Joe, Can you clarify the details? For instance, when you went back to using Nokia phones, was that still on the AT&T network or Verizon?

Our own family's experience does not include 3G, but we have been on Cingular, which is now AT&T, for a long time. Family plan and golden handcuffs and all that... Based on comparisons with other networks, I find that AT&T's 2G coverage is pretty decent. But I see that (based on unscientific observation, of course) Verizon's coverage is generally equal to, or better than, AT&T's across the Southeast US and East Coast US, and from various small GA airports throughout the Everglades).

Using the Blackberry Curve (2G on AT&T), the dead spot in Pompano Beach, FL, that my old Nokia and Samsung phones could not get any bars now show from one to three bars on the Blackberry. I don't know how much is due to the Blackberry and how much is due to improvements (if any!) in AT&T's coverage; Verizon users have had no problems at all in this spot. In general, Pompano Beach and Ft. Lauderdale have been weaker coverage spots with AT&T, while they have always been very strong for Verizon.

I avoided the iPhone pretty much on cost. It's a lot cooler and "more hip" than the Blackberry, but the Blackberry's old-school QWERTY keyword blends rather well with the habits of this old-school 51-year-old touch typist. The Curve is a very good phone with an SMS text and email capability that this old fart can use--younger folks today aren't limited by the lack of a keyboard, but I am not one of those younger folks! And therefore, I would certainly not put any faith in my opinion on mobile phone choice for the general market!

Sounds like an antenna problem. Those are not easily fixed. Do your calls drop when you have 4 bars? A little metal at the wrong resonant distance for the antenna could kill the signal. Or maybe the antenna is optimized for a different frequency than the 1900mhz att is using on its g3 network.

FWIW, I've not had one dropped call. I'm on O2 in the London area. Call quality has been better than the Sony Ericsson handset I used previously, on the same network in the same area.

I believe that some of the issue is to do with Apple (there were complaints about the first generation of iPhones and call volume, quality, etc) but I don't think the network gets off completely free either.

Unfortunately, mileage varies considerably. It's far too simplistic to make a blanket recommendation, or retraction.

This seems like a very fair review. It is strange that there are some people reporting no dropped calls, which must indicate there are multiple problems, but not everyone is affected in all areas. I doubt even the majority of users are affected, but that's just my opinion based on many user's comments.

It may just take longer to get the 3G telephone problem sorted out by both fine tuning the iPhone firmware and and carrier network. I'm sure it is frustrating and you gave it your best shot. If it's not suitable for your use, then it's understandable you need to use another handset. I would think the telephone part should definitely be the most important thing in a cellphone.

Best of luck with your WinMo handset if it's more suitable.

Joe,
have you installed 2.0.1 software for iPhones?
It seems to have fixed 3G coonectivity issues on my iPhone 3G.

How can a phone that gets a D in telephony, get an A overall? I am sorry, but even if it had an A in everything else (which it does not), factor in a D for telephony and you still end up with a C at best.

The iPhone--as its name implies--is first and foremost a phone. If it fails as a phone, it fails as a device.

john wrote: "How can a phone that gets a D in telephony, get an A overall?"

Hi, John,

The phone didn't get an A for overall, but A for overall value. The device offers a heck of lot for $199, as mentioned in the text. Just not enough where it counts, telephony.

Joe

IB wrote: "have you installed 2.0.1 software for iPhones?"

Of course! I also looked for forum posts complaining about reception problems that were made after the update released.

If this were just my problem--and it's perplexing on three phones--I wouldn't have reviewed iPhone 3G as I did. But the calling problems are clearly widespread across different 3G networks and geographies.

Joe

Have you considered operating the phone as an Edge phone and then select 3G when you need to surf the web. Not saying that Apple/ATT don't have a problem, but if the calls are critical shut off 3G. Your call quality will be fine and you get better battery life to boot. Even for an edge phone with GPS and App store the Iphone at $199 is a decent value.

