I'm the same way, I get max 2 bars for 3G when I am inside my house. I live near Chicago and I am heading downtown later today so I'm hoping it'll work better downtown, I guess we'll see..
3G has terrible signal
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I live in Cleveland and when I'm outside I have no problem getting reception or anything like that. It usually shoots up to 3-4 bars on 3G. It's just going to be a pain in the ass to keep changing the settings everytime I go to my house.
GPS signal strength...check
Good signal at home...check
<-----san diego,ca
no probs with signal at all yet...but im taking all your info to heart.
Good signal at home...check
<-----san diego,ca
no probs with signal at all yet...but im taking all your info to heart.
This is ridiculous. From everything I've tried the 3G has better reception than the v1. People making judgments on number of bars and different networks (UMTS vs GSM) is beyond silly.
Well, I played with a friend's 3G in my basement yesterday. I always get 4-5 bars on my V1 down here and no problem receiving calls or data. He was only getting 1 bar down here and basically no internet.... it was just crawling. Turning off 3G made his perform just as well as my V1.
On the back porch it fared a bit better but he still wasn't getting more than 2 bars. We did some synced edge vs. 3G tests and he was definitely beating me, but only by a couple seconds per web page. My V1 actually started loading the page and graphics quicker, but his would finish first. It was pretty interesting.
But yeah, that 3G antenna definitely seems weaker than the Edge one we're used to. I use wifi at home obviously, but not being able to receive a call in my basement is a deal breaker. I live down here!
On the back porch it fared a bit better but he still wasn't getting more than 2 bars. We did some synced edge vs. 3G tests and he was definitely beating me, but only by a couple seconds per web page. My V1 actually started loading the page and graphics quicker, but his would finish first. It was pretty interesting.
But yeah, that 3G antenna definitely seems weaker than the Edge one we're used to. I use wifi at home obviously, but not being able to receive a call in my basement is a deal breaker. I live down here!
I'm actually not getting great reception with 3G turned off either. I'm going to try calling AT&T (like Connie did when her v1 wasn't great out of the box), but I think I'm going to wait a few days until the hold time dies down.
In Phoenix and a thought
South East Tempe - 2-3 bars. South West Phoenix - 5 bars. But I've noticed the number of bars jumps when active (someone noted this earlier) - could it be in order to preserve battery life that the amplifiers are turned down unless in use or when strong signal is present. So far I have seen no correlation with bars and performance - loading time for the same webpages at both sites is the same. Calls seem the same from both. Fun thing is that ATT map predicts the opposite for these to sites, Tempe should be better than Phoenix location
South East Tempe - 2-3 bars. South West Phoenix - 5 bars. But I've noticed the number of bars jumps when active (someone noted this earlier) - could it be in order to preserve battery life that the amplifiers are turned down unless in use or when strong signal is present. So far I have seen no correlation with bars and performance - loading time for the same webpages at both sites is the same. Calls seem the same from both. Fun thing is that ATT map predicts the opposite for these to sites, Tempe should be better than Phoenix location
Really. Then read this thread again dude. People are saying that with 3G "ON" they are getting terrible reception --- worse than with their original iPhones.. Why is that difficult to understand? because you don't want to believe it?
Now these two posts make more sense and is what I was asking earlier. Is the fact that the phone is showing less bars related to the reception? For these two ^^ the answer is no but for others *I think* it's that the reception is worse. But people generally are not distinguishing between the visual bar strength and the reception. If reception is great with no dropped calls at 1 bar -- who would care? That is all I'm saying and all I'm asking people who are posting in this thread.
Exactly. Here's my theory.
The best reception is a 10, the worst is a 1.
I think that with 3G, the phone can go to 10 (full bars, and 3G), but with Edge, you can get a max of 5 (full bars, and Edge symbol). So, if you have a few bars on 3G - that'd be like a 7, but the same amount of bars on edge would be a 3. Does that make sense?
I notice that if my 3G signal drops, I get a full signal via edge. Either way, my calls are not dropped.
This is a good theory. My thing is I have actually dropped calls. Around 8 in two days. When it switches to Edge, you are not getting 3G speeds, so we are not getting what we are paying for. That is my gripe. For what we are paying for and the speeds we want, according to your theory we should get 8-10 bars via Edge. Not 6-7. 1-2 bars on 3G is not what we should be getting.
This then is what is important and what I want to know. Not how many bars are showing since the phone's reception and it's ability to hold on to calls is paramount.
So let's try it again folks...those that are complaining about a lack of "bars" are you dropping calls and getting zero phone recpetion? Or is the reception great and you just don't like seeing only two bars?
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