Repeat tests show iPhone 3G doesn't suffer from faulty hardware - Page 2

1) Are you going to use the UA to determine the browser and platform?
2) Are you going to use the IP address to determine the location and carrier?

I hate these generalized quotes. I have had 6 different phones since I have been with AT&T and the worst was the RAZR I have had 2 LG phones 1 RAZR 1 SLVR and both iPhones. The LG phone I had also used 3G but was pointless because it was just a standard flip phone. The call quality was good though and so is the new iPhone 3g. The call quality is fantastic. The Quality itself is good the problem is there are too few towers. So lets solve this problem. Lets make this phone amazing. I have 2 requests. 1 for apple and 1 for AT&T.

AT&T: Build more god damn towers!!!! Stop wasting time! 3g is where everyone is going not only for the iPhone so lets get those damn towers going please.

Apple: Fix all of the LAG!!!! My old 1st Gen iphone now lags after 2.0 and my iPhone 3g lags. It is frustrating.

It is beginning to look like the real culprit in this fiasco is AT&T.

Maybe time for a thread just on AT&T as network provider?

Yes, this is pretty easy to do to filter out non-iPhone test


This would be great, but you can't get the location with the IP address. I think all the IPs for the iPhone on ATT in the US report as being in New York City. So instead we have a list of the 50 states and all the major cities for those states which the user can save to their results if they choose to do so. After there is enough data I will have to come up with a nice way of presenting it.

As per the carrier I'm sure you can figure this out based on the IP, but at the present time we are gearing this site towards the US to get it launched.

How can the quality be good if you admit there are "too few towers"? Are you losing calls due to this or are you experiencing break-up?

ATT 3G service goes in and out on my 3G Samsung phone. I believe some phones just carry a signal better than others. Briefly I had a 3G Nokia and it was great.

I wish the iPhone would be on Verizons network

And just which other GSM carrier in the USA should they have picked?

T-Mobile, with the smallest base of customers of the major carriers? It's the only other GSM carrier here of any importance. It also has almost no coverage anywhere, especially 3G. And the 3G it has is still not compatible with what would have been needed. Only now are they STARTING to fix that.

So, what are your suggestions?

And by the way, I'm getting better reception than several people with Verison in a number of places now. I can get the internet, and they cant get any service.

So it's not that simple.

Well now that it *seemingly* is proven not to be a hardware issue, go in there and fix the software bugs. Keyboard and scrolling laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag.

I wish you would -- even occasionally -- take the trouble of re-reading (and appropriately editing) your posts before hitting 'submit.'

This, I totally agree with.

There's been a good deal of criticism of Apple's judgment in selecting AT&T as their partner. But let's consider what options Apple actually had.

If you assume that Apple was only willing to design and build a single "world phone," meaning one that uses the GSM standard, then CDMA carriers Verizon and Sprint were both automatically ruled out as partners. That only leaves AT&T and T-Mobile among the carriers with national (more or less) scope. The customer base and cellular network coverage of T-Mobile puts them a distant fourth in the US market, making them much less attractive.

Nonetheless, unconfirmed (anyone?) internet lore has it that Apple first offered iPhone exclusivity to Verizon, who turned it down. Even if this were true, it would probably have turned out to be a bad idea for Apple, requiring duplicate design paths to develop one technology for the US, another for the rest of the world. That may be fine for an established cell phone hardware player like Samsung or Motorola, but isn't a good idea for the scrappy new kid on the wireless block.

Furthermore I doubt that the corporate chemistry between Apple and Verizon would have been good. Both are control freaks. Apple wants to control the user experience, mostly in a benign dictator sort of way. Verizon likes to strictly control the commercial access in a not necessarily so benign way. I don't think that Apple and Verizon could have worked well together, and if they had tried, the user might well have been severely squeezed between them.

Ruling out Sprint for the same CDMA technical reasons, not to mention their financial weakness, that leaves only AT&T as a viable choice among the big 4 carriers in the US. Something of a Hobson's choice to be sure, but on the plus side AT&T has the requisite scale, and in decommissioning the old TDMA network, reassigning that spectrum to GSM and building out their 3G coverage, they're at least headed in the right direction.