Interesting observation. I too live in the San Diego area, but other than one dropped call right after I got the phone (and before any of the software updates were out...though it did worry me at first), I have not had a problem with my iPhone 3G dropping calls. Just the other night I held a conversation while driving from the UTC/La Jolla area up to Carlsbad without any issues. I've had good call quality with the two 3G iPhones I've had (returned the first one last week because of a stuck pixel). I get between 2 to 5 bars of 3G coverage at my house in Carlsbad and very good voice quality.

For comparison, I had constant dropped calls with my previous Verizon phones (RAZR & V710) both in Carlsbad and Carmel Valley.

FYI, in my experience AT&T has better coverage in the SD area and Verizon does better in the bay area.

I've had an iPhone 3G since July 15, and I haven't had a single dropped call. I live in Manhattan, reside uptown and work downtown.

I must say, though, I typically use EDGE for making calls, and turn on 3G only for accessing the web or for swifter access to email. (At home I connect to my wireless network. Of coure, at home I use my desktop Mac for any non-telephone functions I would use in the iPhone outside the house.)

I'm not enough of a techie to have even been aware that 3G was supposed to offer some sort of advantage for telephony; I thought the only reason for 3G was purely for faster web browsing on the phone. It was only hearing the complaints of aggrieved iPhone users that I became aware one would even use 3G for making calls.

I see no reason to change my use habits, and so far--here's hoping I haven't jinxed myself--there's nothing "broke" to fix!

I second andy merrett. I live in Singapore and have bot faced a single call drop. Battery life is poor but better than touch diamond which is way costlier.

At some times on some days I've had consistent call drops, right after I answer the phone. Number of bars changes downwards, call drops, etc.
Rebooting phone seems to help. Generally, it's not too awful of a phone, I may try turning off 3G if problems persist. Today, I've had no problems. I've had 4 or 5 days since July 11th where I had repeated dropped calls.

I've been an ATT customer for two years with a Blackberry Pearl. There has always been a spot on my drive to the office where the BB Pearl would drop the call...always. I got an iPhone 3G three weeks ago and I've not had a dropped call in that area or anywhere else for that matter. Perhaps in Memphis, TN ATT is more robust?? I'm very happy with my iPhone.

2.0.2 is out - what did that fix? I still have the dropped call issue. AT&T says "reboot your phone daily".

Here in the Seattle area, I too also have the 3 bars in Edge, 1 bar on 3G. *sigh* I've learned to toggle as needed for voice/data, but I shouldn't need to do that.

Something to note: I wonder about build consistency amongst iPhones. I got an original 3G the day it came out and it seemed flaky at best. Just last week, I got a warranty replacement and it kicks the pants off my old 3G. What's the deal with that?

Oh - and how many people occasionally get SUPER SLOW texting?

//end soapbox

I believe the problem to be more with the network than the phones. I left Cingular for Verizon due to
the analog network being taken down when Cingular went digital. Verizon had great connectivity, though there were dead spots in California that the network had no interest in serving.

Recently came back to the new Cingular, AT&T. On a Samsung A747,signal strength is one or two bars and calls are frequently dropped, both at home and in other highly urban areas where there should be no question of coverage. Tried calling AT&T tech support. After five minutes of poor reception with Customer support, was transferred to tech support. After over ten minutes in wait que, the call was dropped. Will try again
tomorrow. It is a sad state of affairs when Apple chose to partner with this poor of a network.

Hey Wayne Smith... good to know that spam hasn't missed legit discussion forums.

I live in Northern Virginia, I drive 15 miles home from work, my new 3G is dropping the call 3 times in 15 miles, ALWAYS! I love the iphone computer features, but it looks like all the phones are defective!

I live in British Columbia in Canada and have an Iphone 3G which I got on July 11 when they were released. I have had no dropped calls and overall the phone has been awesome. Battery life is not great, but as I understand that is an issue with most 3G phones. I am hoping the new firmware 2.1 will help the battery life, as Steve promises. If Apple can add Copy and Paste and a real Tether solution this would be the perfect device in my opinion.

