I've had my iPhone 4 for a few hours now and the signal strength is all over the place. At least a third of the time, it's "Searching" or "No Service" and then (after 1-5 min) it jumps back to a perfect signal with all bars. My 3GS was working just fine in the same location this morning (4-5 bars).
Is anyone else experiencing this issue? (I realize this could be a local AT&T problem here in East TN...but I'm curious if others are seeing the same thing.)
I am having the same problem. I don't even get a signal at all. I had full service this morning on my 3G and for a little bit while my new phone was activating but now both have no signal at all.
There's a review of the iPhone 4 in today's Wall Street Journal, and the author, who really loved the phone, commented on this as a minor issue. He said he contacted AT&T and that AT&T told him they had just optimized their network for the new phone and they were still tweaking it. The author commented that even when the phone showed no bars at all, he was able to make and receive calls.
As with the above could be that AT&T is still "making last minute adjustments" since the phone wasn't expected to be released until tomorrow. Try resetting all network settings and see if that helps.
Interesting. It did let me dial even when it said "No Service", but it never actually completed the call. Thanks for the info though - I'll give it a couple of days and give AT&T a bit of tweak time...glad to know it isn't just my phone.
I just reset all network settings as you suggested... After the reboot, it came back with a full 3G signal - so hopefully it'll stay that way. Thanks for the suggestion!
I got my phone this morning and I seem to be having the same issue! I go from 0 bars to full service and back to 0 while sitting @ my desk @ work. I will also give it a few days, but this could suck!
I was seeing the same symptom. I had a 3GS in one hand and the newly-activated 4 in the other. The 3GS showed 5 bars on the 3G network and the 4 showed 1 bar. Two minutes later they were both at 5 bars 3G. Then the 4 went to 1 bar Edge. 3GS never dropped below 3 bars and never left the 3G network.
I spent a while on the phone with AT&T and they said it is "possible" that the local network was not "ready" for iPhone 4 activations until tomorrow. However, after several reboots of the iPhone 4, a couple connects\disconnects from iTunes and some utility run by the AT&T rep to force the iPhone 4 to rescan frequencies, it seems to have calmed down a bit. They also had me power off the iPhone 4, remove and replace the SIM, then power on, just to make sure it was making a good physical connection after transport.
My email flow from Exchange is consistent now and the bars on both iPhones are staying somewhat in sync with each other
I'll leave more info if anything else happens, either to the positive or negative.
I just tried the airplane mode thing and it made little difference. The signal strength for both the 3GS and the 4 are bouncing all over the place, but at least now the 4 is keeping up with the 3GS. It does seem to be reduced to a network issue now.
I am having the same problem. I don't even get a full signal at all. I had full service this morning on my 3G and for a little bit while my new phone was activating but now I am not able hear in the call, call quality is very bad. How they suppose to be release with out testing basic things. First time i am disappointing about apple.
I have noticed that when you grip the phone by the steel rim (natural thing to do) the signal strength drops by 15 to 20 db (you can configure the phone to read signal in dbm rather than bars). The impact of holding the phone is huge and very bad. I have bumpers coming, maybe they will help.
Thanks...found the reset, but doesn't seem to make a difference....bars bounce around and even sometimes it says No Service...I'm not an ATT fan, but this is really not good if the network isn't ready...what would be special about this model that it could not "hit" the network?