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Details of iPhone 2.0.2 Firmware 3G Connectivity Improvements?

I dunno, I'm still going to wait for 2.1. I just upgraded to a 3G and had to restore a backup, I don't want to have to all that again unless the update is significant! :)
 
supmango said:
OK so let me get this straight. Apple wants to make sure that they have a reliable product, so they create it to demand a reliable connection. Then ATT comes back and says "WHOA, wait a minute, we can't handle all of this demand on our networks (be it power or anything)." And, still, it is Apple's fault?!? If I spend this kind of money on something the thing had better work, and work better than anything else out there. This is what Apple created and ATT cannot handle it? This is freaking hilarious. SO in order for Apple to maintain its reputation of reliability, it has to conceed to ATT's demands and reduce it's demand on the network. Maybe I am an idiot, but wont reducing the amount of power demanded by each iPhone on ATT's network REDUCE the reliability of each individual connection? Or, at the very least, make the service MORE sporadic in areas with sparse 3G coverage? I don't know, but to me the problem is still with ATT.
Click to expand...

No, the phone was asking for more power than it needed.

Let's say power companies weren't on-demand power, but instead they would reserve power for each household. Power comapnies are also usually rated to a max power generation, usually in the megawatts for some smaller ones and gigawatts for the much larger ones. For the sake of simplicity, you only have a single 100W light bulb at your house. The old iPhone firmware = (supposedly!) telling the power company you reserve 1kW, but only use 100W. The new iPhone firmware = (supposedly!) correctly reporting 100W. Now you can see how many people allotting more power than necessary could leave some in the dark (no pun intended, since I'm talking about the phone at this point and not about the light bulb)
 
supmango said:
What other 3G devices have you seen this with. My experience is exactly the opposite. ALL 3G devices have exactly the same problems on ATT's network.
Click to expand...

I'll admit I'm going off of pure word of mouth (or should I say forum post) here, since I've never been witness to these calamitous issues. If you can witness first-hand that 3G has been crappy and dropping calls for all AT&T devices since the iPhone came out then this lends a lot of credibility to Apple's announcement. Curiously, though, I haven't really read of 3G users having problems even though they don't tend to congregate and come up with conspiracy theories quite as much as our lot.
 
Gee I wonder why people aren't upgrading to 2.0.2. Maybe it should have been a major instead of a minor release.

And while I used to upgrade all my hardware and software with every new release, I've stopped because Apple doesn't tell the end user what has changed in the new software.

"Improves compatibility with certain XXXXXX". Not good enough.
 
the bottom line is: apple and at&t want this problem to go away. to do so, they have initiated action. the best we can do is follow their advice. we will never know enough about the problem to have an intelligent approach to the solution. therefore, if an update is recommended, it should be done.

NOW, on the other hand, apple HAS to make these updates palatable and attractive. otherwise they're sure to meet with lots of resistance (as evidenced by many of us). GPS, cut and paste, ****, the lag! I have to hard-reboot my device every morning so it feels like it's fresh from a firmware update (notice to many of you:

ITS NOT THE SAME TO POWER IT OFF THAN TO HARD REBOOT, TO HARD REBOOT YOU HOLD THE HOME AND POWER BUTTONS TOGETHER TILL IT SHUTS DOWN FORCIBLY. OR TYPE REBOOT IN THE CONSOLE, OR USE BOSSPREFS.

I don't think a lot of people know this last little bit. Sure, it's annoying to have to reboot the phone like if it were a Windows box, but it sure works around the lag bug.
 
jmadlena said:
My 3G reception has been alright, but just today my iPhone stopped ringing some of the time. I randomly had missed calls today, when it clearly never received a call.
Click to expand...