I have had my Iphone 3G since launch date. I have not had one dropped call either. And I have no LAN line. The call quality on my Iphone 3g is better than any other phone I have had in the past as well.

I have also experienced lousy phone performance on my iphone 3G, in my home, where I used the original, is pretty useless right now. All software updates have been installed, but I did not know you could use it without the 3G. I will try that. I live in Boca Raton, FL

My wife has had the 3G iPhone for a little over a month. Loves the touch screen, etc...

But one day last week it just stopped taking or making phone calls. In the middle of an afternoon conference call it just stopped working. We have come to find out that AT&T decided they would make a little unannounced network upgrade that required the phone to be "hard rebooted". It didn't effect my crappy Samsung BlackJack - which up to this point I think is the worst phone ever made - nope just shut down the iPhone.

Windows has the three finger salute, the iPhone has the two finger salute.

The 3G is a lousy phone or AT&T is a lousy network! My 3G drops calls daily and can't find a 3G connection 95% of the time. (suburban Phila.) I would have stuck with Verizon if I did not hate them so much.

I'm in SoCal, South Bay area, and I get horrid reception and a lot of dropped calls.

With my Verizon Blackberry, on PCH from LAX to Torrance roughly, I only would get maybe 1 dropped call right around Riviera Village.

With the 3G, I get drops about 4-5 places.

Sometimes, the signal strength will go to no bars, dropped call, then pick right back up and work fine for the next hour. To me it looks like firmware/programming/hardware, not the network.

Lately I've been getting a "No SIM card installed" message. Rebooting always brings the phone back.

Since the latest update I haven't had the SIM card message.

For business, the Blackberry still beats the iPhone hands down. You can't dial the iPhone while driving, as you have to LOOK and be careful what you touch. Any of the blackberry's have touch speed dial, which is invaluable.

And I know, a car adapter could offer voice dialing, but what about rental cars? Again, for business use.

I'm still limping with my iPhone but I'm advising our company PM's to seriously reconsider a purchase.

== John ==

I am based in North America and have been using a mobile phone now for about 20 years and on multiple carriers, I have also travelled extensively offshore and the 1st thing I would point out is that is doesn't seem to matter where I have been, my North American CDMA telephony service (Telus and verizon) has been routinely better than the GSM service I receive pretty much anywhere (including North America).

I have had some opportunity to use the iPhone and it is a slick device to use, but the reality is that slick is great until you actually NEED the device and then regardless of anything else the basic core fucntionality must be there and in this case that means a combination of both the phone itself (the author was right, it is a phone 1st) and the network.

Cheers

I don't have an iPhone yet. Still look to getting one though. I live in Houston and work with quite a few people that have them. No one I know has had any problems with it yet. I had switched to AT&T a while ago from T-Mobile. I can tell you that the AT&T coverage is great in Houston. In my home with it's metal roof I get a great signal while friends that have other service providers have to step outside to use their phones. I guess maybe it comes down to where you live and what towers you can access.

I look forward to giving up my Tilt and the boggy WM6 OS.

I've had my iPhone 3G for about two months and have had only two dropped calls. I have, however, dropped the phone once. *accidentally* Otherwise, the phone's awesome!

An update to my earlier posting: The problem may be less the phone than the 3G network. Just spent
45 minutes with AT&T customer and tech support who could not resolve why the Edge network showed a 4-5 bar signal strength, but in 3G dropped to 1 to 2 bars. It appears the Edge defaults to 3G whenever any 3G signal, not matter how weak, is detected. My Samsung A747 apparently cannot be set to stay on the Edge network. 3G coverage is almost non-existent where I live in Simi Valley, Ca., and shows as "very weak" per AT&T tech support. You need minimum 3 bars to sustain a call - 1-2 will likely drop the call. AT&T could not tell if or when coverage would be improved and indicated there are weak areas. Sales staff at AT&T represented 3G as having great coverage throught this area. Verizon is 5 bars from the same location. Solution simple, but not for iPhone users. Good luck!

