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How'd you guys know the reception was so great here at Cocoa Beach...The only place the phone tends to have problems here is when it's in your pocket and your swimming....

Jul 29, 10 - 09:38 am Comment from: Mac4lfe

"except for US voice calls on ATT"

I'm happy Walt tested his i4 in all 50 states so he could confidently make this statement. My i4 is still naked and I have zero call issues here in S.Florida. Walt needs to amend that statement.

Buying an iPhone in the area where you know you don't have coverage and then complaining about dropped calls is stupid.

Oh, and BTW, reception is perfect here in RTP, NC.

Jul 29, 10 - 09:47 am Comment from: breeze

Patience is a virtue.

Jul 29, 10 - 09:50 am Comment from: silverhawk

I've got my T-Mobile phone and a iPod touch. I just hope Apple allows T-Mobile to get onboard soon, then I will buy a iPhone.

Jul 29, 10 - 09:50 am Comment from: Arnold Ziffel

I've used iPhone 4 in the Texas Hill Country (definitely not urban), and the reception and service have been excellent.

Jul 29, 10 - 09:53 am Comment from: TheMacAdvocate

DED says it best: in a market (the U.S.) where Apple would just pick up a few million customers - mostly ones defecting from ATT - it just doesn't make sense for them to develop a CDMA phone for Verizon.

In markets where the iPhone is on other carriers, Apple is absolutely smashing competition. It's actually kind of embarrassing. And there are *many* remaining unexploited markets for Apple to do this with the same phone they have now.

From a global market perspective, until Verizon moves to LTE, you can forget about another carrier getting the iPhone in the U.S. Dems da brakes.

Am I perceiving a mellowing on MDN's opinion and portrayal of the reality that is AT&T's diverse coverage strengths/weaknesses? I have nothing but good service. I just learned last week that the cell tower on the school campus where I work is owned by AT&T. That may add to my great service.

I am sick of hearing the PR puke words 'delight' and the worst, 'thrilled'.

Apple PR needs to lose those 2 fake words from their vocabulary.

You still don't understand it. Apple stays with us only to be able to blame us for their poor reception.

Ok… I know I slept in late and I'm still a little bleary-eyed… but did MDN actually just defend AT&T?

I must still be dreaming. It appears that MDN also took away that pesky ; that appears when typing out the & symbol.

Mossberg: "But I still wouldn’t advise adopting it as your primary phone if you live, work or travel in areas with poor AT&T reception." (That would mean JUST ABOUT EVERYWHERE!) TRANSLATION: the iP4 DOES NOT WORK as promised by Steve Jobs.

MDN: "Apple needs to wake up and add U.S. carrier options if they really want to delight all of their customers."

Great take. Now, consider this, please:

Trust & integrity are vital characteristics in the CEO of any company trying to sell us something. Steve Jobs used to demonstrate these characteristics. But, in the iP4 fiasco, he has completely abandoned them.

He tells us at the WWDC launch that the new phone is the best ever, revolutionary antenna design, and proceeds to grasp the phone in a way that he, a few days later, says you can't hold it because it blocks the signal.

After confirming that the iP4 antenna problem is worse than that of previous iPhone models and worse than most of the competing smartphones (that he calls 'very good phones - nothing wrong with them') he then proceeds to tell us he's going to fix the problem we are having by covering it up with a rubber band or some kind of case - all of which destroy the look, feel and special elements of the new iPhone.

We all are a bunch of fools and morons for allowing him to get away with such despicable and, as usual, arrogant behavior. Instead of just returning the phone or not buying the phone, we should demand his integrity. That means actually fixing the problem with the phone and providing an exchange for anyone who is not happy with the crippled one they bought from him in good faith.

Otherwise, why should we ever again believe anything he claims about his 'revolutionary' products?

iphone 4 in San Diego great coverage no drops 2.4 mb/s down 1.3 mb/s up I have no complaints

Jul 29, 10 - 10:30 am Comment from: Vatdoro

I have great AT&T coverage here in Utah. I hardly ever dropped calls with my iPhone 3G, but I've never had a dropped call with my iPhone 4.