It might take until the end of my iPhone 3G contract, but I suspect that the coverage issues, vexing as they must be for some people, will eventually become a non-issue.

what's amusing it that, according to all the articles, Apple offered this gig to all the companies and only ATT was willing to step up to Apple's conditions.

apparently the gig was that the carrier would chip in a major piece of the devo costs in exchange for the exclusive contract which would allow for payback of the money. akin to the whole 'we'll give you your new phone for free and you will use us for 2 years' gig that subscribers get.

but the other boys balked because Apple wanted total design control. they weren't willing to give the carrier a say in how the phone was designed, what hardware or software etc. which is not the norm with such deals. ATT said okay and got the gig.

and now the others are probably kicking themselves

I live in San Antonio, Texas, and I have had no issues with my 3G at all. A few dropped calls here and there, though.

you didn't have to buy the iphone. you wanted it, you knew from day one that it was with ATT and ATT only.

so yeah, you did buy into ATT in a way.

although back in year one there was the option to just buy the phone, have it hacked, use it with whomever and pray nothing bad ever happened cause you have no warranty.

Now we can bury the 3G chipset and iPhone suck debate and maybe move on to dealing with application issues...

Like:

1) updates done on my iPhone crashing the phone - till i restore it.

2) apps wiping out their data

3) and proper push.

Don't get me wrong... I love my iPhone - I just want the obvious fixed.

Why does a financial analyst think he is qualified to determine something completely out of his field of expertise? If I have a pain in my chest, I don't go to an auto mechanic for a diagnosis.

When they write their opinions down for the public to read, they should replace the word "speculate" with the more proper phrase "guessing since I have no clue how this stuff works".

Stick with financial markets Richard. Considering how well that is running, perhaps you should consider changing careers. Perhaps a palm-reader, or fortune-teller is more your game.

The problem with this test is the wording or focus on antenna. The antenna is such a small part of the equation that if that is all that there was to the test it would be meaningless. Thankfully this article indicates more involved testing. There could have been translation issues in previous reports.

As to the problems some people have had well it is a networked device and like all networks performance depends on load. For example I get really speedy downloads at home in the middle of the night. Day time is a diffferent story and more variable.

Given that I have experienced connection reliability issue that did not exist on previous phones. Whom to blame? Honestly I don't know but I do know that 3G is buggy as hell so I blame Apple.

Dave

Ok I've corrected my spelling mistake(s). But you should not get so angry over spelling errors and think before you write especially when you think you cannot edit after hitting submit. Is this a spelling bee forum?

Why doesn't Apple just admit they made a mistake going with AT&T and move on? Seriously, could they have picked a worse carrier in the US?

I wish you would keep your simple agreement statements to yourself. You offer no follow up.
Who are you- High Priest of the Apple Council?

Seeing as how, for now at least, San Antonio is the corporate HQs for AT&T I'd certainly hope so! I wonder if when they move up to Dallas within the next year or two Dallas' iPhone problems will be instantly fixed

Sure, Apple makes the iPhone, which has been tested and performs like all other 3G phones, so you blame Apple and not AT&T? AT&T who is providing the bulk of the service and infrastucture your buggy 3G relies upon?

My iPhone works just great here in Canada. The evidence is clearly mounting (note the Blackberry Bold suffers similar issues in the USA on AT&T) that this is primarily a carrier issue.

I don't know where you got this info but it's not entirely accurate. Verizon was the only other carrier Apple offered the phone to.

Verizon turned down the offer because Apple wanted to share subscription revenue. The $200/$300 ATT pays Apple probably isn't much different than the total revenue share.

Also the iPhone business model does not fit Verizon which likes to charge for extras such as visual voicemail, GPS, and media downloads.

It's a minor victory that Apple and the iPhone have been vindicated. But there is still the problem of what is going to be done to improve service for those experiencing problems. I guess the more iPhones in use would increase the incidents of dropped calls and poor performance. How is anything going to be done about it in a short time frame. More towers and repeaters or is new switching equipment going to be required? This could take many months. I wonder if a long-term mess-up like this would allow Apple to get out of their exclusivity commitment with AT&T.

