Reception issue; not just with holding phone

[medgirl2001]

I have an iPhone 4 and have noticed no reception issues of any kind, even with holding the sides. But my mother's phone seems to report reception very strangely - if you leave the phone in one place, not even holding it, the bars are all over the place, anywhere from no bars to 4 bars. It does show a change in reception with holding the sides. Putting a case on it seemed to help that, but not the overall reception problem.

Mine in the same place did not seem to do that, although to be fair, I didn't test it extensively. At times, she will have no bars (but not "no service", but still be able to send/receive texts and even make a phone call, but at other times, if you call the phone it goes to voicemail as if it's somewhere with no reception. Non iPhones at my parents' house work fine, but they live in an area that doesn't get terrific reception, and phones will sometimes show 3G, sometimes EDGE there, so I think they seem to be on the outskirts of 3G coverage in our town.

From what I have read about the reception problems, they seem to be more noticeable in areas where the AT&T signal is not the strongest, so perhaps that applies here. I am hoping this will be fixed with the rumored software update, but I was wondering if anyone else is noticing reception problems that are not only due to how the phone is held.

 

[Rooftop voter]

I was in a charleys resterount yesterday with my girlfriend. We both had 5 bars of service, she was using a 3gs and me an iphone 4, but my phone would not connect to the Internet at all. It was acting like it was searching for signal, but clearly wasn't. I used Her 3GS without any issues at all. I have a few more issues with my phone, other than the reception issue, so this will be going back for a replacement after they get everything sorted out.

 

[medgirl2001]

I tested this out a bit more today at my parents' house with more than one iPhone 4. I think in this case it's not the issue of holding the phone a certain way. I think their house is in an area where they sometimes get an EDGE signal and sometimes get a 3G signal. When it's 3G, the signal strength and data speeds are strong. When it's EDGE, it tends to be a bar or less and has almost no data throughput. It can switch back and forth without anyone holding it. I never noticed this there before with my 3GS - actually, with the 3GS, I never got anything except EDGE there. I do think this may all be related to whatever the bigger iPhone 4 reception issue is, because it seems to be affecting people more in lower signal strength areas. I do think there is a possibility a software update could fix this, if it's related to how the phone is reporting and handling lower signal strengths.

 

[psywzrd]

I noticed this as well. While I can make my bars go down by using the death grip, the bars also go down if the phone is just sitting on my couch or whatever. Yesterday I had it on the couch next to me and I watched it go from 5 bars of 3G to 1 bar, back up to 5, etc. without me even touching it. Whatever the issue is, it seems to be affecting my phone whether I'm touching it or not.