iPhone 4s unusable in apartment. Microcell useless as well

[Vikinguy]

I started a thread a couple weeks ago about my iPhone being essentially useless as a phone in my apartment. I drop atleast 3/4 of my calls. Called ATT...guy hooked me up with a 100 dollar rebate on the microcell and threw me 100 bucks off my next bill. Dandy


Get the microcell home...all set up and registered. If anything my issues are worse. If I get up and move around at all I drop the call...seems the connection to the cell is lost...I then look at my phone and it's searching for the normal Att signal...sometimes it goes on for close to a minute. Absurd.


Yes the microcell is 2 feet from a window and all the lights are solid...no blinking. So I took the phone to apple today to run diagnostics. The genius said the phone was fine other than a few app crashes which aren't even happening. He said he didn't see any dropped calls...lol. I mean...I've dropped atleast 35 calls THIS WEEK in my apartment.

So..went back to ATT. Dude was like....lets switch out your SIM card. Then the manager came over and said that it sounded like a faulty microcell and if the SIM switch didn't help (it didn't) to bring in the microcell and they'd swap it out.


So basically....am I screwed? I know good and well the chances that I got a defective microcell are very low. What will ATT do when I return my second one? Is it possible that moving to a 4G phone would be better? Different towers? Maybe I have a 4g tower near me? I mean...I'd hope they'd let me out of my contract if my phone is useless in my home...but I have little faith in big corporations and how they deal with customers.


Thoughts?

 

[DroidRules]

I think you should use a cell provider that can give you service at your home. If that's not At&t then maybe you should change providers. Why would you pick at&t if you have no clue about the service they can provide you? Is this your first cell phone? Sounds like an un-educated consumer purchase to me. Good luck.

 

[Givmeabrek]

How is Verizon service in your area? That's what I would look into.

 

[richarddwyer10]

Move

 

[maladjusted]

without insulting you, i'd suggest that you made the effort -- and then some -- to make the phone and service work. the at&t service obviously doesn't work for you where you need it so you should be able to get out of the contract, but i suppose that's easier said than done. it would be nice if they took back the microcell and reimbursed you for what you've spent trying to make it work, but i doubt that will happen.

don't know where you are, but in my area at least, at&t sucks and even microcells haven't helped friends of mine with bad service to begin with. i'd suggest verizon as well. you shouldn't have to keep a phone and phone service that do not work for you. tough lesson, but it's not your fault.

 

[Vikinguy]

I think you should use a cell provider that can give you service at your home. If that's not At&t then maybe you should change providers. Why would you pick at&t if you have no clue about the service they can provide you? Is this your first cell phone? Sounds like an un-educated consumer purchase to me. Good luck.

I live in a largish city. There is an ATT store less than a half a mile from my door. ATT service is as good as ATT can be (spotty) where I live but when I go in my parking lot I have 4 bars. The issue is inside my apartment.

Obviously going with another provider would be great....but not having to pay to get out of the contract is the issue.


Strangely my iPhone 4 only dropped calls occasionally in my apartment.

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without insulting you, i'd suggest that you made the effort -- and then some -- to make the phone and service work. the at&t service obviously doesn't work for you where you need it so you should be able to get out of the contract, but i suppose that's easier said than done. it would be nice if they took back the microcell and reimbursed you for what you've spent trying to make it work, but i doubt that will happen.

don't know where you are, but in my area at least, at&t sucks and even microcells haven't helped friends of mine with bad service to begin with. i'd suggest verizon as well. you shouldn't have to keep a phone and phone service that do not work for you. tough lesson, but it's not your fault.

Appreciate the post. Yeah...i feel like I've done enough but I'll try one more microcell.

 

[abijnk]

I think you should use a cell provider that can give you service at your home. If that's not At&t then maybe you should change providers. Why would you pick at&t if you have no clue about the service they can provide you? Is this your first cell phone? Sounds like an un-educated consumer purchase to me. Good luck.

Highly unlikely. Problems like the OP is describing are usually just the result of living in an apartment. Cell coverage in a building vs out of a building isn't necessarily carrier dependent unless the building you are in has repeaters for a specific service.

In our apartment AT&T and Verizon both get the same level of service, which is to say very little at all. Go outside the building and everything is hunky-dory.

Why a microcell wouldn't be able to fix that is beyond my level of knowledge...

 

[lordofthereef]

If you are having trouble, even with the microcell, I would suspect there is something causing interferance. Let me ask this, were you on ATT before? Were you with a different carrier? I imagine this isn't your first mobile phone. What were your experiences with others?

 

[Stealthipad]

You should have returned your phone within the grace period to avoid having to pay the ETF for leaving now.

I started a thread a couple weeks ago about my iPhone being essentially useless as a phone in my apartment. I drop atleast 3/4 of my calls. Called ATT...guy hooked me up with a 100 dollar rebate on the microcell and threw me 100 bucks off my next bill. Dandy


Get the microcell home...all set up and registered. If anything my issues are worse. If I get up and move around at all I drop the call...seems the connection to the cell is lost...I then look at my phone and it's searching for the normal Att signal...sometimes it goes on for close to a minute. Absurd.


Yes the microcell is 2 feet from a window and all the lights are solid...no blinking. So I took the phone to apple today to run diagnostics. The genius said the phone was fine other than a few app crashes which aren't even happening. He said he didn't see any dropped calls...lol. I mean...I've dropped atleast 35 calls THIS WEEK in my apartment.

