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What's the Problem With iPhone 3G Reception?

CWmike writes "Apple's iPhone 3G was just a couple of days old when reports began trickling onto the company's support forum from dissatisfied customers complaining about poor reception. Although no one outside of Apple and AT&T — and maybe a chipmaker or two — really knows, that has not kept others from speculating, or in a few cases, making claims based on unnamed sources. What's going on? We may not have all the answers, but we do have questions. Gregg Keizer put together everything we know in a FAQ on the griping about iPhone 3G reception."

19 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. With the fees that Rogers charges in Canada by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    We've all made our own Canadian version of the iPhone:

    1. take your regular plain old cellphone
    2. buy an iPod touch
    3. buy duct-tape
    4. if you can't figure out step four by yourself, please return your Handyman membership card to Red Green.

  2. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? by mrSteveBallmer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apple sells crappy products! If you stick with a majority company like MS you will have no problems people! http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

  3. iphone through the iwall by ez151 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is extremely frustrating the amount of dropped calls and call failed's I get. I had a sony-erickson for 3 years and had maybe 3 or 4 dropped calls and maybe 2 or 3 times when i cannot make a call. I do those numbers in like 3 days of iphone use. It is not my area, I always have 3g, but the bars do fluctuate wildly from 1 or 2 to 3 or 4 in the same location. I love the phone but i am worried if this is a problem they can fix or will it get worse?

    1. Re:iphone through the iwall by pyrofx · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I went with a friend to the Apple store for him to get the new iPhone. While standing there I stated comparing my version 1 iPhone to the new ones. While holding them side by side for a size comparison I noticed the new version had only 3 bars while my phone had 5 bars. I thought it may have been this particular phone but nope every phone in the store had 3 bars! I'm waintg for version 3 if my battery will hold out.

  4. If your Jesus phone won't work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...it's because you're not praying hard enough. Try prostrating yourself towards Cupertino five times a day.

    1. Re:If your Jesus phone won't work... by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Funny

      I love it! Faith based communications.
      If it does not work, you are clearly not worthy.
      The bar display does not indicate signal strength, it shows if your aura of cool is sufficient.

  5. The Apple Product Cycle. by LarsG · · Score: 5, Funny
    --
    If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
  6. Not new to iPhone by The_Quinn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    AT&T has had these kind of problems for years with their 3G service, it only took a successful platform to bring their shortcomings into the public light.

  7. Re:"I love the phont, but..." by Rakshasa+Taisab · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not cognitive dissonance, it's called imagination. The ability to imagine how the iPhone would be if it didn't drop all the time. It is that which he is in love with.

    And it can be fixed.

    --
    - These characters were randomly selected.
  8. The answer is simple by JamesP · · Score: 5, Informative

    Infineon chips. (ex-Siemens)

    I had the displeasure of working with products from this company, it is as fun as having a fork stuck in your eye.

    Crappy documentation, flaky concepts, incompatible versions, etc.

    --
    how long until /. fixes commenting on Chrome?
  9. Re:"I love the phont, but..." by vertinox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What's wrong with you? How would you "love" your phone if you can't use it for its primary purpose? Is it mandatory to "love" this phone? Would you burn in hell if you don't? Or most of the people just lack balls to say that you don't "love" it anymore?

    I think what he is trying to say "When it works, its works better than anything else out there in terms of functionality or meeting my personal preference."

    Its like old Ultima Online. I loved to play that game to death but the game client was so damn buggy it crashed all the damn time.

    It was a very love hate relationship. Sure I could play text muds, but it wasn't the same.

    Hope that makes.

    --
    "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
    -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
  10. Re:Beware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    a nice girl like you doesn't need a penis

  11. Re:Wide-spread discussion. by Niten · · Score: 5, Funny

    A Cellphone is two parts
    1) a radio transceiver
    and
    2) a computer ,

    <SteveJobsRDF>

    ... and an iPod, and an Internet communications device!

    </SteveJobsRDF>

  12. Re:My experiences by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder how long before there is a class action lawsuit?

    Kind of sad that this is the first thing on peoples' minds. Would you not prefer Apple to recall the phones for a fix, or issue a firmware update that takes care of the problem? No.... you were wronged and therefore must sue.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  13. Re:Wide-spread discussion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    But the problem may lie with the way Apple's software uses the radio [businessweek.com].

