Comments on: Apple, AT&T mum on iPhone 3G issues

A month after the launch of the iPhone 3G, reception problems continue to plague owners with dropped calls, poor networking speeds, and frustrating customer service experiences.

[inachu]

new ITUNES has a defect. My pc does not see my iphone at all.
I uninstalled the new itunes and installed the older one and now I can sync.

[imaginenews]

I have been dropping signals left and right. It's not uncommon to loose a signal during a call. On top of that it happens about 3-4 times a day and I'm in a heavily saturated Dallas 3G area.

[joetesta70]

I've heard nothing but nightmares about the new iPhone. This will never replace the Blackberry as a reliable business tool.

[dsstroud]

Never is a long time, brother.

[stickyd]

There have been some bugs with the iPhone, but they have and are being addressed by Apple. It's not like Blackberry and Treo hasn't had their fair share of bugs, issues, or server-crashings. Why can't people just admit that Apple has a special product that's only going to get better with time. RIM should be scared.

[aMUSICsite]

Get the same problem here in the UK too..

I hope it's something they can fix with a software update or there could be a huge number of replacement phones coming out of the factroies soon. Especially as mine seems to be getting worse every week...

[rplat_1]

It's possible that I missed something but I saw no stats to support or prove your contention that the 3G problem is widespread. Personally, I am finding 3G to be very reliable.

[aztec92154]

I'm having an EXCELLENT experience with my iPhone 3G. In fact, I recently went to the top of Garnet Peak in California and had EDGE access!!! Full internet access from the top of the peak. So my iPhone experience has gone above an beyond what I expect from the phone.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jensenl/visuals/album/2005/garnet/

[andycohen]

Live in an area, malibu, ca. that shows coverage on the 3G map, and work in beverly hills, ca which also shows 3G coverage. The 3G network signal is so bad that at my office I get five bars on edge and one or no bars on 3G. And many, many dropped calls and calls that go right to voicemail without ringing. So I just switched off the 3G and just use the Edge. Kind of defeats the purpose of the new iPhone. And it sure is a battery hog! The old phone was bad, and the new phone is much worse, even on Edge with no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi on. I am a fairly heavy phone user, and find that I need to have the phone charging nearly all day either in my car or at my desk to avoid that dreaded dead battery icon. So traveling for even half a day where there is no charging availabillty means a certain dead battery. Sure makes me miss my old Blackberry with its
incredible battery life and ability to carry an extra battery. Tried a few battery chargers, both rechargeable and aaa battery powered ones, but none work well enough to get me through the day without wall or car charging. This is a serious flaw which will make me consider going back to blackberry when its new iPhone killer phone comes out soon.
Had the 2G I phone from the day it came out, and got the 3G i Phone the third day it was available, and love the i tunes, internet access, phone operting system, 3G apps store, camera, maps, operating system, look and feel of the phone, etc. but the low battery life and no replaceable battery is a definite design flaw that could make me become a Blackberry user once again.

[Dann1burk]

i guarantee you have at least one ofn the following things wrong that it is wasting your battery
1. you never turn wifi off
2. you never turn bluetooth off
3. your email checks more then once an hour
4. you have disabled auto backlight features
5. your phone takes longer then 5 minutes to auto lock

if not one of these problems then most likely a combination of them.
i know a guy who had the same issue and it was a few of the above mentioned. after the fact, BAM! the battery lasts for at least 11 hours, more then enough time to get it back on a charger

[pol;0987]

own one, can speak from experience, I HAVE EXPERIENCED NO ISSUES WHEN IT COMES TO SERVICE HANDOFFS, driven from jacksonville fl, to fort lauderdale florida and had reason to be on the phone the entire time, yes a 4.5 hour convo plugged into the car charger and the calls didnt waver once all the down I-95 while connected to 3G in JAX. There are times when 3G is off, and im in my office building, i'll see Edge disappear and be replaced by blue square icon, thats no signal, but thats due to my building, i walk outside and bam!!! 4 bars.

I guess what makes this story a tad bit biased is the comment, " This is the main reason that carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, say they have such strict testing " and Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T dont? This also may be a case of vocal minority, but the main thing that stands out to me, if you are having a problem with your carrier and reception wouldnt you go to the carrier? whats a message board or CNET gonna do for you? Half the previous posts are from people that dont have iPhones, just throwing their $.02 in.

