Is the iPhone a good Telephone?

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
I am strongly considering buying 7 iPhones for my Anesthesiology group. We are salivating at the prospect of using all its features but we have a question. Is the iPhone a good phone? We currently all have RAZRs and we get reception in all of our locations and all of our operating rooms. So.



1. What is the call quality like?

2. Does it get a signal everywhere your old phone did?



I thank all of you who answer me.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 34
    davegeedavegee Posts: 2,765member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HockeyDoc View Post


    I am strongly considering buying 7 iPhones for my Anesthesiology group. We are salivating at the prospect of using all its features but we have a question. Is the iPhone a good phone? We currently all have RAZRs and we get reception in all of our locations and all of our operating rooms. So.



    1. What is the call quality like?

    2. Does it get a signal everywhere your old phone did?



    I thank all of you who answer me.



    Both of these questions are highly subjective AND for the most part VERY VERY location sensitive... Me telling you how good the iPhone is in the mountains of NJ (yes we have them) would be of little value if your are in the middle of NYC in a hospital filled with electronics, monitoring devices, MRIs, CTs, over saturated 802.11, perhaps even cellular repeaters.. where I worked we had them all over the place for the Nextel phones, etc, etc, etc.



    This is not unlike some random poster writing a post that says "Don't use cingular, their network sucks" and NOT having any location filled out nor telling anyone WHERE is his posting from.... How can anyone possibly take the poster seriously?



    Okay not exactly the same but you get the point... In short without some additional details it will be impossible to answer your questions in any way that would actually help you.



    Dave
  • Reply 2 of 34
    spindriftspindrift Posts: 674member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DaveGee View Post


    Both of these questions are highly subjective AND for the most part VERY VERY location sensitive... Me telling you how good the iPhone is in the mountains of NJ (yes we have them) would be of little value if your are in the middle of NYC in a hospital filled with electronics, monitoring devices, MRIs, CTs, over saturated 802.11, perhaps even cellular repeaters.. where I worked we had them all over the place for the Nextel phones, etc, etc, etc.



    This is not unlike some random poster writing a post that says "Don't use cingular, their network sucks" and NOT having any location filled out nor telling anyone WHERE is his posting from.... How can anyone possibly take the poster seriously?



    Okay not exactly the same but you get the point... In short without some additional details it will be impossible to answer your questions in any way that would actually help you.



    Dave



    Not really, he asked 2 very simple and specific questions:





    1. What is the call quality like?



    - Well? Is the call quality you get on your iPhone during use any good?



    2. Does it get a signal everywhere your old phone did?



    - This is a simple Yes or No answer.



    [Edit]

    I live in the UK, so don't have an iPhone yet, otherwise I would have answered your questions HockeyDoc.
  • Reply 3 of 34
    lfe2211lfe2211 Posts: 507member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DaveGee View Post


    Both of these questions are highly subjective AND for the most part VERY VERY location sensitive... Me telling you how good the iPhone is in the mountains of NJ (yes we have them) would be of little value if your are in the middle of NYC in a hospital filled with electronics, monitoring devices, MRIs, CTs, over saturated 802.11, perhaps even cellular repeaters.. where I worked we had them all over the place for the Nextel phones, etc, etc, etc.



    This is not unlike some random poster writing a post that says "Don't use cingular, their network sucks" and NOT having any location filled out nor telling anyone WHERE is his posting from.... How can anyone possibly take the poster seriously?



    Okay not exactly the same but you get the point... In short without some additional details it will be impossible to answer your questions in any way that would actually help you.



    Dave



    To your question, my iPhone has better voice quality than my Razr on the same AT&T network. Yes, it gets a signal everywhere my Razr did.



    I live on Long Island in NY. The iPhone also has far superior usability with all of its calling related features compared to the Razr,e.g, I could never go back to answering voice messages sequentiallly.
  • Reply 4 of 34
    davegeedavegee Posts: 2,765member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpinDrift View Post


    Not really, he asked 2 very simple and specific questions:

    1. What is the call quality like? - Well? Is the call quality you get on your iPhone during use any good?

    2. Does it get a signal everywhere your old phone did? - This is a simple Yes or No answer.



    If the iPhone itself was 'notorious' for specific quality issues that were not affected by network quality - like notorious low volume or whatever... we'd see an enormous amount of people posting about this obvious problem... so if you think 'call quality isn't location specific thats fine... you can continue to live in fantasy land... for the rest of us... call quality is quite dependent on your specific area.