Woooo-hooo "excellent". Ouch!
Well said. Moss had 2 more weeks to test than any of us will. I agree it was well written. Whoever disagrees simply needs to submit a better article/review. I'm sure we can get out the red pen. Be easy folks. One man's point... And a darn good one.

FTA:

"In several cases, when I was already on a call with three or four bars showing, I deliberately covered the hot spot with my hand..."

Talking to his mother-in-law, perhaps? HOPING against hope that the death grip could be put to positive use?

"Sorry, Zelda, it's this darn iPhone!"

Jul 29, 10 - 10:47 am Comment from: jerkstore

Re MDN's take of "Apple needs to wake up and add U.S. carrier options if they really want to delight all of their customers." If they're in an exclusive contract with AT&T, they must honor that contract. For all the negatives of AT&T in certain geographies, AT&T was the network that allowed Apple to launch the iPhone on Apple's terms. Apple must take the good with the bad here. And so must we. When the exclusivity period ends, so will AT&T's deathgrip.

MDN is back on the meds recently. It seems more like the old MDN again. It was only a few weeks ago that MDN was ready to fire bomb ATT cell towers if a stroke didn't happen first.

I haven't seen much reference to it, but each phone's antenna system will have a directionality issue, some more than others. Loop, coil, and dipole shaped antennas each produce unique patterns of reception. When you make a call and you have good reception, don't move the phone and a dropped call will be less likely. Has anyone also checked out the directionality pattern for the iPhone (and other phones too?)? FWIW my iPhone reception on my 3GS model is poorer since iOS 4 w/update.

My iPhone 4 performs better for me then my 3GS did, sometimes night and day better, such as at the train station I wait at every day when going home from work. Consumer Reports et. al. couldn't see the forest for the trees. Sure, I can make the bars drop, but in practice I get a signal in places I didn't before and I get a more reliable signal, sometimes amazingly more reliable, in places where before it was unreliable.

The antenna "issue" has been blown way, way out of proportion. The iPhone 4 is better, not worse. Consumer Reports et. al. simply set out to prove that the bars could drop and, guess what, they succeeded in proving that, but that's not investigating an issue and giving users real information, it might even have been an attention grab, but I tend to think it was just bad reporting, an attempt to compete with blogs, which required them to give up in-depth investigation.

AT&T working fine in Pueblo Colorado, MDN enough with your AT&T rants, oh I forgot your in California where every one has a woody about something.

"After confirming that the iP4 antenna problem is worse than that of previous iPhone models and worse than most of the competing smartphones (that he calls 'very good phones - nothing wrong with them') he then proceeds to tell us he's going to fix the problem we are having by covering it up with a rubber band or some kind of case - all of which destroy the look, feel and special elements of the new iPhone."

Sounds like a rabid Android fan. Your sentence is simply not ture (i.e. it is a lie). As has been confirmed by reviewers, as well as anecdotal evidence by very many users, iPhone 4 reception is BETTER than, or at least as good as, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G or most other competitors (and that is WITHOUT any bumper case). Attenuation WITHOUT the bumper casse, due to the 'grip of death' has been CONFIRMED to be no worse than most competitors under similar conditions.

The point has been lost in the ocean of white noise generated by very few astroturfing Android (or MSFT) bloggers and picked up by virtually all other media. Antenna issues on iPhone 4 are no better or worse than any other cellphone, due to the laws of physics. Apple's return rate is actually smallest ever; support calls regarding the issue are negligible and no worse than they were for 3GS or 3G. Percentage of dropped calls is practically the same as 3GS or 3G.

Apple has delivered their best cellphone yet, just like they did in the past 3 years. So what is different this time around? Well, during the past year, Apple became the largest tech company in the US (larger than MSFT), and second largest overall, behind Exxon-Mobile. This makes many people dislike it with passion for that reason alone. It is now a massive target, and everyone with a beef, agenda, or competing product, will be taking shots.

@Excellent

Please go back to the mental hospital you escaped from.