The cost of new or added hardware is probably going to be passed on to AT&T users by rate hikes. Nearly everyone was screaming they needed 3G and were still pointing fingers at Apple because the original iPhone didn't have a 3G chip. Now the 3G chip is here and the 3G infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle the demands placed upon it. Maybe the best short-term solution is to throttle back the whole network in densely populated areas in order to even out the bandwidth for all users. (I'm not sure if the network works like that, but it's worth a shot) It's like finally being able to buy a Lambo Gallardo and then finding out that traffic is bumper-to-bumper 24 hours a day.

Jeez, an over-saturated 3G network already and this is just the start of iPhone growth. Maybe some startup company should just turn NYC into one gigantic WiFi hotspot.

Isn't google doing something like this in California? I think with wimax and other technologies its just a matter of time before wireless (wireless anywhere, not hotspot) becomes the norm.

If you think about it most of the first mobile internet phones were used mainly for email and visiting special chtml mobile sites. The iPhone (and other new phones now) are really changing how we use the mobile internet. I kind of view this period, at least for the US, as early adopters. Just like HD has been around for a while now and has only recently really taken hold.

I think a year from now the mobile internet will be a vastly different beast in the US

I'm at work in Boston. Yesterday I did a 3G speedtest from here: http://i.dslr.net/tinyspeedtest.html

I got 60 Kbps on 3G yesterday. So I tested again today and got 986 Kbps. Nothing was different. Same phone. Same 3G setting. Same position at my desk. Very obviously something was different on AT&T's end.

BTW, yesterday had 4 bars, today had 2 and later 3 bars so that apparently means little as well.

I AGREE 100% Typing is slow and app response time is slow too. Getting from the lock screen to place a phone call from my contacts list takes 7-8 seconds. It should be snappier.

At least in LA the AT&T network has serious problems. Forget about 3G. I turn it off most of the time. The old 2.5 network is not good enough to maintain calls through the center of Beverly Hills. I have yet to complete a conversation without a dropped call.

I love the iphone, but I don't think I can live with this much longer. Both Sprint and Verizon provide much better reception and call quality. I switched with my wife from Sprint on July 11th.

Is there any hope for improvement??

Sorry, but these tests are way too limited to *prove* anything.

Among my iphone 3g-owning friends and colleagues here IN THE UK (i.e. ignore AT&T) every one of us (around 20 people spread across London, Manchester and Birmingham) has problems. Dropped calls are normal, and a massive percentage of calls incoming go to voicemail directly.

NO other phones we use on the same network have these issues.

NONE of these issues occurred with the original iPhone on O2.

There is a flaw in the way 3G is handled - whether it's hardware, software or a combination of the two. Sure 3G networks are still immature, but Nokia seem to know how to make them work just fine - my office N95 has not dropped a call since I've owned it, and it holds a great signal almost everywhere.

It worries me that this just gets Apple off the hook for some shoddy engineering.

I love this as a device, but it sucks big time as a *phone*.

My error. Old age.

Interesting

Date.......................................... April 2, 2007*
Total Mobile Subscribers................ 478.4 million
Total 3G.......................................... 45 million

Date ...........................................End May, 2008†
Total Mobile Subscribers...............910.8 million
Total 3G......................................101.5 million

* http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/April2007/4516.htm"]http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/April2007/4516.htm

† http://www.unwiredview.com/2008/06/2...s-100-million/

Apple didn't have too much of a choice unless they wanted to make two versions of the iPhone, one CDMA2000 and another EDGE/UMTS. AT&T by far has the largest UMTS/HSDPA network in the country (maybe the only one, I'm not sure if T-Mobile has started their rollout yet or not), and I can't see Apple making either a special CDMA phone for Verizon or Sprint, though that would have definitely been best for the consumer.

My iPhone 3G doesn't give me too many problems, mainly because I live in a rural area and am likely the only person using a 3G AT&T phone for miles. Fortunately I still have 3G service because I'm relatively close to the Greenville/Spartanburg, SC area. And even in downtown Greenville/Spartanburg I still have good service. AT&T just deployed 3G here in June, and I thought coverage would be shoddy but it is actually decent. At home I usually have 3 bars of 3G, and always have 5 bars of EDGE. Sometimes the 3G will jump from 1 bar to 5 bars and back down, but it only drops 3G completely about once a week or so if that often.