I've just started having weird problems as well. I'll get a voicemail (after not hearing the phone ring). When checking the voicemail, the recording would simply halt mid-sentence. I'd get that little spinning circle where the pause button normally would be. Then all voicemails would become unretrievable. And then on top of that I'd lose system sounds -- key clicks, locking sound, etc.... I tried rebooting the phone and that brought the system sounds back but the voicemails still wouldn't play. After a few hours, I'd suddenly hear the voicemail sound and then could play them again. It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm on EDGE or 3G. This has happened three times in the past two days. It had never happened before that. :confused:
 
To happydude and all others with dropped calls.
1. Apple is addressing this and will replace your phone, they are stress fractures, go in to an apple store and say you are dissatisfied with the service and all and now you have stress fractures. They will give you a new one.
2. If you are dropping calls they can test for this, bring it in and they will replace it.

To everyone else
Please anyone with 2.0.0 and 2.0.1 please upgrade, you will help improve the network for everyone!
 
None of this explains why:

1. Prior to 2.0.2 my iPhone 3G worked perfectly every day for the last month and half.

2. Since 2.0.2 I've been on EDGE 75% of the time in high 3G areas and have had my first, second, and all the way to 10th dropped calls.

The problems i heard rumored about were actually caused by the update which was a supposed fix. Very interesting and true story, something to think about.
 
I'm surprised that Apple or AT&T hasn't developed a way to 'Push' a Firmware update to the devices, then give the user a window saying an update is ready for installation. Then, it would be a forced update. I mean who doesn't want their phone to work properly?
 
orbital said:
To everyone else
Please anyone with 2.0.0 and 2.0.1 please upgrade, you will help improve the network for everyone!
Click to expand...

Except yourself...

Apple f-up. They made a device that said "gimme more priority/power!!!" not counting on AT&Ts lousy cell-towers Powersupplys?

So, if this explanation holds any water (doubtful...) then you should stay on 2.0 and get the most power for yourself while everyone else goes to 2.0.2. *insert evil genius laugh*
 
I'm so frustrated with my 3G's performance of late that I turned off 3G functionality the other day to see how that would be. I must say, both phone and internet has been working MUCH better.

This is frustrating though since it makes me realize I should have kept my original iPhone since I essentially have no additional functionality over the original and am socked with a $15 month increase for 3G service and texts. Pretty lame. I hope Apple's forthcoming fixes make it worth turning 3G back on for me.
 
I feel like...

I feel like what they are doing is capping your bandwidth in clever ways to make you think you're getting full "power" when you're probably getting bursts of 3G connectivity filled with regular-ass connectivity.
 
varscsak said:
It's seems weird that they wouldn't be able to solve this problem on the cell tower end. A manufacture of a phone can bring down a cell network...that seems odd.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with that statement.

Anyhow...I am still having dropped call problems.
What AT&T really needs is to add MORE CAPACITY TO THEIR NETWORK or put a moratorium on iPhone sales until it is fixed!!!!

And why the ****ing silence from AT&T and APPLE on this issue. For God's sake why let rumors run wild on the internet instead of just coming out with the facts in the open.
 
what I don't get

What I don't get is that I'm running 2.02. I've had problems with email, connectivity, dropped calls, got a bad screen (on my second one.. on number 3 now), freeze ups, etc.... but now... everything seems to be getting better without me doing ANYTHING.

I got tired of standing in line at the Apple store to return my phone.... etc. I decided to just deal with it until the last day I could return and get a new phone (hoping Apple had fixed the chipset or something).

Well, I'm at the two week mark today... but honestly, for some unknown reason... my phone has been pretty stable for the last week. I haven't dropped a single call.. email works most of the time... only had a couple freeze-ups in the last 8 days... etc. I haven't reinstalled anything.

Can Apple actually tweak phones without you knowing it? Or, is the ATT network in my area getting better? How else could an iPhone 3g start getting more stable all on it's own without any other firmware update etc.? I hope I'm not jinxing it by saying I'm not really having any problems anymore (it's not perfect yet) but for the most part... a reboot every few days is all I've had to do... to maintain a reasonable level of stability and function.
 
i just can't upgrade with fears of worse service and degraded battery life. You have to actually fix something for me to be inclined to update. I know I *may* be screwing the heard, but I simply can not afford worse service at this point.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5C1 Safari/525.20)

I'm so glad I kept my 1st gen iPhone!! These 3g issues with AT&T won't be solved for quite awhile.
 