I just got back from Chicago. In Omaha we do not have 3G yet, so I was looking forward to giving it a try. Data tested out faster, but phone calls were a disaster. 2 dropped calls, 2 failed calls, 2 incoming calls went direct to VM. Aaarghh. I had to switch back to Edge which worked fine.

I held out for 3G on iPhone before switching, now it appears I've stepped bacward in time to a 2G phone.

I have my fingers crossed for patch 2.1 and Omaha's 3G implementation, which is just around the corner.

Per a post yesterday -- Jobs promissed that 2.1 due out this Friday will solve the dropped call issues. I have yet to upgrade my iPhone to a 3G and am watching this whole thing w/ interest and to be honest a little relief that I waited.
My biggest gripe is that we still will not get Cut&Paste, voice dialing, and multiple time based email check intervalls -- stuff my old SOny P900 had years ago.

Think the dropped call problem may be a network matter not just moving to AT&T. I didn't know what a dropped call was until I moved from T-Mobile to AT&T.

How could you give the iPhone an "A" for Sync? It does sync contacts, calendar events, and bookmarks (which is great), but it does NOT sync notes or tasks (to-do items). And worse, almost no applications sync!!! So if the iPhone crashes (which at least prior to 2.1 happened a lot), you lose your data. As a PDA, this phone is a near complete failure. As a computer with the intent of running apps and saving data, it is a complete failure. It doesn't even sync your photos.

Anyone considering the iPhone based on apps and the App Store should take heed. Too many of the apps are horrendously simplistic, and without the ability to sync and save your data, you have to treat this device as either a toy or a small web browser.

I can tell you that AT&T coverage in Austin, Texas is spotty at best, and terrible out where I live (near 620 and 2222, near Lake Travis but in city limits). Sprint and T-mobile seem to have coverage problems, but Verizon's coverage is excellent. I wish there was an iPhone available from Verizon, but since there isn't, I'm going to check out Android/Google as well as LG's latest.

I'm an executive in a high-tech firm in Silicon Valley. I switched from Blackberry to iPhone and now getting frustrated within a week. I've been AT&T customer for over 3years though.

My email does not work - it could be either due to 35000+ items in my mailbox or something else, but it always worked on my Blackberry prior to the switch. iPhone support and my Exchange admin were unable to fix it. My admin thinks it could be due to some corruption in Outlook data.

Battery life is miserable. Even if I don't use the phone much, it gets over by 2-3pm despite of all night charge. I see my colleagues keep their iPhones often connected to their laptops for charging. I rarely get time to sit on my desk, so it's not an option for me.

Also, I've been dropping calls often at several places. Fortunately, my office and home work fine. In fact calls are dropped consistently at 101/880 intersection near San Jose airport. I can't believe such a center spot can be a bad spot for 3G.

iPhone cannot detect phone numbers in email and calendar messages. BlackBerry allows you to press the phone number right from within any email or calendar messages. It's very hard to read, switch to phone, and type numbers while driving.

Also, I'm unable to copy-paste text from one application to another. I can't believe how they did not think about it.

I don't care about other cool features if I can't do my basic office work. I'm returning this iPhone over this weekend and will switch back to Blackberry (if I time it well, I may be able to get Blackberry Bold). I hope iPhone 3.0 comes out with better support for office users.

-PK

Although I don't own an iPhone, I do own an iPod Touch, with version 2.x software. I agree with Paul Miller's assessment, the reply above mine. I love my iPod, but I do hate the buggy process of App updating, and the lack of syncing with important items besides contacts. I could not imagine replacing my Treo with an iPhone, period.

My wife has owned the iPhone 2G since the first release day and I returned my 2G 2 days later. I've been using the HTC P3600 for over a year, and after trying the iPhone, decided it was a GREAT toy, but not a business phone. The screen is very nice to look at, it does have the BEST browser on a phone, bar none, and I've tried them ALL. Which brings me to my next point.

Windows Mobile allows me to try them ALL. I'm not stuck running the Apps Steve wants me to run. I've got literally tens of thousands of programs to choose from, and many of them are free.

