So I had been having tons of problems with 3G in the north suburbs of Chicago. I really couldn't have a conversation without a dropped call and even on my drive into the city I never got over 2 bars of 3G and was often at the tiny 1 bar they show.
Today I decided to bring in my iphone and after explaining my situation the Apple Genius offered to give me a new one which I gladly accepted. I didn't think it would fix the problem but I kind of decided I at least wanted to rule out the possibility that it could be a malfunctioning phone.
Low and behold all day today my 3G service was significantly better than it had been. I went from No Service in my house to 1 or 2 bars (I'm right at the very tip of AT&Ts 3G coverage and on my drive in I went from 1 bar to mainly 4 or 5 bars (assuming 5 is the max). I also had two different conversations on the drive in for a total of about an hour and I didn't drop either call once (something unheard of before). My car displays the number of bars and I kept checking the phone to make sure it was on 3G and not Edge b/c I had never seen 5 bars on 3G before.
I'm on version 2.0 and won't upgrade for a few days to do a little more testing but needless to say if you expect to get better 3G coverage than you are getting than you might want to try an exchange. The Apple Geniuses seem more than willing to help out. Also I highly recommend it if you got one on launch day as I remember a bunch of other initial buyers complaining of the same thing. By now you are pretty much guaranteed of not getting one from the first batch.
Today I decided to bring in my iphone and after explaining my situation the Apple Genius offered to give me a new one which I gladly accepted. I didn't think it would fix the problem but I kind of decided I at least wanted to rule out the possibility that it could be a malfunctioning phone.
Low and behold all day today my 3G service was significantly better than it had been. I went from No Service in my house to 1 or 2 bars (I'm right at the very tip of AT&Ts 3G coverage and on my drive in I went from 1 bar to mainly 4 or 5 bars (assuming 5 is the max). I also had two different conversations on the drive in for a total of about an hour and I didn't drop either call once (something unheard of before). My car displays the number of bars and I kept checking the phone to make sure it was on 3G and not Edge b/c I had never seen 5 bars on 3G before.
I'm on version 2.0 and won't upgrade for a few days to do a little more testing but needless to say if you expect to get better 3G coverage than you are getting than you might want to try an exchange. The Apple Geniuses seem more than willing to help out. Also I highly recommend it if you got one on launch day as I remember a bunch of other initial buyers complaining of the same thing. By now you are pretty much guaranteed of not getting one from the first batch.