So..went back to ATT. Dude was like....lets switch out your SIM card. Then the manager came over and said that it sounded like a faulty microcell and if the SIM switch didn't help (it didn't) to bring in the microcell and they'd swap it out.


So basically....am I screwed? I know good and well the chances that I got a defective microcell are very low. What will ATT do when I return my second one? Is it possible that moving to a 4G phone would be better? Different towers? Maybe I have a 4g tower near me? I mean...I'd hope they'd let me out of my contract if my phone is useless in my home...but I have little faith in big corporations and how they deal with customers.


Thoughts?

 

[lordofthereef]

You should have returned your phone within the grace period to avoid having to pay the ETF for leaving now.

Perhaps, but that isn't an option now, so how is making this statement helpful at all?

 

[SR45]

Perhaps, but that isn't an option now, so how is making this statement helpful at all?

Its helpful for those that read this post that one should do some real life testing in different area's to see if the phone is for them, and take it back during the 14/30 day period or else suffer for not doing so. The OP was not happy and should have returned it and not sit on his hind end hoping that it would get better or try different extended hardware sold by a carrier.

That is what I did with the Galaxy S2 when I did not get good coverage in my area. Returned it fast before the return period ended. Common sense.

 

[iLuvMyMacToo]

I was with Vodafone and recently moved into another apt building, I couldn't get a reception inside and had a lot of drop outs when on rare occasion I did managed to get 1 or 2 bars. I changed over to another Provider and all is fine. Now I can make calls inside my home.

 

[Vikinguy]

It's gotten progressively worse is the thing. I've had ATT since the iPhone 4 launch.

I was with Sprint for about ten years but obviously couldn't get an iPhone which i believe to be the best phone. I sold my iPhone 4 to fund my 4S purchase...so taking the phone back within the restocking period wasn't an option.


It will be interesting to see how ATT handles this if the new microcell doesn't help.

 

[marksman]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

I think you should use a cell provider that can give you service at your home. If that's not At&t then maybe you should change providers. Why would you pick at&t if you have no clue about the service they can provide you? Is this your first cell phone? Sounds like an un-educated consumer purchase to me. Good luck.

Yup. I have changed cell providers numerous times over the years because of poor access at my home. AT&T has the best coverage for me. To me that is the primary consideration. Which service is best depends on location

 

[lordofthereef]

It's gotten progressively worse is the thing. I've had ATT since the iPhone 4 launch.

This leads me to think, even more, that there is something strange going on in/near your apartment which is interfering with the signal. Does any other phone/network cause the same/similar issues at your place?

 

[RedRallyeZ]

It's gotten progressively worse is the thing. I've had ATT since the iPhone 4 launch.

I was with Sprint for about ten years but obviously couldn't get an iPhone which i believe to be the best phone. I sold my iPhone 4 to fund my 4S purchase...so taking the phone back within the restocking period wasn't an option.


It will be interesting to see how ATT handles this if the new microcell doesn't help.

If you said that the service with your 4 was alright, you could probably find an iPhone 4 owner who wants to upgrade and trade with some cash on their end.

Definitely a last step solution, but just throwing out everything I can think of. I've got lackluster service in my apartment, but then again I live in a "hole" that no provider gets good reception in. However that bad service has been consistent from my 3gs to my 4 and now my 4s.

 

[sk1wbw]

It's AT&T, not the iPhone. I lived in an apartment in Virginia with AT&T and an iphone. Got nothing, no bars, nada, zero, zilch inside. I had to step outside to get a signal.

Now here in Florida in the house, it was the same way. Switched to another carrier (NOT Verizon) when the new iPhone 4s came out and now I have 4 to 5 bars in the house.

AT&T signal is great on the main roads or highways but once you get off them, the service sucks.

 

[ardent73]

Rtfm

If it hasn't already been said the microcell should NOT be by a window. That will cause the problem of the microcell signal competing with the real cell towers outside. The microcell is NOT a cell tower signal booster, it is a cell tower signal "by-passer".

I do agree that the 4S is terrible as a phone; I wish I'd kept my original iPhone and just bought the new iPod Touch for iOS5.

Good Luck

 

[Vikinguy]

This leads me to think, even more, that there is something strange going on in/near your apartment which is interfering with the signal. Does any other phone/network cause the same/similar issues at your place?

My dad's sprint EVO gets pretty decent service. Which is to say he doesn't drop calls in here.

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If it hasn't already been said the microcell should NOT be by a window. That will cause the problem of the microcell signal competing with the real cell towers outside. The microcell is NOT a cell tower signal booster, it is a cell tower signal "by-passer".

I do agree that the 4S is terrible as a phone; I wish I'd kept my original iPhone and just bought the new iPod Touch for iOS5.

Good Luck

Hmmm...well i had to put it near the window to get the gps connection going. I'll try moving the new one away from the window.

 

[takeshi74]

Cell coverage in a building vs out of a building isn't necessarily carrier dependent unless the building you are in has repeaters for a specific service.

Or one carrier just has better coverage within the building for other reasons. OP has indicated that calls on a Sprint device don't seem to get dropped.

It's certainly possible that the building itself is the major problem as it is in many cases but it doesn't sound like the building prevents coverage from all carriers.