opening up a can of worms. You cant expect people to send video and picture messages and thing the service will be able to handle it when the service doesn't work to begin with... I love the new thing that they are offering. That mini cell site for your home. Oh how cute. $150.00 and I can make a call from home. Hey idiot. Thats what a home phone is for. I Need to use my phone AWAY from home. How about fixing that. GET IT TOGETHER AT&T before you lose all you customers and go bankrupt again....

Same here.

Jersey City, NJ, Newport area. This is a business center, and the reception is just a nightmare.

The phone would show full bars and 3G indicator and yet neither web browsing or retrieving emails would work.

Not speaking about the call drops. I estimate that 80% of the calls made in the area using my iPhone 3GS would eventually drop.

I'm trying to switch off the 3G for some days, to see if it has something to do with it.

Now, I wouldn't say it's necessarily a problem with the iPhone, as when I'm home (1/2 mile from my work place), 3G is working just fine, and call reception is fine too.

Message was edited by: Anteus

Hi,

I am / was a HUGE iPhone 3G fan, had 3 models and always blamed the local Vodacom provider in South Africa for my connectivity / voice issues, even got them to come out to install a 3G booster @ my house to try and sort out my issues.

Finally on Sat went out and bought a HTC Hero running Andriod, holy **** is all I can say...in the same area's where I had issues of dropped calls, ActivSync issues connecting to Exchange, delayed sms that would come through in batches and flacky MMS the Andriod does all of that 1000% better everything just works...reminds me of when I had my pre iPhone handsets...nice and stable.

My beautiful white 3GS is in the cupboard waiting for the day a fix comes out, miss it but **** is it nice to have a reliable phone that can do all my iPhone could.

Russ