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Some Customers with iPhone 3G Connection Issues

AT&T website claims my area is COVERED in 3G, but why is it that I get zero to 2 bars of 3G service over here?

I bought the phone because my area is covered and I would love to use 3G, it sucks that I have to turn off 3G not only because the coverage isn't good, but because it drains battery too.

Even in NYC, my phone gets 5 bars and web pages and data still don't load quick.

I love this phone, but it is a shame that I can't even use it's features properly, I hope all that needs to happen is AT&T updates their network and Apple releases a firmware update.

Ofeten times EDGE loads just as fast as 3G and my calls never get dropped on EDGE.
 
When I first got a CDMA cell phone from Sprint, I used have a lot of dropped calls. As 3G also uses a type of CDMA technology, which is quite different than regular GSM, it may be taking the telecom companies a while to implement the whole system properly.
 
rctshack said:
wow... my boyfriend and I both have the phone and live on folsom street here in san francisco and can barely get reception ever. I usually have to walk to the opposite side of my bedroom to get a clear call. And while I would say it's just bad reception in general... I had another phone with ATT before this and it was full bars all the time.

At times we will put our phones beside each other and his phone will have 4 bars while mine has 1... it makes no sense at all... especially because we live in the center of a major city... a major city that is iphone heavy... and a block from the ATT headquarters here in SF... just slightly ironic that random people in iowa gets much better reception...

or all the phones have something messed up with them... god i hope it's software related so it can be fixed...
Click to expand...

Yes, but Iowa (my home state:D) is still on edge. It appears these issues are related to 3G only and not edge service. Apple/AT&T better step up soon.
 
This isn't just an iPhone thing. I am having the same issue lately. I have next to no coverage and can rarely access the 3g network. I believe AT&T doesn't have enough pipeline to deal with the amount of people trying to access the network. Something tells me they weren't prepared for the onslaught of iPhones that were going to sell.
I also called and complained today about the lack of being able to hold on to calls and obtain good service and they credited me $25 for the inconvenience. I think I'll switch elsewhere in November when my contract is up.
 
FuuFuu said:
seriously i don't think this topic is worth to be in the front page. like no other phones don't get dropped calls every so often, dropped internet connections? its only something to blab about.
Click to expand...

In slight defense of this particular issue, however, is the fact that many of the people reporting call drop issues are people who had EDGE iPhones on the same carrier immediately before their 3G iPhones, and used them in the same places. So on the always relative scale of reliability, if those people are saying their calls are dropping more on the 3G iPhone than they were on the EDGE iPhone, that to me is relatively reliable testimony that something is going on.

Pair that with the fact, AFAIK, that as AT&T rolled out 3G services some time before they rolled out the iPhone 3G, and in general those upgrading to 3G phones on AT&T haven't been up in arms over this issue in the way that iPhone users have, it seems to me that there's more than just hype associated with this.

Sure, the iPhone gets more attention than every other handset put together. But I think, based on these two relatively unique aspects of this situation, there probably is also something going on. Hopefully something that can be fixed in firmware.

Longofest or anyone else who knows... are other HSPA phones able to do anything like observe and detect 3G network quality and automatically make calls on the 2G network when the 3G network is available but patchy? It seems like these phones ought to be using the 2G network for voice much more often than they actually are....
 
I also in valley village/studio city. and get almost no 3g reception. 1-2 bars at the most. when i go into hollywood, i get full reception, but when changing towers, i do get dropped calls
OnTheBandwagon said:
I live in Valley Village and most of my time is spent in this general part of the Valley (VV, SC and Sherman Oaks), Hollywood and the West Side.

I have exactly the same problem except in parts of the West Side. I'm pretty much always set to edge unless I want to surf.
Click to expand...
 
This weekend I was in Vegas for Defcon and let me just tell you, that I was not ammused on the stablity of the 3G iPhone.

First off, GPS worked less then 10% of the time. Most of the time it would hang for long periods of time doing nothing. Even standing outside if completly clear skies with no major building blockage. It didn't even do basic triangulation based on towers.

The 3G speeds were terrible. In the Bay area they are super fast for me. In Vegas it was a nightmare, far worse then dial up. Now, I am not sure if it was due to the heavly increased number of techies in the area or what not. However, my Verizon EVDO card was ultra fast. Inside the buildings I wouldn't be able to use the phone at all. Even though I had 2 bars, I wouldn't be able to connect to anything data or make calls.

