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Is this whole Apple/ATT 3G a fraud?

ktemkin said:
If I bought the phone and I lived in an area where there was no 3G coverage, I would have no standing to complain.

But when I live in an are that is supposed to have great 3G coverage, and I find out that it has lousy 3G coverage, I'm annoyed.
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Yeah but their coverage map is not a guarantee of coverage. That is why if you are unhappy with it you need to go do something else. All the phone networks realize they don't have solid coverage everywhere. That is why people have the opportunity to return the phone and get out of the contract if the service is not up to par where they live. That is your main option if you are this unhappy.

Your only other option is to make specific reports to them about holes in their coverage and hope eventually they are able to fill them in. I will tell you right now if you tell them that 3G coverage sucks all over Chicago that will not get you anywhere. If you report to them that I work at this address, and I can never get usable 3G coverage in the building nor outside the perimeter that is something tangible they can test and potentially fix.

If you don't want to do either one of those two things then I don't know what to tell you other than it sucks to be you, because those are you only two options at this point.
 
ktemkin said:
You miss the point.

If the same signal that is available in the store was available ANYWHERE AT ALL within 20 miles of the store, I would say everything is okay. So, my criteria is just ANYWHERE. Just one place. Show me just one place.

But I am telling you that except for another Apple store, there is NOWHERE in what might be considered the sales area of the store (20 miles) where the 3G signal is anywhere near what it is in the store.

NOWHERE. Period !

If Apple were to tell me that some areas were good and some areas were bad, that would be one thing. But I am telling you, in the northern suburbs of Chicago, I have yet to find a single place in two weeks of using 3G, where I have seen more than two bars.

I am going to go out tomorrow and take a picture of the cellphone tower near the local AT&T store and I will report the number of bars that I have. The store has assured me that that tower is a 3G tower. No trees or buildings in the way. I can practically count the nuts and bolts mounting the atenna to the tower. So, what kind of crap is it that I can stand next to a 3G tower and not get more than two bars of 3G on my iPhone3G ! ! !

The AT&T network in the northern Chicago suburbs is garbage.
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do you know how those repeaters work? they use large powered antennas to grab as much signal as possible and then "repeat" the signal. though it appears you have 5 bars of signal in the store, your signal is actually only as good as what the repeater can grab. because the phone is grabbing the repeated (and powerful) signal, the phone says it has 5 bars, but in actuality it's more like 3. does that make sense? if you don't believe me do a speed test inside the store and then do one outside the mall. (do 3 for an average). you'll find the speeds will be nearly identical.

as for coverage sucking in chicago, i don't doubt it.
 
ktemkin said:
Voice is fine. 3G data worse than EDGE.

3G improvement is why Apple marketed this new phone and why I bought it.
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This is what I see and my biggest complaint - 3G is often worse than data. . .it just hangs out there and simple pages take a very long time to load. Worse, the variability bugs me. . .edge seemed consistent . . .maybe slow, but very consistent. 3G occasionally is very fast, most of the time is ok (slightly better than edge perhaps) but also is really slow. . .
 
OP, bought the phone from the same store as you, launch day and I live in the general area of said location and I can concur without question that this is the case. Though I do see 5 bars of 3G pop up here and there on lake cook road and waukegan. Yet what am I to do, leave my house and drive to the intersection so I can do some downloading.

While I don't care if anyone likes your analogies or not, I will say that you are right about the service around here, frankly, it blows. One bar in my house, dropped calls on 3G, fast busy when redialing. I have no intentions of returning the equipment but if I have to switch of 3G to ensure an important phone call than the phone is truly a disappointment.
 
FWIW, I was in the Apple Store the other day where I bought my iPhone, and I did not have 3G coverage in there, yet at soon as I stepped outside of the mall, I got 5 bars 3G. So there's no conspiracy by Apple and AT&T here.
 
ktemkin said:
Long-time Apple fan (128K Mac in 1984). Purchased iPhone3G on release day.

Over the past two weeks have noticed that, except for the demo that was given with my phone at the time I purchased it, I have NEVER gotten more than two bars in 3G--most of the time it is just the single dot. As a result, 3G performance is poor. My first gen. iPhone on EDGE performs better than the new iPhone3G.

Now, we are not talking here about a problem with some obscure functionality of the iPhone3G. We are talking about the primary and preeminent feature of this new phone--the fact that it is usable as a 3G phone.