Just another viewpoint

I know that many people are having real problems, but I just wanted to say that in Minneapolis, I get good 3G speeds and haven't had a problem with dropped calls since the 2.02 update. In fact, I get better service (fewer dead areas) with 3G than I did with the older voice protocol.

I wonder how much of the problem is due to ATT's sometimes sparse buildout of 3G and how much is due to the iPhone. After those iPhone tests showed consistently good signal strength, I tend to think it may be ATT's network that's the issue. If so, then they better start building towers, because iPhones are only getting more popular.
 
moonzilla said:
all i know is that my reception has been worse since the 2.0.2 update. in fact, ive had more dropped calls in the past 3 days than at any other point with the 3g
Click to expand...

That is due to everyone else NOT UPGRADING. My 16g White has not dropped a call since 2.0.2. I will admit I live in an area where people upgrade when they receive an email from Apple/at&t.

Kind of a no-brainer.
 
skiphunt said:
What I don't get is that I'm running 2.02. I've had problems with email, connectivity, dropped calls, got a bad screen (on my second one.. on number 3 now), freeze ups, etc.... but now... everything seems to be getting better without me doing ANYTHING.
Click to expand...

It's not you, it is your fellow iPhone 3G users. As they upgrade to the 2.0.2 firmware, the load their phones are putting on the 3G network lessens which improves service for everyone else.
 
Since upgrading to 2.0.2, I've had more dropped calls, failed calls, and calls that just never come through between myself and other iPhone users than I had in two years with my razor. At first we thought it was just that classes started in this college town on Monday and the network was overtaxed, but I'm beginning to suspect the phone. Obviously, there's still a little bit left to do.
 
varscsak said:
It's seems weird that they wouldn't be able to solve this problem on the cell tower end. A manufacture of a phone can bring down a cell network...that seems odd.
Click to expand...

It's not the cell tower's fault. Coming from someone who's written power control algorithms for 3G communication networks, I can assure you that the problem lies in the handset. Imagine it like this:

You're the cell tower standing in the center of a room and it's your job to speak and listen to phones that come into your room. Ok, then imagine someone (representing a phone) comes into your room and starts shouting "CAN YOU HEAR ME!?" You respond, "Yes, I can hear you but you don't need to talk so loud. Do you understand?" The phone responds "I DIDN'T HEAR YOU VERY WELL, COULD YOU SAY THAT LOUDER?" So you repeat it louder, "I CAN HEAR YOU BUT YOU DON'T NEEd TO TALK SO LOUD. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" The phone repeats "I DIDN'T HEAR YOU VERY WELL, COULD YOU SAY THAT LOUDER?" Enter phone 2 who says "Hello, can you hear me?" You respond to phone 2 "I hear you phone 2, respond." Because you're still shouting at phone 1 phone 2 says, "Sry, I couldn't hear that. Could you say it louder?" and so on. Now imagine this "Can you hear me" stuff is happening 1500 times a second I you can see how this can quickly spiral out of control.

There's something most likely wrong with the UE's (phone) receiver that's not allowing it to properly pluck out and decode the tower's signal causing the phone to determine that it needs the tower to shout louder.
 
cenetti said:
People on this site are already using 2.0.2.
I met a girl tonight at the bar, she was bragging about her iphone and I asked her if she upgraded her firmware, she gave me this dumb blonde look. Then I asked if she received a sms from ATT, then she said "oh I thought it was an Att advertisement or something like that, I deleted it."

there are way toooo many people out there who don't even know what firmware is.

Good luck getting everyone update....it'll take months
Click to expand...

Apparently 2.0.2 isn't the firmware she's looking for.
 
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