Monday, August 18, 2008
Is the iPhone 3G ever going to work?
As everyone knows, the iPhone 3G does not work very well as a phone. Not a big deal, unless you realize it is actually a phone ;-) On a phone, nobody wants their calls to be dropped. Is it so old century.Everyone I talked to says the 3G reception is bad. Some friends are in the US and have no way to test the same SIM card on a different 3G phone. Some are in Italy and have been using 3G for a long time. I can confirm it just does not work well... It is not a network-only issue. There is something in the phone.
First, AT&T was under pressure (I even read the problem was visible only in major cities, just because it is where people are more spoiled ;-), then it was Apple. Apparently, the 3G chip does not work too well.
Some said a firmware update will fix all the issues. However, the 2.0.2 update that came out today does not seem to do it. I bet the solution is a combo of hardware, software and network. But hardware is a major part.
Unfortunately, that means changing the chip of every iPhone 3G and I do not think it is ever going to work for Apple. If you bought an iPhone 3G, you can hope for a slight improvement. Then hope something else breaks to return it and get a newer version that will work better. Too bad you bought the first version. Luckily for me, I have not :-)
Posted by Fabrizio at 18:46
2 Comments:
Fabrizio,
A hardware or firmware fix would probably improve things modestly. I think people were oversold on the idea of 3G.
I left Verizon - which is routinely ranked as the best cell provider in the States for the iPhone 3G and have been very happy.
It works great in Chicago, Columbus & Manhattan. The calls are never dropped and the voice quality is excellent - especially if you're using your headphones.
I think the network is simply over loaded in the bay area & other locations and I'm betting this is where the complaints are. I noticed I switched to 'Edge' a lot in the Bay area.
AT&T is the old Cingular and in the US Cingular & T-Mobile all vary depending on location. In some cities it's fine - in others it isn't.
So if you plan on travelling and roaming then you will have issues. If that's the case - probably the only US provider to use is Verizon. Verizon is the onl provider I've found that works reliably everywhere - and as we all know they will probably never support iPhone.
In all my years of using different providers I can say it's a lot like real estate - location, location, location. It just depends on the quality of coverage that provider has in your area.
These users will continue to be dissapointed IMO.
Comment Posted at 06:41
@Anonymous:
How come this all sounds *so* familiar. It is a sound from the past. Here in the Nordic countries we had this same issue of
- varying network coverage
- rather poor network when out-of-town
- unexpectedly dropping connections
- discussions like "my mobile operator is better than yours"
- operators without enough capacity on their network
...but it was 1995, not 2008.