    A simple example...



    To my brother who lives on a mountain-side facing New York City...



    Q: How is the HDTV picture quality on that Sharp Aquos?

    A: Fantastic!



    To my other brother who lives on a mountain-side NOT facing New York City...



    Q: How is the HDTV picture quality on that Sharp Aquos?

    A: It sucks I can't even get a picture most of the time!



    Dave
  • Reply 5 of 34
    jdradenjdraden Posts: 89member
    The call quality on my iPhone is pretty average. It's not as good as a landline, but it's better than it was on my RAZR. The reception is also about on par with my RAZR.
  • Reply 6 of 34
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    If you guys have an iPhone, just answer his question. Subjective or not, I'd say he just wants an answer. If you are that insecure about Apple's phone, you could follow up by telling him what the reception was like on your old phone in the same location. Just follow JDraden's lead.
  • Reply 7 of 34
    mac voyermac voyer Posts: 1,294member
    Sascha Segan of PC Mag thinks the phone quality is terrible. I strongly disagree with his analysis . I mention his opinion only because I respect his work. It just shows how subjective this type of analysis can be. Leo Laporte did a TWIT podcast devoted to the iPhone. One of his guests used the iPhone to call into the program. The voice quality was great. It was great when he used the headset and speaker phone as well. The TWIT is easy to find, so you will be able to judge for yourself. My experience, (watch for my review) is that the iPhone sound quality is the best I have heard in a phone. It replaces my LG Fusic from Sprint. I am in Beaverton, OR. It has an excellent mic so the person on the other end can hear you just fine. The speaker phone performance is particularly impressive to me. I do not know what led Sascha to his conclusion. But it does not correspond to the real-world examples I have heard and experienced. The iPhone is a great phone.
  • Reply 8 of 34
    vineavinea Posts: 5,585member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HockeyDoc View Post


    I am strongly considering buying 7 iPhones for my Anesthesiology group. We are salivating at the prospect of using all its features but we have a question. Is the iPhone a good phone? We currently all have RAZRs and we get reception in all of our locations and all of our operating rooms. So.



    1. What is the call quality like?

    2. Does it get a signal everywhere your old phone did?



    I thank all of you who answer me.



    Unless you get a discount for getting all 7 at once I'd just get one and test it out...IF you are getting a discount...heh...let me know and maybe I can convince someone around here its a good idea.



    Vinea
  • Reply 9 of 34
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HockeyDoc View Post


    I am strongly considering buying 7 iPhones for my Anesthesiology group. We are salivating at the prospect of using all its features but we have a question. Is the iPhone a good phone? We currently all have RAZRs and we get reception in all of our locations and all of our operating rooms. So.



    1. What is the call quality like?

    2. Does it get a signal everywhere your old phone did?



    I thank all of you who answer me.



    ......



    You sound like a generous soul, but before you buy several iPhones, or even one, I would suggest that you check out the iPhone forums at MacRumors.com.



    http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=322939



    They've set up a discussion area for people to report problems they are having with the device, and they seem to be numerous. Some of the bugs will no doubt be fixed with software upgrades, but that may be as far away as October.



    The issues range from repeated crashes, to the inability to record a greeting.



    Like the the folks who post here, the people who go to MacRumors, tend to be tech savvy, early adopters, and Mac loyalists. None of the complaints sound like mere sour grapes, event though the forum runs to 4 pages.



    It seems like Apple jumped the gun on the release of the iPhone. Personally, I'm going to wait until at least, for the second version.
  • Reply 10 of 34
    vineavinea Posts: 5,585member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Madame Defarge View Post




    The issues range from repeated crashes, to the inability to record a greeting.



    Like the the folks who post here, the people who go to MacRumors, tend to be tech savvy, early adopters, and Mac loyalists. None of the complaints sound like mere sour grapes, event though the forum runs to 4 pages.



    It seems like Apple jumped the gun on the release of the iPhone. Personally, I'm going to wait until at least, for the second version.



    Seems mostly to be Safari issues and some iPod functions. Oddly my 5.5G Video iPod has some of the same issues with photos disappearing that requires a power cycle for them to return. Scary when these are your imported photos of your vacation off your camera and are your only copies...