The other major issue I had was dropped calls. Once I got the call going it was ok, however incoming calls would only cause my phone to ring 50% of the time. But even then, when I would answer you couldn't hear the other person. I had a similar issue with my girlfriends iPhone when we first got it. We could talk to anyone we wanted, but couldn't talk to each other on the phone. Yes, no joke ... the 2 iPhones couldn't talk with each other.

2.0.0 had more stable phone service for me, but 2.0.1 has more stable applications.
 
Appple replaced phones with Short Antennas

I glad to see that we were not the only ones with this issue. At first we just switched them to the edge network. still had some issues.

We took our phones back to the apple store because of bad reception and too many dropped calls we were told by the tech at Apple that there is an issue with some of the antennas on the phones being TOO SHORT and this is causing the problem they swapped out the phones in the store and now no more dropped calls. The two phones were purchased at the same time so maybe the same batch.

we have a total of about 9 new (3G) and 12 old iphones. so we have enough in the office to test and see a difference.

DP
 
I'm also in an area that AT&T's 3G map shows to have solid coverage. When I use 3G it seems to connect then drop, it is pretty much always switching between Edge and 3G, so I just leave it in Edge. What a waste. My area is Reston, Virginia just 30 minutes away from Washington, DC. Just wanted to add to this survey.
 
solitarycow said:
I live in LA, specifically Studio City, but I'm always in Hollywood and the Downtown area. I notice my 3G signal continuously goes in and out and it's frustrating! Is anyone else having the same problem? I mean this is LA! We should have pretty good 3G signals everywhere right?
Click to expand...

My phone has been terrible in terms of reception. I will drop a call 4 or 5 times in a row when I start with 3 bars. I think it tries to switch to 3G and then drops the call when there is no 3G signal. Even my Edge coverage is much worse than my girlfriend's AT&T non-iphone. It's driving me crazy because I love the device, but above and beyond any feature-set, I need a working telephone.

I still have another 15 days to return it, and am seriously considering doing so.
 
I've got an original iPhone and I've seen so many damn problems since the 2.0 software update.

1) (similar to the 3G issues people have mentioned) I've had numerous occasions of the signal arbitrarily going from 5 blocks to zero and saying "no service". Even when I'm doing nothing but sitting on the couch. Then it will magically find the signal again and back up to 5.

2) Opening my contacts is now slow as balls. By slow I mean it takes a minimum 7-10 seconds for the iPhone to switch to the contact list and then even longer before it starts responding to touches again. This was fine before the update.

3) Half the programs crash for no apparent reason (not just app store apps...I'm talking original pre-installed apps too). I understand that this will happen, but it happens WAAAAAY more than before the 2.0 update.

4) I've had numerous occasions where the phone has rebooted on me out of nowhere. Very frustrating.

5) Safari is really slow when trying to type in an address or even get to the address bar editor. (Feels like when I used to use AOL and a 28.8 modem to get online on my old Performa. I'd type a sentence, then watch it fill out on the screen a few seconds later)

6) One time my phone bricked itself and then un-bricked itself (after hard reset). I was looking at the home screen (not pressing anything) and it just rebooted itself and then said "connect to itunes" and said it wasn't activated. I did a hard reset and the home screen came back up, but no 3rd party apps would work. Every single one crashed on launch. I had to resync and reinstall every single app.

7) App store apps bought on the phone haven't been syncing back to my computer. I have to manually search for them and download them on the computer or they won't sync the next time.

8) Apps that have updates are not installing properly when attempted on the phone and when I download the update on the computer and sync to the phone, the app store on the phone still thinks I need to update...wtf?

9) This is DEFINITELY not a new issue, but sometimes mail decides to stop checking for new mail. I have a gmail account set up on my phone to check every 15 min and sometimes I'll decide to randomly open Mail and it won't have looked for new mail for hours (one time it was over 48 hours!!).

10) Syncing is no longer convenient. You need a good hour to make sure it finishes everything. The stupid backup process takes half an hour minimum. All I have is an 8GB and it's only 65% full.

This is just to name a few off the top of my head, but it's extremely frustrating. I love my iPhone even with these flaws, but it's definitely made me not want to spend anymore money each month to get the new one if they can't even fix simple problems like the damn email not checking properly (been happening since day 1).

But some of these games sure are addicting...
 
FuuFuu said:
seriously i don't think this topic is worth to be in the front page. like no other phones don't get dropped calls every so often, dropped internet connections? its only something to blab about.
Click to expand...