Im not perfect or maybe I dont get the Interweb but if I have a problem with a service, product, or vendor, I'd contact them to fix it first, then if not resolved, go gripe on the web, but when people that dont have or havent personally experienced the product, good, or service, but they are still "reporting" on the issue, something is truly wrong...wait that wouldnt happen with Verizon would it?

[tile00]

if you were in or followed the wireless industry, you would know that verizon is NOTORIOUS for their hardware/service testing...to a fault. verizon has crippled features that phone manufacturers put in in the past all in the name of 'quality'. you conveniently overlook that statement that other iPhone users on different networks in the world have voiced the same complaints and issues. from a logical standpoint, that generally makes you focus on the hardware. network reception quality varies from place to place thats for sure...and that's great that you get great reception...but to dismiss other's bad experience just because you have a great one is dumb. do i think that they are a majority of users? no, but what is an acceptable minority? 10%? that would make 100k pissed off users.

[David01110]

So...people should only comment here if they don't have any problems? Personally, I'm glad that I saw this article, and these responses, before I ran out and got an iPhone. As far as the mention of Verizon, it seems that the reason it was written that way is because the next paragraph quoted a Verizon executive. His comment certainly wasn't biased, either.

I don't think that anyone can argue the fact that the rollout of the iPhone 3G was a mess verging on fiasco. Now, rather than being able to iron the original problems out and move on, Apple is faced with a whole new set of problems. I was really rooting for them...on paper, I think that the iPhone has the potential to revolutionize the way we think about our phones. In reality, it's starting to look like they may have bitten off more than they can chew.

[Mystigo]

I don't doubt that others are having problems, but here in the Northeast Atlanta area, 3G works well. It hasn't been perfect, but it is generally very reliable. I kind of wonder if increased traffic over 3G can affect overall performance of the network. I for one have dramatically increased the amount of data I download over the network since I got the 3G iPhone -by at least an order of magnitude (thanks to Pandora). If you extrapolate that out into far more tech savvy areas like New York and San Francisco, where the 3G iPhone is likely to be much more common, there could be unprecedented pressure on the network. This also could be one of the contributing factors to poor 3G performance.

[wratbatblue]

I continue to have some of the typical 3G-related issues: weak, inconsistent, or nonexistent signal in areas where users of other 3G phones have no problems, and where I myself had no problems with the Razr V3xx that I had prior to the iPhone. I might be having dropped call issues, too, I suppose, if I ever used the 3G network. I don't; between the drain on the battery and the horrible reception, I just leave 3G turned off. I don't know which company is to blame for these problems, or if it's a combination of both, but I know that I'm paying for an "iPhone 3G data plan" that is more expensive than a data plan for my older iPhone was, and in view of the difficulties with 3G, that seems like breach of contract to me. I've read more than one musing about the potential for a class action suit over it, and although I tend to despise people who want to jump into court at the drop of a hat, I wonder about THIS hat. That goes double in view of the absolute silence on the part of both AT&T and Apple.

[skooter64]

well. I'm in Australia on the Optus Network - not one known for it's great service. My old Sony was shocking on it. Full of black spots everywhere. The iPhone is a totally diffferent beast. Has been working flawlesssly, 3G, Gps, all great. So no complaints here. Much better than my last phone. Mail, GPS, everything very fast and no dropped calls.

[adamberberich]

Mine's fine (NYC/NJ). I can see how people can get frustrated but I'm sure it's hard on the network when millions of new 3G lines are added. I think v 2.1 will address EVERYTHING in one punch. It's already been seeded to developers, so look for it in the next few weeks. If it's SUCH a problem for people, note that you can turn 3G off if you're in an iffy 3G area i.e. a suburb of a city with prevalent 3G coverage. This saves battery too.

[vbhadrak]

I upgraded from the old iphone to the new 3G iphone. I have consistently seen that the 3G network is horrible! Unfortunately, I have to turn off the 3G network, else my calls keep dropping! This is not an isolated issue as all my friends who got the 3G phone (over 10 in number) have experienced the same issue.

[wratbatblue]

I forgot to add to my comments at 6:03 PDT that I'm in the Austin, TX area, and I'm by no means alone in experiencing 3G reception problems here. It's puzzling that many users in other areas are having few or no problems, yet so many of us here are having them, but only with the iPhone. That would at least suggest that the iPhone's 3G radio (or antenna? I'm sure no expert) is not as finely tuned as those in other phone makes/models. If that or something similar were true, and if AT&T 3G is "weak" in our area, pretty much everyone with an iPhone 3G would have this type of problem. Since I doubt that AT&T is going to accept me refusing to pay the extra $10 for a 3G data plan I can't use, somebody needs to fix the issues.

