“Apple Inc.’s iPhone 3G was just a couple of days old when reports began trickling onto the company’s support forum from dissatisfied customers [regarding iPhone’s 3G reception],” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.
“What’s going on? We may not have all the answers, but we do have questions. Here’s our take on the griping about iPhone 3G reception,” Keizer reports.
“It’s conceivable that Apple has diagnosed the reception and dropped call bugs and that it can produce a fix soon, but it’s also possible that an update is weeks or months away. That’s Apple…. You never know, since the company won’t discuss much of anything, certainly not details of updates, before they’re released,” Keizer reports.
“The only definitive date on Apple’s iPhone calendar is Aug. 22, this coming Friday, when the company will unveil the iPhone 3G in another 20-plus markets. Apple has a history of doing software updates when it launches a new version of hardware, so it’s possible that the Aug. 22 debut in new countries will coincide with a firmware fix,” Keizer reports.
“AT&T, which is Apple’s exclusive partner in the U.S. market, has not admitted that a widespread problem exists, but spokesmen for the firm have acknowledged complaints from customers. They insisted that the numbers are small,” Keizer reports.
Much more in the full article here.
My contacts are once again taking 5 seconds to open up. Looks like the temporary snappiness of 2.0.1 has all but disappeared so it must be time for another update.
@ R2
Get rid of some friends.
@r2
Have you tried shutting down and rebooting? I’ve discovered that many of the apps available on the app store tend to either fragment the memory of the device or have memory leaks. If I stick to the Apple only apps, my contacts are remaining relatively snappy without the daily reboot.
Well, add me to that small list. I’m tired of hearing my coworkers brag about the 3G signal on their phones while my iPhone just shows “No Service” in our room.
I’m not a fan of at&t;’s 3G “service.” For now, I stick with Edge. It’s also much better on battery life.
Massive recall in the works I predict. Sell the stock now!
I have had a few problems with reception, but nothing much.
Couple of dropped calls in 4 weeks or so.
However, I got the same problems with the 1G iPhone, in the same poor reception spots – although the 1.1.3/4 seemed to help.
3G is cool – email is flying in on push, surf anywhere. Love it.
I think they will fix it so it goes to EDGE smoothly and back again – that seems to be the issue.
I notice that these issues are having a bad effect on iPhone sales….NOT.
I’m gonna git sum a’them new apps mmmhmm.
Two things.
1. I got rid of at&t;just before the iPhone came out. The service from them dropped calls continually. I have no dropped calls now on t-mobile.
2. “Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld” sounds identical to an article I just read on MacWorld UK. I wonder who copied?
Is it not a little interesting that the iPhone 3G, which is a small Mac OS X computer, is aware of possible network problems so it jumps to a slower better edge network.
I guess that the other 3G cell phones do not care about congestion or poor connections. Apple has to just get the iPhone to ignore the stench, sit in that over congestion and keep going. Who cares if the connection sucks. Blame AT&T;for that. The Mac can jump from network to network so I assume the iPhone will sort this out too.
Baby, crying, panty-waist whiners who never grew up as the entitlement generation will have to wait a couple weeks or so before their urinated-in diapers and can’t-cope behaviors are pacified, as in a mother’s teat.
Grow the fsuk up, you babies.
@Uh Oh,
You seem to post the exact same two sentences on every iPhone thread. Shorting Apple’s stock, eh?
Freddy,
Don’t worry about him. x is just bitter because his mother was a crack whore who abandoned him to suck on a glass one rather than his own. Now he just uses some peanut butter and his poodle.
x is poorly.
iPhone 3G
Half the price, but twice the headaches…
While I don’t live in a 3G service area, I travel a lot.
No dropped calls, only very fast data. I’m really happy with 3G service, and thank god for a wi-fi when in Edge areas when using data.
@R2 mine is very good right now… the contacts synching. I just made some changes and they were pushed to my iPhone within seconds. My contacts open up instantly.
Apparently “mister too lazy to type in a user name” (ie: gbyhdualbv or similar crap) is now posting as “Uh Oh”. Sounding the troll alarm.
iPhone 2.0 Software
My experience with the iPhone 2.0 software running both on my iPhone first generation and iPhone 3G has been extremely good. In fact I would say my experience has been well beyond satisfactory while definitely below exemplary. On a scale of 1 to 5 I’d put it at a 3.8. On a scale of 1 to 10 I’d put it at 7.
It is important to note that I am specifically rating reliability here. If I were to rate my entire, overall, iPhone/iPhone2.0/iPhone 3G experience which includes using the device as a phone and Internet device, as well as the ability to add applications, etc. my experience would rate 10 on a scale of 1-10. The overall ease of use, utility, and entertainment value of the device completely overwhelms the glitches.
I realize I’m not allowed to even admit there are glitches on this website, but there are.
I use my iPhone a great deal. I use it even more than my previous iPhone due to the availability of third party applications. I use Telnet and VNC applications, social networking applications, network speed testing applications, online banking applications, World of Warcraft related applications, books, a molecular modeling application and personal productivity applications.
I have experienced the occasional stall and had to reboot my phone, but nothing serious. Keep in mind, prior to the iPhone I was accustomed to rebooting Windows Mobile devices throughout the day just as a matter of course. I had to make sure the phone was still working. Windows Mobile devices would hang on me, and the screen would freeze showing maximum signal strength. This would lead me to believe the phone was on and working just fine. At the end of the day I would find out the phone had crashed at some point, without being used mind you, and that I had 20 voice mails waiting for me. Everything is relative.