Went to AT&T store (Highland Park, IL). Two, long-time employees said that they have never seen a iPhone3G with more than two bars in 3G mode. They said that that was normal. They have a cell tower (that they said was 3G-enabled) about 1,500 feet north of the store. I checked AT&T's coverage viewer and that AT&T store, as well as most of the Chicago area, are in the deep blue coverage area, indicating 3G reception just about everywhere I use the phone. The store employees said that because their other-brand 3G phones show five-bar reception, they assume it is an Apple issue.

After leaving the store I drove in an approximate 1/2-mile diameter circle around the cell tower because the AT&T people said that the signal was not omni-directional. They said the signal was stronger in the opposite direction from their store. My drive showed no difference in any direction around the cell-site.

Made a genius bar appointment and went to Apple store (Northbrook Court). While waiting in the store for the appointment, I found I had all five bars on 3G even though I was deep in a store in an enclosed mall. This was the first time I had ever seen the phone with this kind of reception (except for the day I bought it). Embarrassed at the situation, when my name was called, I jokingly asked the genius if they had a cell-site in the store. To my amazement, he said "yes"!!!

So, You try out your new iPhone3G in the store and it display tremendous performance because, unbeknownst to you, you are only 100 feet from a cell-site (or, likely, just a repeater). Not far outside of the store (200 feet), the coverage drops off and you are back to the same old poor 3G reception.

This is almost like fraud!!!

I've been sold something and shown that it does work in the store, but once "in the wild" that same performance is unavailable, even though the carrier, AT&T, proffers maps showing availability.

It's not like I am out in the boonies here. This is Chicago. Home of Motorola and the first cellphone.

I'm a pretty easy-going guy, but this is starting to piss me off. AT&T points the finger at Apple and Apple points the finger at AT&T.

What gives here?
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You're not in Chicago, you're in the burbs. I live in Chicago, real Chicago, and get four or five bars consistently.
 
I am at school right now in the loop (adams and clitnon) and I am getting 5 full bars of 3G indoors - around 65kb/s according to iNetwork.app (the best I have ever seen)
 
chicagdan said:
You're not in Chicago, you're in the burbs. I live in Chicago, real Chicago, and get four or five bars consistently.
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Chicago is a metropolitan area there buddy, the suburbs aren't exactly far away nor are they farms and fields. What the city has, its outlying areas should have.
 
Just wanna say that the inetworktest APP and the WEBAPP shows completely different results for me. (yeah I know one shows kB and one kb)

I get quite often 5 bars but it isn't really the number of bars that determine how fast the browsing is. So I wouldn't look at the bars too much but at the actual performance.
 
I live in the suburbs (Deerfield) and work in the city (Sears Tower) and the 3G voice is very spotty on my iphone. Using it in my house I will often have one bar and get tons of dropped calls. The funny thing is I can surf the web at very fast speeds on 3G during those times.

I drive in on 294 to Chicago and on the way in I still get very low 3G reception and tons of dropped calls. I've also lost calls in the Sears Tower. This weekend I switched off 3G and will try to see if I get dropped calls on Edge. My hopes is that I leave it on Edge and just switch on 3G when I need the data speeds. I just can't take the dropped calls anymore. It is a pain going into the settings but the other great things about the iphone makes it worth it. I wish there was an enable/disable 3G from the home screen.

I'd imagine that 3G service will continually get better over the next year or two so as long as I can keep a phone conversation on Edge I won't complain too much. If I continue getting dropped calls (I get 4-5 bars on edge normally) I'll have to take the phone back and get a replacement.

I won't lie though, it certainly is disconcerting when I have a phone conversation and get dropped calls constantly and people say my phone sucks. I did just buy a new 3G iphone and I don't expect that to be happening.
 
This is a total fraud on Apple's part. I had no intention whatsoever of upgrading to a 3G iPhone, but that damn Apple. They made a product so sexy and whatnot that it just made me upgrade. Well, that and my wife needed a new phone anyway. So she got my perfectly operating 1st Gen. Regardless, damn you Steve Jobs, and damn you Apple! You'll be hearing from my lawyer very soon! (yeah, he likes his iPhone so much he wanted to congratulate you guys personally)

And to top it all off, I now need to go find a new case, and I don't think my old case was made for the 3G iPhone.

Damn you Apple! Damn you!!
 
ktemkin said:
!
The AT&T network in the northern Chicago suburbs is garbage.
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I feel your pain, ktemkin. I live about 5 minutes from you, and up until mid 2006, my family and I had Cingular cell phones. We got so sick of the crappy reception, and all of us switched to Verizon. I haven't had a single reception problem since then, and not a single dropped call that I can remember.
 
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