With all due respect, as a potential iphone buyer who is already frustrated with at&t coverage on a samsung phone, I am glad this is being talked about. It is valid to me, even if not to you.
 
poor coverage

I live in NYC, and I had a first-gen iphone, and rarely had any coverage problems. With my new 3G version, the phone often does not ring, and a voicemail will just show up when someone has tried to call. This happens several times a week (the no-ringing business). It's very frustrating. I reset my phone and it sometimes fixes it, so I'm not sure what the deal is.
 
I had horrible issues with dropped calls on the iPhone 3G. It was probably the poorest service I'd ever had from a cell phone before...

Then I finally convinced Apple on Michigan Ave to swap it out (after they'd made countless lame suggestions that both they and I knew damn well weren't gonna work)... I've not dropped a call yet with this new one, after dropping 29% of my calls on my original iPhone 3G... and my call reception in my home and office are night and day better. I was literally unable to take a call in my office with my first iPhone 3G cause I'd be breaking up non-stop and eventually just drop the call. Today with the new phone I had a 10-minute conversation with my sister from my desk and everything was crystal clear on my side and hers.

Bottom line is if you're having issues like this, just keep harping on the Apple employees until they budge and give you a new phone. There are plenty of them out there that are not working like they should be.

Now if ATT could just fix the 3G network here in Chicago, I'd be good to go.
 
Funny, I couldn't get an edge or 3G signal at all today, sat dumbfounded for a whole hour then turned my iphone of and on again, did the trick :]
 
Don't even work in the store

I went to the SF Apple store yesterday and NO iphone there had 3G availability. The workers said the reception was not goo at the store, but was fine right outside. I assumed the metal store acted like a ferraday (no clue re spelling) cage and bought one. Now, I've got a new iphone that is EDGE just like my old one. I'm hoping they update the firmware and fix this, they have 14 days.
 
DPinTX said:
We took our phones back to the apple store because of bad reception and too many dropped calls we were told by the tech at Apple that there is an issue with some of the antennas on the phones being TOO SHORT and this is causing the problem they swapped out the phones in the store and now no more dropped calls. The two phones were purchased at the same time so maybe the same batch.
Click to expand...

If this is true, it sounds that it could be a quality control problem during manufacturing.
 
keyrock said:
My phone has been terrible in terms of reception. I will drop a call 4 or 5 times in a row when I start with 3 bars. I think it tries to switch to 3G and then drops the call when there is no 3G signal. Even my Edge coverage is much worse than my girlfriend's AT&T non-iphone. It's driving me crazy because I love the device, but above and beyond any feature-set, I need a working telephone.

I still have another 15 days to return it, and am seriously considering doing so.
Click to expand...

My wife has also been having problems in the LA area. After browsing the Apple forums, I told her to disable 3G unless she wants to do browsing. She said reception has been much better with 3G disabled.
 
No problems

I live in DC, and have had nothing but great reception with my 3G. It is much better than my original iPhone. With the 3G, I've had no dropped calls, reception in locations where my wife's original iPhone gets none, and generally a wonderful experience.
 
Count me in with this problem. I'm in the DFW area near the airport and I haven't had all my bars since I've gotten the phone. The latest update didn't help.

I can barely use the phone at work and it's constantly dropping back down to EDGE. If I wanted to use EDGE all the time I would have just kept my old iPhone.
 
i think this is an ATT issue.

symptoms
=========
1) 3G bar and signal strength vary and fluctuate standing in the same spot.
2) my wife's phone and my phone, sitting on a table 1 foot away from each other differ in signal strength (3G). i swap places and they swap signal strength. wait a couple minutes and now the signal strengths are drastically different again.
3) when i get 5 bars on 3G, the most i've seen it last is 2 seconds. then it drops all the way to 1.
4) latest update has thrown me into Edge most of the time which leads to better overall service.

i wonder why ATT & Apple won't address the issue publicly?

try getting 3G in the silicon valley, travelling up and down 280.....i wish you the best of luck.
 
I still have the Gen 1 iPhone, however my friend did upgrade to the 3G. On his daily commute if he calls me there is a 100% chance we will have at LEAST TWO dropped calls.

I'm really wanting to upgrade, but not a chance before they get this fixed.
 
Sounds like Apple is gonna due what they did with the MBP's and airport dropouts ignore the customer.Post in the forums, watch your threads get locked or deleted.But, in the end the Ipud is their big $$$ maker so it will get acknowledged
 
Same problem.

I was on T-Mobile with iPhone 2G (best coverage I've ever had!)

...Switched to AT&T with that iPhone, not too bad.

Switched to 3G, BIG difference.

Dropping calls in areas I didn't on the old network, and when I turn 3G off, the reception is always a lot stronger. This is NOT what I expected. :(
 
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