I am NOT happy with the speeds I'm getting though, it usually is around 450-500 kbs, though sometimes it'll jump over 1000. Last night I actually got 2000 kbs, right before the 3G network crashed (from about 2 am until 3 pm today). So though it appears my speeds are usually capped at about 500 kbs, it does get speeds well above that occasionally.

Interesting. I know about 8 other people with an iPhone 3G in the US on AT&T and no one is having reliability issues with the phone service. The repeated complaint is only about the battery life. Do dropped calls happen when you switch off 3G? It is possible that most users in the US aren't using 3G much yet since it isn't widely available but here in the Boston area, 3G is widely deployed and I haven't heard any complaints.

I am such an Apple fanboy that I'm wearing my Leopard release night t-shirt to the office today. I own about 6 macs, got the iPhone 3G on July 11 and had one of the originals as well.

But I just don't agree that the iPhone 3G doesn't have something wrong with it. I had a 8525 before I got my original iPhone, and I never experienced anything like this—and that was AT&T as well. Everything works perfectly when I disable 3G. That's fine; it's like I got a 16mb original iPhone for way less than the original. But, it just ain't workin' right.

Hopefully these tests establish that it's not the *hardware*. If that's the case, then hopefully the software update will take care of things.

Oh yeah, and I could tether my 8525 as well. ):

The 8525 did not use HSDPA, like the iPhone. This is a brand new 3G standard for AT&T.


AT&T forbids tethering. The iPhone is technically capable.

Wow... I didn't know that there was a Birmingham in the US, seriously (o_O)


The 8525 is UMTS (3G), the iPhone 3G is actually 3.5G (HSDPA), but I guess "iPhone three point five gee" or "iPhone three and a half gee" were a little bit too long for marketing reasons :-P
And yes, tethering is forbidden by AT&T, but other companies in other countries don't :-D Can still see some iPhones tethering outside AT&T's claws.

People, don't rely on how many bars the iPhone displays! You should actually do a speed test! I ran a speed test this afternoon while being near to my work place, just right in the city center of Cologne, Germany, with lots of people around me. I had full UMTS reception (4-5 bars). Using testmyiphone.com, I had the following downloading speeds:

2.32 MBps, 2.93 MBps, 2.8 MBps (ran the test 3 times)

This evening, I ran another test at my home place where I usually have very low UMTS reception (only 1-2 bars). I expected to have very bad download speeds, but surprise, surprise:

2.3 MBps, 2.69 MBps, 2.08 MBps (ran 3 tests again)

Though my iPhone displayed a much worse UMTS reception, download speeds have been comparable, only insignificantly lower.

testmyiphone actually suffers from very serious bandwidth stability issues, if the test is good looking, trust it, but if the test says that your speed is bad, don't trust it, try other speed tests to see if the problem is your carrier or if it's the web page.
Today I'm getting 4.5 Mbps readings on my 5.8 Mbps conection, wich is... not that bad of a reading, but yesterday I had 1.3 Mbps readings in testmyiphone, but just afterwords I was downloading at above 700 KB/s, so that means that the problem was the web page, not my connection.

I have resorted to switching off 3G almost permanently - as have everyone else I know - as the only way to get a half reasonable chance of making and receiving calls. It is way, way more reliable than 3G, but I still get plenty of complaints about audio quality ("sounds like you're underwater" etc.) which I never had with the original iPhone.

No idea what the root of this problem actually is, but it isn't trivial. When I spoke to the girl in the O2 shop today where I bought my phone, she said, and I quote, "yeah, we've been getting lots of calls about this - my brother has the same problem - but lots of other people see to be doing fine. It's weird. Come in and we'll swap your SIM card to see if that helps".

Something, at least in a large batch of these phones, is seriously faulty.

I'd like to hear some more examples of people blaming victims. Certainly, your not a victim if you knowingly signed up for AT&T, which any reasonable inquiry would tell you isn't without consequences. I'd rather not use a cell phone then be stuck with AT&T. Interestingly enough, my iPhone on T-Mobile has better sound quality then my buddies on AT&T (version one).

Good point Dave. The antenna could be fine, but a faulty chipset/firmware could still muck up calls and connections. The real question is if AT&T's other 3G devices are experiencing this problem, and if they are, how come we're not hearing about it.