3G iPhone reception - is new phone bad?

[Demetri70]

It could be because my 16/black i received 3 days ago had the newer version they were talking about here...

[jfarabee]

I am thinking so, I am running 5A347. Is anyone having issues running the new firmware, or are they all the old?

[coolphazuka]

mine shows only one or two bars at most but call reception is good and surfing on 3g is good also.

I've been having slot of is lag and crashing tho.

[r-e-a]

So I have a pretty lousy situation and hopefully someone can lend me some helpful advice...

I've had my 2G iPhone since about March. Having the phone for a little less than a month I started to notice that I wasn't getting all of my phone calls as people would tell me this. I called the apple support line about a week later and we re-set the network settings which appeared to work for me for about a week then I started to notice poor service again... text messages were lagging pretty bad, calls won't come through, calls would drop...

then in this past month it got even WORSE, I moved to a new place and I get just about no service at all in my apartment - there are a few small spots where I could place my phone and get like 2 bars at most and as I use the phone with my earpiece and just pray that it doesn't cut out. In fact, the only way I know that I'm missing a call is if I have the TV on and I hear that crazy sound that it makes when an incoming call interrupts the cable.

Thinking that perhaps it's just my apartment I was patient once again... but even just sitting outside, driving in my car, in a restaurant... the missed calls still happen! The only way I know is when people finally find me and tell me how they've been trying to get a hold of me for an hour or when voice mails arrive like 6 hours later. I've even had friends over to my apartment to see if their service is any better... friends that have AT&T but have blackberry's have better service, people with Verizon have great service and people with Sprint have so-so service, but still better than mine!

So I called AT&T 2 days ago and I talked to them about this problem. The AT&T rep thought it sounded like it's a phone issue not a service issue since he saw that I have 10 towers around my apartment that even if my building is built like a bomb shelter, I should not have this issue when standing outside. Then he switched me over to an Apple rep and we went through about 4 different procedures to troubleshoot my service issue and every single time we did this, I'd drop a bar... hahaha, just the exact opposite of what we were trying to accomplish. He grew concerned and asked me to go to an AT&T store to let them SEE what was happening.

Well, my luck apparently sucks because as I was leaving work to go to the AT&T store, my phone dropped in the parking lot and my screen shattered. When I got to the AT&T store and gave them my whole story, the guy just looked at me like I was the saddest thing in the store and just said, I can't replace the phone, but I can replace the SIM card - basically the sim card acts like an antenna and if it's a service issue the SIM card could potentially give me better service and if it doesn't then there's nothing else he could do.

I changed my SIM card and got like one more bar in my house, but calls still cut out. I went to the apple store and told them what my issues were and so it's going to cost me $200 to replace the screen. So I thought, why not just get a new phone. The guy told me that if I get the new phone, I'd have to sign up for the new plan with new/more fees and if this doesn't work out for me and I want to return the phone within the 14 or 30 days then I'm ruining the integrity of my account with AT&T and he seemed to think it was just better for me to get a screen replacement...

I'm still convinced it's the phone! But the issue here is that I'm looking for a long-term solution and it's pretty pathetic that I only get about half my phone calls, can barely keep a conversation and have to re-boot my phone just about every day. Am I better off trying out the new phone and risking keeping this bad service or should I just switch? Unfortunately, Verizon would seem the like the answer for me since my friends have awesome service everywhere I don't... but they don't cover all the calling areas that I NEED and are considered international areas which I'd have to pay per minute.

[tom_es]

I have spent 1 hour on the phone with ATT today, both customer service and tech support were really pleasant but were not able to solve the problem.

ATT confirmed that in my area there is coverage, or should be coverage.
They made me set to 2G and back to 3G... nothing.
They ended up the call by saying that there are many users that have experienced problems with iPhone and ATT 3G network. They said that is it a known issue that seem to be related to the iphone and that the Apple and ATT technicians are working on it but with no solution.
I have challenged the statement by asking if I were to have another ATT 3G Phone the 3G network would work, the answer from the technician was yes it would.
This week I am walking in an ATT store and ask them to make me compare and test an other 3G phone.

I will keep you all posted.

In the apple support forum discussion here a reply:
Or you can just do what I did and get your iPhone exchanged for one that is not defective.

Here's what I did and it worked:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1628071&tstart=90

Now I have a 3G iPhone that smoothly hands-off calls from 3G to GSM when the 3G signal gets weak, and it doesn't drop calls. After getting my iPhone exchanged, I am very convinced that there are simply some 3G iPhones that are defective. Go to the Apple store and give them a chance to help you. I'm glad I did because now my iPhone works great!

There are many forum threads on the same topic:
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1397833
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7790823#7790823
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=5977274#post5977274