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Seth Meyers on SNL got it right...it's about the calls.

elgrecomac

elgrecomac

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 15, 2008
1,163
162
San Diego
As a frustrated iphone owner, it is great to see that the issue with the iphone is not the 100,000 apps that no one uses...the average is about 10...but, rather that the iphone, AS A PHONE, is extremely weak due to Apple's good friends at ATT. In New York, San Francisco, San Diego and countless other areas, dropped calls are the norm, no signal is the norm...but I do have 10 cool apps.

Bravo SNL!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmgKDvWdi6o
 
I very rarely have issues where I live. Of course for me it's all about the apps. I probably use mine as a phone for less than an hour a month. And if I stopped calling my wife, that would drop to about 5-10 minutes a month.

So it's NOT about the calls. At least not for everyone.
 
Well...

Surely said:
I rarely have trouble making phone calls with my 3GS. So......... meh.
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Lucky you. But a VERY LARGE part of the iPhone owning public is more than frustrated with ATT performance. Dropped calls or no signals in major metropolitan areas....like New York City and San Francisco were the fuel for the joke on SNL. And ATT acknowledged they had a problem LAST January and said they were going to fix it ASAP. To quote SNL...really? Really? REALLY? :eek:
 
elgrecomac said:
Lucky you. But a VERY LARGE part of the iPhone owning public is more than frustrated with ATT performance. Dropped calls or no signals in major metropolitan areas....like New York City and San Francisco were the fuel for the joke on SNL. And ATT acknowledged they had a problem LAST January and said they were going to fix it ASAP. To quote SNL...really? Really? REALLY? :eek:
Click to expand...

You base this on what? These forums? The sqeaky wheels?
 
Whenever I travel to NY, I always notice that data speeds are very slow, but I don't have much trouble making calls. Maybe it's just me. I've been with AT&T/Cingular since 2002 though, so maybe it's just that I've grown used to them. I still say that if the phone moves to Verizon, they'll begin to see the same types of problems. The iPhone itself is a data hog and gunks up the network.
 
archipellago said:
Its not ATT....
Click to expand...

+1. I am honestly starting to think the antenna in the iPhone is just weak. Next to other AT&T serviced phones in my house, the iPhone has the weakest signal, consistently.

We actually switched from Sprint to AT&T because it got service in our house (due to a special insulation, signal strength is hard to come by), we have no home phone and rely on cell phones. My dad can actually leave his cell phone on the charger next to his bed in the back of the house and we will hear it ring, I can be in the kitchen full of windows and close to them and see "No Service" regularly.

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPhone 3G but it is starting to make me wonder if AT&T is solely to blame or if other things were a priority and Apple just didn't quite get the antenna right.
 
-aggie- said:
You base this on what? These forums? The sqeaky wheels?
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Maybe he based it on... Consumer Reports? Many press articles?

Or perhaps the ATT CEO himself admitting it? After his speech, ATT even gave out a press release noting the LARGE effect:

"AT&T has suffered in New York and San Francisco from better than average iPhone penetration. In these two cities, AT&T has been too successful in selling the iPhone, to the point where the network has been severely strained.

While only two markets, these issues have had a large effect on customer perception due to their high profile nature.”
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So no, it's not just complaints on these forums.
 
I have never got a dropped called or not being able to make a phone call.

The iPhone is working perfectly.
 
-aggie- said:
You base this on what? These forums? The sqeaky wheels?
Click to expand...

Exactly. I have never had a dropped call that wasn't due to traveling into a rural dead zone. I don't live in NYC, but I've never had problems when I visit. Without a doubt my iPhone gets better reception and has better call quality than any previous phone (Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung) I've owned (all of them on Cingular or AT&T).
 
Yea I don't get it either. I have an iPhone in the South Bend, Indiana area and my coverage has been fantastic. I don't recall losing any calls yet either in the six weeks I have had my phone. The data also has been fast and reliable. So it's just those big cities and deserts that must be affected. This tells me it's not the phone just an over populated network.
 
Good for Seth. I'm betting Apple's getting angrier and angrier about this every day. This kind of exposure only pushes them more.

I sure hope they drop this exclusive contract in the U.S as soon as they are legally able to. I'm getting darned close to 50% of my calls being dropped these days.
 
Small White Car said:
Good for Seth. I'm betting Apple's getting angrier and angrier about this every day. This kind of exposure only pushes them more.

I sure hope they drop this exclusive contract in the U.S as soon as they are legally able to. I'm getting darned close to 50% of my calls being dropped these days.
Click to expand...

I'm sure Apple is fuming over this right now. This is a bad kind of label. I don't know when the exclusivity is over next year but there is guaranteed to be a CDMA phone once it does end.
 
elgrecomac said:
Lucky you. But a VERY LARGE part of the iPhone owning public is more than frustrated with ATT performance. Dropped calls or no signals in major metropolitan areas....like New York City and San Francisco were the fuel for the joke on SNL. And ATT acknowledged they had a problem LAST January and said they were going to fix it ASAP. To quote SNL...really? Really? REALLY? :eek:
Click to expand...

I have yet to have an issue, and so have the majority of my friends, in different states.

