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Signal Strength / "No Service" Issues

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.)

iPhone 4 (Black, 32GB)

Posted on Jun 23, 2010 10:15 AM

Reply
77 replies

Jun 23, 2010 10:21 AM in response to Adam Byram

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.

Jun 23, 2010 1:15 PM in response to Adam Byram

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.

Jun 23, 2010 1:31 PM in response to sharekalla

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.

Hold it by the glass and see the difference.

Signal Strength / "No Service" Issues

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