I hear lots of people complain about the reception their iPhones get. Lots of complaints about dropped calls seem to make their way to me from many iPhone users. They readily blame ATT for the issues.
I have had ATT wireless service for about 8 years now. I have had multiple phones during those years, as have my family members who’ve had phones on my plan. Some phones get great reception, others drop calls constantly. My daughter’s Samsung Propel had terrible reception. We could be sitting side by side on the couch and I had four bars on my Sony Ericcson Walkman phone, and she had no bars on her Propel. Same service, same contract, same couch, same house. Big difference in reception. Prior to my Sony phone, I had a RAZR, and its reception was awful most of the time.
I have since replaced her Propel with a Pantech Insight. I also have the Insight. These get amazing reception even with only one bar, or a bar coming and going, while my husband’s LG flip phone is only adequate with five full bars.
So I’m wondering, maybe the poor reception on the iPhone has nothing to do with the service provider, but instead with the device itself. I hear so many complaints, so often, I have to wonder if the device is to blame, and not always the service provider. And if this is the case, then why aren’t we making the complaint known to ATT and to Apple: if a low-end smart phone like the Pantech can get better reception and fewer dropped calls and 3G than an iPhone, on the same service provider in the same location, then maybe the device needs some tweaking.
Something to ponder.
I switched to AT&T from Verizon 2 years ago. I have an iPhone and my wife and daughter have regular phones. All of the phones have issues with dropped calls and occasional lack of service. We live in NJ and I can definitely say that it is the network that is at fault. My wife is so fed up that she is going back to Verizon and she us getting Nexus One as soon as it is out. I’m staying with my iPhone at least till the summer.
I have been on AT&T now for about two years now. I use an LG Incite (worst phone I have owned) and have only drop about 3 calls in the time that I have had it. Another family member has a Nokia (model ?) and no problems on AT&T and loves her phone. Wife has a Motorola Razor and no problems with it. At work, a coworker bought an iPhone about six months ago, and blames all his problems on AT&T. Poor reception, poor 3G performance. He and I have been in the same room making calls and I have no problems and he is dropping calls. I point this out to him and he still blames AT&T. He says Apple would never make a bad product. I say seeing is believing.
A few months ago I posted a video where I took two iPhones and put them next to each other with the compass running. It definitely messed up the compass.
The reason why I did that was to prove the field around the device. In another aspect, even though you have a low field emitting, when you get more phones around you, the bigger a field interruption you might have.
I would say poor reception due to interference. Buildings, other iPhones, etc.
I’m think both are factors, e.g. a good phone on a poor service, a poor phone on a good service, and a poor phone on a poor service.
As for the iPhone, mine works very well here at home. Anytime I travel though (which tend to be to high population areas), the quality of the service drops. I’m convinced that ATnT’s network in high population areas is simply inadequate.
o2 in UK, no problems with reception that are not massively evident on other handsets on the same network.
Many of the problems over here seem to stem from the massive costs of setting up 3G networks a few years ago (the government licences alone were gigantic investments) and it took or is taking many years to pay off those debts. Infrastructure cannot be renewed at the pace that new tech demands. I think that is where some of the problems lay over here at least.