[Prince2k3]

I also have services problems. I live in the dallas area. my iphone keeps going between 3g and edge and its very annoying I finally just turned it off. I also noticed when it does that it really drains the battery. I wish someone knew a fix. its really sucks not to get the full experience of the 3g iphone.

[cdporterfield]

I also am in Dallas, and 3g is terrible, at least on my iphone that I just bought 3 weeks ago from a local At&t store. More often than not, my phone will not connect with mail or the internet. Called are frequently dropped, especially if the phone drops 3g and goes to edge. Plus, you can watch the 3g signal vary up and down from full bars to no bars, even while sitting still. Then, even when it has full signal on 3g, the phone often still will not connect to email or the net. To add insult to injury, Safari is just as crappy on the iphone as it is on my macbook pro. On the laptop, Safari will lock up and give a perpetual spinnig beachball. On the iphone, it just quits for no apparent reason. I want to like my iphone, but I am telling people who ask that I cannot recommend it unless the reception problems get better. I really wish Verizon had been given the exclusive contract for the iphone. Right now, i feel suckered into saying with At&t just because I wanted the iphone.

[jaguaraja]

I own a 16GB white iPhone. I've had it for about 2 weeks. I live and work in New York and in a heavily saturated 3G area (at least according to the AT&T map). I have had issues where inside a building I drop to EDGE. While I have not yet had dropped calls, I have an inconsistent browsing experience. There have been many occasions where I will be using Safari only to be randomly brought back to the home screen (and no, I didn't accidently press the button). It happens to me from using various apps. I will just simply drop the current app and return to the home screen.

Also, even after the 2.0.1 update, I still have slow texting issues. I have slow response to scrolling and delayed responses to contact selections. I'm quite sure there are a number of bugs here as I have not had any of these poor performance issues with the iPod Touch that I also own. I too would be happier knowing that Apple and AT&T acknowledged that there are issues and then dealt with it in a timely fashion.

[3Gadget]

This happened to me too! No matter what I'm doing. The iPhone will take me back to home screen randomly. Do you have a solution?

[scottcohen9]

I am having the same problem. This is quite a major and irritating issue. Does anybody know what APPLE is doing about this? Ughhhhhh. RC

[boychuk]

No problems with my iPhone 3G here in Canada on the Rogers network. No calls dropped, voice quality excellent.

[mpitogo]

I live in the NYC/NJ area and haven't had issues with dropping. 3G coverage is not the best in some areas but its still good on Edge. Its like the mountain of problems built out of a mole hill. One has to wonder exactly how many out of a million or so iPhone 3G users are affected.

[JP2stepR]

My 3G phone hasn't dropped a call when handing off from 3G to Edge networks. It's worked very well here in Atlanta, working with a less than perfect AT&T network. WIth regard to coverage maps...T-Mobile's shows every little nook and cranny that has weaker signals within the metro area (and accurately represented in my experience) while AT&T shows a solid high saturation throughout Atlanta. I think AT&T should acknowledge it's area isn't as built out as claimed. Including the very weak 3G area around my home, which is less than a mile from AT&T Wireless' national headquarters building. Heh.

[justnavigate]

I don't know about anyone else but, the only problem I'm having with the 3G is connecting with my bluetooth system in my car, I actually think it might have something to do with the last software update, 2.0.1. This is actually my second 3G and the first one worked fine, this one not so much. Anyone else have this problem?

[justnavigate]

Well, I also have a problem with it kicking me out of Safari and returning me to the home screen but 3G services seems to be working fine.

[etiahwhite]

Ugh...that happens to me too but not often and it also happened to my original iPhone if I notice it happen repeatedly in the course of the day I simply power down and power back up. I have the tendency to not power down for days but I notice that doing that fixes minor issues....but this did remind me of one issue I no longer have...with my original iPhone it would send calls straight to voicemail I don't have that problem now...at least so far.

[aztec92154]

@etiahwhite

If you're using the EDGE network, you cant sent or receive phone calls. With the new 3G network, you can both surf the net AND make a phone call at the same time. Neat, huh? So you're calls dont go to voicemail if you're surfing the net.