If I had to guess I would say its about 8-10% of total iphone users that have "sporatic" issues. People that have problems constantly, go buy another phone. Vote with your wallet, not your online forum account.
 
kgeier82 said:
I have yet to have an issue, and so have the majority of my friends, in different states.

If I had to guess I would say its about 8-10% of total iphone users that have "sporatic" issues. People that have problems constantly, go buy another phone. Vote with your wallet, not your online forum account.
Click to expand...

Wow... a brilliant scientific survey...

:rolleyes:

w00master
 
kgeier82 said:
I have yet to have an issue, and so have the majority of my friends, in different states.

If I had to guess I would say its about 8-10% of total iphone users that have "sporatic" issues. People that have problems constantly, go buy another phone. Vote with your wallet, not your online forum account.
Click to expand...

This may be true for the areas you & your friends live but the areas with the most users are in NYC & SF. I have no idea what the percentages are but it is ridiculous for any carrier to have poor coverage in two extremely large markets. It is simply ineptness.

It's also not that simple to vote with your wallet. People like the iPhone, invest money in apps and are tied to two year contracts. The fault will lie with Apple if they don't listen to their customers and provide an alternate solution. The fault should lie with AT&T since they can't get their act together despite having a popular & exclusive phone while using GSM which ishas advantages that CDMA does not have.
 
That gave me a laugh this problem is more of the IPhone users in America , me living in Canada have not droppped a call besides once being the basement of my school and had 1 bar.
 
Leet Apple said:
That gave me a laugh this problem is more of the IPhone users in America , me living in Canada have not droppped a call besides once being the basement of my school and had 1 bar.
Click to expand...

Thank you! It's good to know that I'm not the only one that doesn't have any problems with my iPhone. A lot of people talk about terrible reception with AT&T but I've yet to have a single problem with their network and I travel quite a bit.
 
iPhone Savvy said:
+1. I am honestly starting to think the antenna in the iPhone is just weak. Next to other AT&T serviced phones in my house, the iPhone has the weakest signal, consistently.

We actually switched from Sprint to AT&T because it got service in our house (due to a special insulation, signal strength is hard to come by), we have no home phone and rely on cell phones. My dad can actually leave his cell phone on the charger next to his bed in the back of the house and we will hear it ring, I can be in the kitchen full of windows and close to them and see "No Service" regularly.

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPhone 3G but it is starting to make me wonder if AT&T is solely to blame or if other things were a priority and Apple just didn't quite get the antenna right.
Click to expand...


probably the infeneon radio chip. for the 3G there was an issue in some cities with almost constant failed calls until apple fixed it in 2.2. my inlaws have been on AT&T since June and never complained about the service with their cheapo Samsung A237 phones. could also be a regional thing since no carrier owns all their towers. a lot of the cell towers are owned by third party operators with most of the LTE towers going this way. everyone runs different equipment and it could be the iphone electronics having problems with some towers and not others

my wife had something similar on VZW. out of 3 phones, the middle one had horrible reception. the first and third ones were always 5 bars almost everywhere
 
Is there any proof, or reasonable theory, that another network wouldn't suffer the same struggles as AT&T has in these markets if they had the exclusive rights to the iPhone? That's not an "apologist" mindset, or apple fan boyism, I personally couldn't care less whether Apple or AT&T looks bad in this to tell you the truth.. It appears there's an issue in those areas, so as opposed to looking to blame someone I wonder if any carrier would have produced different results..

I've seen the data numbers and the iPhone increased data usage (particularly in San Fran & NYC) at just a mind boggling number.. There's reason to believe that no carrier would have been able to handle a spike like that smoothly.. It makes sense..

Like I said, I don't care either way but there's no denying that the iPhone changed the cell phone industry- specifically that amount of data thats being used on a regular basis.. I don't know that any carrier prior to the iPhone even imagined this let alone had a network set-up to handle it in place..
 
jemeinc said:
Is there any proof, or reasonable theory, that another network wouldn't suffer the same struggles as AT&T has in these markets if they had the exclusive rights to the iPhone? That's not an "apologist" mindset, or apple fan boyism, I personally couldn't care less whether Apple or AT&T looks bad in this to tell you the truth.. It appears there's an issue in those areas, so as opposed to looking to blame someone I wonder if any carrier would have produced different results..

I've seen the data numbers and the iPhone increased data usage (particularly in San Fran & NYC) at just a mind boggling number.. There's reason to believe that no carrier would have been able to handle a spike like that smoothly.. It makes sense..

Like I said, I don't care either way but there's no denying that the iPhone changed the cell phone industry- specifically that amount of data thats being used on a regular basis.. I don't know that any carrier prior to the iPhone even imagined this let alone had a network set-up to handle it in place..
Click to expand...

sure, the iphone increased the amount of data being used on at&ts network. thats fine. back when it come out, you would expect that the network would be pushed to the limit and performance would be negatively impacted. however, the issue is that at&t has done very little with the boat loads of money they have made to actually improve their network. instead, the money has been pocketed and customers have suffered.
 
I live in San Diego (right in the city). I have had an iPhone since day one. I have had 3 or 4 dropped calls in that whole time.

I had a Sprint phone and had dropped calls every day previous to my iPhone.

ATT is way better than Sprint here (in my experiance).
 
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