I would advise not getting a cell phone if you live, work, play in areas that you have no or poor cell phone coverage.

My problem with AT&T isn't the dropped calls or shoddy coverage. It's their incompetent customer service that makes me want to jump ship. Their corporation is basically four or five different companies connected to each other by a band-aid and the AT&T brand name. Try to get them to communicate with one another and you're in for a world of frustration.

I can take some hiccups in coverage. I live in San Francisco where getting approval to build new cell towers is pretty damned difficult, and I refuse to get too upset when the miracle that is a cell phone doesn't work perfectly and keeps me from talking to someone on the other side of the world for a few seconds longer than I'd hoped. But when I call AT&T to clear up a billing problem, I want to know that I won't spend three hours and 14 transfers to get zero answers. Yet that's what I get, over and over: Billing discrepancies (last month my bill was 35 cents total for two iPhones with unlimited date and a landline) and service reps with absolutely no idea who can answer my questions, much less fix the problem permanently.

TheMacAdvocate
"From a global market perspective, until Verizon moves to LTE, you can forget about another carrier getting the iPhone in the U.S. Dems da brakes."

And what about t-mobile?
My buddy (who is a tech for sprint) says T-mobile has arguably the fastest and most advanced wireless network in the US (and in case you aren't aware is it GSM not CDMA). And that an iPhone 4 on t-mobile would likely see 2X-3X (and even more in over-stressed areas) the data speed that it does on AT&T.

Jul 29, 10 - 12:30 pm Comment from: lobodave

Mossberg's tests are useless. If the problem is AT&T then whenever it is present it should be present on any phone using AT&T service. As far as I can tell, Mossberg did not do an exhaustive set of comparisons with other non-Apple hardware.

Jul 29, 10 - 02:19 pm Comment from: bobchr

@Toddy B
wanna try Verizon, they're not much better, as a matter of fact they are decidedly worse. I tried calling someone to tell them that I paid my FIOS bill and that they cashed the check from my bank 2 weeks ago. Five transfers later the issue still has not been resolved. They didn't even have a record of the account number I had the bank write on the check which I got off the bill.

Mossberg another journalist gone over to the FUD side.

Inclement weather and building crawded lands together with lack of cell towers, all help to signal loss and eventually to calls droping off.

http://thinkboard.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/what-wireless-phone-carriers-do-for-us-is-amazing/

@ toddy b

AT&T is still ranked #2 in CS behind T-Mobile. The could be #1 in my books. Never a problem, alwYs professional and courteous and if the feel I am frustrated with something, the give me 300-500 free rollover minutes. And, whatever I called them for, I get the answer but sometimes from a CS Supervisor. Wait times are almost nil and they now allow entry of your security code which speeds up speaking about my issue or question with ease.

I hope iOS4 supports Android. If it does - I'll buy one.

Aug 01, 10 - 08:56 am Comment from: Wireless Test Man

@TheMacAdvocate

A 3G CDMA iPhone would only cost a couple million dollars to produce.

Apple would pick up more than a few million customers from Verizon and AT&T would suffer from major defections & switches (which only helps Apple sell additional units).

China Telecom has told Apple they want a 3G CDMA iPhone, and KDDI, the second largest carrier in Japan would love to get their hands on an iPhone (Apple is only currently on the third largest carrier in Japan, Softbank)

Any phone on Verizon's LTE network will also be required to have 3G CDMA in them until coverage is completely built out and all the standards are complete for VoIP in LTE (circuit-switched voice does not exist in the LTE standards)

Are you a total troll?

Aug 01, 10 - 03:16 pm Comment from: cuz i'm the taxman

@Toddyb

I work for one of the large Cellphone companies in sales. I can tell you that you will get a lot farther if you try being friendly and courteous yourself than if you come at the poor CS person with the classic entitled yuppy asshole attitude that we get ALL the time from users.

My experiences with asshole customers are too numerous to count. My experience as a customer with Big Cellphone Co. has always been excellent. That's because I treat them as I would like to be treated. It works everytime.

the second largest carrier in Japan would love to get their hands on an iPhone
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