    I know that I have full faith in the detailed engineering analysis ordered by a speculating stock broker. Which was then off-handedly barked to a respected journal such as Business Week.

    It is good to see others do too. That's why our economy is so awesomely strong.

  14. Re:My experiences by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately, legal action, or threat thereof, is often the only way of inducing a company to recall, update, patch, refund, or otherwise ameliorate one of their fuckups.

    Some lawsuits are about vengeance; but that doesn't mean that lawsuits aren't a legitimate means of obtaining redress.

  15. Lots of uninformed speculation, little data by russotto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We've got one _securities_ (not engineering) analyst speculating that it's a problem with the chipset, and that it's unfixable. Yeah. Then we've got Businessweek echoing that claim, citing two unnamed sources (one of which is probably the securities analyst, the other of which is likely someone repeating the securities analyst). No technical data whatsoever on those claims.

    Then we've got Ny Teknik, which cites a problem between the antenna and the amplifier (I would speculate they are referring to antenna impedence matching). They again cite unnamed sources, but they at least claim there was actual testing done. If this is the case, it would not be fixable in firmware, but it's at least not a design flaw.

    On top of that, there's the nature of the problems. Poor signal strength and low speeds both could be caused by the problems of the nature Ny Teknik suggests, but dropping calls when switching from 3G to Edge argues for some sort of firmware problem, dropping calls during the handoff. Of course, it's also possible there are multiple problems; low signal strength exposes a problem with the handoff.

    Finally there's the question of how Apple missed it during testing. It seems widespread enough that it would have been noticed, which argues for a manufacturing problem or perhaps a last minute software change.

  16. Not True by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1) Samsung handsets use the same Infineon 3G chipset and side by side have been shown to not have the same problems as the iphone

    2)I have an iphone. It worked great for 1 week and then the data service stopped working.

    The phone hasnt changed. It's a network issue. As more iphones have come on in big cities they just cant serve the demand.

    So its the phone which could be performing better (as seen by the side by side Sansung comparison) >and its the network (as seen by many people whose service only recently went to hell but used to be fine)

  17. Re:"I love the phont, but..." by try_anything · · Score: 5, Insightful

    that had the same features as a comparable $150 phone from any other manufacturer

    A feature list does not a product make. If (like me) you were keeping an eye out for a decent, featureful phone in the years before the iPhone came out, then you probably noticed a few phones with incredible feature lists that major phone companies developed but never sold in major markets. Despite the phones' impressive feature lists, they weren't good enough to carry the company logo in a major market like Japan, Korea, or the US. The ones they did sell in the US were just barely usable enough for buyers who craved those features and were willing to put up with a lot of clunkiness, so you can imagine how bad the phones were that they only sold in China.

    So then the iPhone came out, and I was like, "Yay, now someone has figured out how to make a feature-filled phone with a decent interface that isn't the size of my fist. Any day now some non-evil carrier will have one. Yay! I can't wait." And I waited for a frickin' year while the cell phone companies continued to come out with crap. I was counting on them to AT LEAST clone the iPhone and come out with a "good-enough" copy of it, maybe a year behind and slightly less stylish, but what does that matter to a hopeless dork like me anyway.

    Well, they did take the iPhone seriously. They ran around saying "iPhone competitor" and "iPhone killer" so often it sounded like a religious mantra. But if you judged by the phones they released, it was like they had never seen an iPhone before. They kept making awkward stylus-based smart phones and cooked up a few pathetic "iPhone competitors" like the LG Venus. It became clear that not only were the cell phone makers not going to match the iPhone in 2008, they aren't even on pace to match the original iPhone for years. Certainly not in 2009, unless an Android-based product turns out to have an Apple-like (i.e., highly polished right off the bat) debut.

    So today, this very minute actually, I'm walking out the door to buy an iPhone. (How many times I've posted something on Slashdot in defense of the iPhone and wished I could say that! Um, well, two or three times at least.)

    I'll sell my soul to AT&T, despite their shameful cooperation with the un-American acts of my embarrassingly un-American American government, because the gap between the iPhone and second-best is just too embarrassingly large. I won't put up with it anymore.

    And as usual I'll add my caveat that I'm not interested in a Blackberry, "smart phone," or PDA, so I'm not claiming the iPhone is the clear leader, or even the best product, in those markets.