I upgraded my first generation phone to the 2.0 software the first day and I was one of the people who couldn’t complete activation due to demand. However I was able to activate later that evening. It was really annoying for me because the iPhone is my only phone. Although I was better off than some because I use the YouMail.com voice mail service and it trapped my calls even though my iPhone was disabled. I still received e-mail alerting me that calls had come in, with transcripts and I could return calls using Skype, so it wasn’t the end of the world for me.
MobileMe
Not much I can say here except, WTF?!?
In the text of the article above, more than a little ironic that rolling your mouse over the three green underlined links lead to ads for the following:
3G – BlackBerry
iPhone 3G – BlackBerry
software updates – Microsoft Vista (Mojave)
In the text of the article above, more than a little ironic that rolling your mouse over the three green underlined links lead to ads for the following:
3G – BlackBerry
iPhone 3G – BlackBerry
software updates – Microsoft Vista (Mojave)
Battery Life
Because of 3G, I often use the phone when sitting around in situations like waiting at the Post Office or DMV or car wash. Because I use the phone much more, it seems as if the battery life is not as good as it used to be. I experimented by leaving the phone alone one day and only using it when I received a call. The battery life was effectively no worse than my previous iPhone.
I haven’t downloaded any of the game applications, and I wish someone would create GO for the iPhone. If I don’t see it soon, I’m gonna crack the books and get to work on it myself.
3G Connectivity… The Big Issue
AKA 3G Neophytes (i.e. the vocal mass of naiveté)
I have experienced the connectivity issues that have become, in my humble opinion, over blown and seriously distorted by a large number of 3G neophytes. These people have expectations set too high by the Apple Reality Distorting Hype Machine. That would be the ARDHM Mach 7. Now in turn, they are distorting the reality of the actual situation. This is a possible consequence of inadvertently promising too much.
I can tell you very specifically that I have problems when I am in an AT&T;area that has weak but distinguishable 3G coverage. In such an area, on the iPhone as well as any other 3G phone I’ve used (and I’ve used a few), it is best to turn off 3G and rely completely on Edge.
I have used 3G phones from NOKIA, SAMSUNG, and Motorola. I have always used the AT&T;network. It is my experience that different phones from different manufacturers handle poor situations in different ways. Some phones refuse to try EDGE without you manually forcing them onto EDGE. Some phones go for EDGE even when a good 3G signal is available. Two phones from two different manufacturers will behave differently at the same location. In my experience, 3G performance is less than predictable no matter whose phone you’re using.
I can also state that if I am in an area where my iPhone’s 3G operation is good, it is CONSISTENTLY good. It doesn’t work sometimes and not others. If the iPhone is guilty of anything, it appears that it is programmed to be too optimistic about 3G. A bit more pessimism on the part of the phone would probably be a good idea. I don’t know what the technical criteria for choosing EDGE over 3G should be, but I suspect that when signals are fluctuating with a certain frequency, it’s a good idea to switch to EDGE.
One anomaly that I can reproduce consistently on my iPhone 3G occurs when I am in an area with a weak GSM signal. If I turn off 3G, I will suddenly get 4 to 5 full bars where I previously had none.
I believe that a significant number of people out there thought that 3G was going to improve voice communications. This is simply not the case though I’d bet a million dollars that more than half of those people purchasing iphone 3G think this. This would explain the number of people complaining about dropped calls. GSM is a 2G technology. The 3G portion of the iPhone applies to broadband data communications only. Someone should put that in bold letters on every iPhone box. I. E. just because you can surf the web faster doesn’t mean you won’t be yelling, “Can you hear me now?”
[ Note: When I was writing this a client called with Time Machine questions. I completed a 1 hour call, with no drop outs or disconnects using my bluetooth earpiece and the battery level in the phone has barely budged. I should also note that this client was so clueless as to what it is going on with Time Machine that she was completely unaware that she activated it. These are the sorts of people buying iPhones.]
I also suspect that MobieMe problems are getting mixed in with reports of iPhone speed and connectivity issues and creating even more confusion. I have observed on more than one occasion that when I couldn’t get MobileMe e-mail for minutes on end, I was able to surf the web just fine, or configure for a different e-mail account and get e-mail there just fine.
In addition, “Fast” is a wholly subjective term. I am more than a little sure that there are people complaining about speed who have a very different view of what “fast” means than Apple and the ARDHM Mach 7. Fast to me currently means the 14 megabits/second download I get on my home cable modem. “Fast” is not the 500kb/s to 600kb/s I get on the iPhone 3G. More often than not I get around 300kb/s which is still far “faster” than EDGE but painfully slow if you’re accustomed to double digit megabit/second speeds.
We must take note of the fact that someone was able to create an application that did nothing except exclaim “I’m Rich” and at least 8 people paid $1000 each for it. These are the people buying iPhones and complaining.
Apple Quality and Secrecy
The Internet is a massive Feedback Loop / Echo Chamber. It doesn’t take much to create a viral concept that sweeps the “tubes.” I saw it happen with Windows VISTA. I’m a Mac guy through and through. I still bleed in six colors for those that remember the expression, but when I installed VISTA on my laptop and started using it, I liked it. I had virtually no problems and I continue to like it. It was a big change for people accustomed to XP, but it was not the operating system from hell as it was painted by the media. Microsoft is right about that, if very wrong in their chosen method for trying to get that information out there.
I am not completely unsure that there aren’t numerous false complaints out there on the net because it helps competitors. I have no proof of this, just a feeling.
Apple has had some serious quality issues lately not the least of which was the MobileMe situation. This cannot continue. The echo chamber words relating to Apple right now are poor quality assurance. No company can stand that for long. The Cupertino organization needs to realize that it is one large intellectually incestuous group of highly intelligent people and find a way to communicate with users again. Secrecy and believing that you don’t need to talk to anyone are only going to accentuate their arrogance, amplify the negative in the echo chamber, and create a fertile ground for the discontented to wreak havoc.