Also, without the basic features phones have had for years, (ie: cut/copy/paste, MMS, Voice Dial, Speed Dial, Video, a GOOD calendar, a home screen you can REALLY modify, and many others), I just cannot justify the change.

And for the record, my wifes phone started having call problems about 2-3 days after the release of the 3G phone. I would say that's due to network issues. From the beginning, she's had to Hard Reset it every couple days to restore the signal strength. Then when the 2.02 update hit (to "FIX" problems), she started having texting issues where the keyboard is now REALLY laggy and the signal is now weaker at home. I've done the Full Restore twice, and no change. Can't wait for the next firmware release to get more "FIXES"...

PS: My son-inlaw also needs to disable 3G to make calls from his home.

I trialed an iPhone 3G for three weeks before returning it. For me, the critical issues were battery life (3-4 hours per charge) and terrible sync problems with MS Exchange. The battery life issues ostensibly were due to poor availability of the 3G network in the area where I live and work (metro Boston). I was advised to turn off the 3G network feature to save on power. This is a ludicrous suggestion! While there is much to like about the iPhone, it is still at its heart and soul a consumer device and I am a business person. For business use, it is nowhere close to being ready for prime time.

Okay, so I got the new patch for my iPhone 3G on Friday, and I'm still having dropped calls out the wazoo, even when I turn off 3G. Totally unacceptable, DO NOT GET ONE OF THESE PHONES!!!

Okay...so I went to NH for Nascar yesterday and could not connect to any website and this was with the 2.1 software update. :(

After having the 2.1 update, I have not dropped a call yet, except for my 1 year old son hanging up on me!

More stable now, but to make such a bold statement based on such a small sample size?!? Did you take the phones back to AT&T or Apple? If not, why? I had a slight battery issue, they replaced it immediately. One thing that I suggest is that before you throw the baby out with the bathwater, that you at least make an attempt to ensure that the units and the software are ok. Also, make sure that you qualify your statements to say, "dont buy it if you live in my house where reception sux."

Upgrading to 2.1 has fixed all of my problems. No more dropped calls and applications no longer suddenly quitting. Safari still occasionally crashes once or twice a day when browsing the web, but overall 2.1 is a major improvement to my iPhone. I think 2.1 should really be version 1.0 and everything prior was beta.

Never be the first to buy the first, or second, of anything. In another year my Sprint account will be expired and then I will get the iPhone. Should be Gen 3 by then, at least.

I live in the San Diego area as well. I've had nothing but problems with the call connectivity of the iphone using 3G and switching it off. The update has not helped. If I could figure out a way to get out of my AT&T contract, I would.

Last week, I purchased two iPhone 3Gs for myself and my wife.

I'm a long-time Apple "branded" fanatic, going all the way back to my first Apple LISA ($9,000) purchased in 1983.

DO NOT BUY AN iPHONE UNTIL YOU VIEW MY VIDEO ON YouTube about my issues. My wifes phone will run 5 hours (in stand-by) before the battery fails... My iPhone is so bad, just watch the video.

Get on YouTube and type in my moniker, RoyFromTexas and look for the video, AT&T phone, NO BARS IN TEXAS.

I've had my iPhone 3G running version 2.1 and I've LOVED it. Absolutely no problems. I'm in Salt Lake City and I've never dropped a call. my older Samsung had slight call dropping issues, but not my iPhone! GO APPLE! (just please give us flash faster!!)

i have a old model 8GB iphone. i am facing call dropping problems in india. i found a call drop in every minute some time and some time there is no call drop in 20 minutes of conversation. it is difficult to prove to iphone peoples as it is a random problem. problem became more serious as i upgraded to 2.1 from 1.1.4. it is found very immersing and uncomfortable when ur call drops very minute on business call. when i tried the same sim on other Nokia phones i found no call drop where i encounter 10-20 call drops daily. For me this problem is totally due to iphone and APPLE as APPLE failed to fix this issue in there latest up date. i switched to nokia i am quite happy as there are no call drops any more. and awaiting for APPLE to do something to improve there product "iphone"