    Vinea
  • Reply 11 of 34
    fuzz_ballfuzz_ball Posts: 390member
    For me the call quality and availability is the same as my old RAZR. Actually a hair better when you consider I no longer have that intermittent buzzing sound that some RAZRs develop (which mine did).
  • Reply 12 of 34
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    I used to use a >2 year old Motorola v551 on the AT&T/Cingular network.



    Signal strength on my iPhone has been on par or slightly better than my old phone. I generally didn't have problems there and haven't had any with the iPhone. This is at home in Berkeley, in San Francisco, in between, and on my way to Santa Cruz and back where I went for the 4th of July.



    Regarding call quality, I feel that the iPhone is far superior to my old phone. I think I can heard some audio compression going on which I couldn't previously hear on my old phone, but I think that is due to the iPhone being better so now I can hear those artifacts. I think this is due to AT&Ts network. That said, no complaints and overall its better than my old phone.
  • Reply 13 of 34
    I live in Louisiana. In my area Sprint and Altell have the best coverage, however I really wanted to buy my wife an iPhone for her B-Day. We had At&t before and left b/c it was so bad.



    My wife loves the phone and talks about it all the time. She tells me all the time she can't believe it sounds this good on At&t/Cingular.



    I even called my mother the other day and she said I sounded much better than on our previous phone.
  • Reply 14 of 34
    Hi...Work in busy trauma center ED.....reception excellent as any AT&T can be expected. Use the phone for contacting in house and external. Get better quality of the call than I did with the Blackberry Pearl... no interference with EKG tele....hope that helps









    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HockeyDoc View Post


    I am strongly considering buying 7 iPhones for my Anesthesiology group. We are salivating at the prospect of using all its features but we have a question. Is the iPhone a good phone? We currently all have RAZRs and we get reception in all of our locations and all of our operating rooms. So.



    1. What is the call quality like?

    2. Does it get a signal everywhere your old phone did?



    I thank all of you who answer me.



  • Reply 15 of 34
    filburtfilburt Posts: 398member
    Considering RAZR series is judged as the benchmark of RF signal strength (although audio quality honor is generally awarded to Nokia), I would say iPhone is in good company. On the other hand, many (including myself) found iPhone's speakerphone to be on the weak side. I normally use the Bluetooth headset myself, however.
  • Reply 16 of 34
    reeve76reeve76 Posts: 37member
    I had a razor and an 8125. i currently purchased an iphone and they blow both away. It is the best phone I have ever used. It gets good reception almost everywhere and even on low service the call quality still seems pretty good. definetley a good phone, worth checking out.
  • Reply 17 of 34
    lfe2211lfe2211 Posts: 507member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by filburt View Post


    Considering RAZR series is judged as the benchmark of RF signal strength (although audio quality honor is generally awarded to Nokia), I would say iPhone is in good company. On the other hand, many (including myself) found iPhone's speakerphone to be on the weak side. I normally use the Bluetooth headset myself, however.



    I use the speakerphone for all calls and audiobooks when using the Ipod function. It is much louder than my Razr for calls. I have to crank the volume down from max level for audiobooks as they can be heard in nearby rooms.
  • Reply 18 of 34
    sheilaesheilae Posts: 15member
    But don't give it to them until you've activated it and used it in every one of the spots you'll need to use it. Then- it becomes a great new gift! Someone will think you're great!



    (If it was acceptable, go out and get the 7 for yourself and your partners.)



    You may as well- if you end up getting them for your partners first, you know you'll be in deep ^%$# !)
  • Reply 19 of 34
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    in the latest TWiT podcast (#103) some dude talks about doing high end audio analysis and found that the iPhone's sound quality was top notch and surpassed all the other phones.
  • Reply 20 of 34
    dudditsduddits Posts: 260member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by HockeyDoc View Post


    I am strongly considering buying 7 iPhones for my Anesthesiology group. We are salivating at the prospect of using all its features but we have a question. Is the iPhone a good phone? We currently all have RAZRs and we get reception in all of our locations and all of our operating rooms. So.



    1. What is the call quality like?

    2. Does it get a signal everywhere your old phone did?



    Call quality on both ends - how they sound to me, how I sound to them - have been excellent.



    It also gets a signal everywhere my old phone did.



    If you already enjoy good reception, benefits outweigh the risk. Furthermore, since it is well known that anesthesiologists tend to be among the most laid back specialists in medicine, it is likely that unforeseen problems would be well-tolerated.
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