Apple has “no comment” to reports of iPhone 3G problems
Posted August 17th, 2008 by GenghisPhlip
ABC News has finally caught up with an Apple company spokeswoman and asked her the hard questions. When asked about the hardware flaws and spotty service that have been widely reported by first time iPhone customers and long time users alike. The spokeswoman’s reply? A resounding “No comment.”
The report tells us that the un-named Apple spokeswoman declined to answer ABC News’ questions about widely reported dropped calls, slowness in accessing the Web and lack of access to AT&T’s 3G network voiced by forum members and bloggers around the world.
Recently, customer complaints about the iPhone 3G, which is widely advertised with the slogan “Twice as fast. Half the price,” have reached a new high on blogs such as this one and even on Apple’s Web site.
The report cites 48-year-old Doug Clements, who retired from the computer industry and has been a decades-long Apple fan. Last week, Clements started a thread on Apple’s own discussion board describing his difficulties and frustrations with his new iPhone 3G. He was stunned by the response that his thread got. As of this writing, thousands of people from around the world have replied to “iPhone 3G Reception Problems? You’re Not Alone” describing similar problems that they have had accessing the 3G network.
“I was just shocked that that many people replied,” he said. “I am a true Apple fan, so this is nothing to make Apple look bad. … I think Apple should come out and tell people what’s going on with these phones.”
The report says that the “What’s going on?” sentiment was echoed by readers from California to Germany who related similar stories to ABCNews.com.
Dropped Calls, Cell Phone Service
The ABC News report continues with Ambar Kulkarni. Ambar is a 33-year-old software developer from Alpharetta, Ga. He and his wife both report problems with their matching 3G iPhones with their biggest complaint being dropped calls.
“My calls get dropped a lot, and I’m not even moving one inch, anywhere,” he said. “I move my chair a little bit and my call gets dropped. It’s just weird.”
Kulkarni told ABC News that he did not have the same problems with his first generation iPhone but he did mention that the Web download times with his iPhone 3G did seem to be faster.
“I’m not so sure what it could be,” he said. “I used to be on T-Mobile before the iPhone bandwagon. I thought T-Mobile was bad, but not like this.”
Read the full ABC News report here
The 3G chipmaker, Infineon, has stated the chips in the 3G iPhone are the same as the ones that go into Samsung 3G phones with no problem. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me earlier, but is it possible that Apple engineers under-amplified the 3G reception capabilities in order to maintain a basic, company-targeted level of battery life?
In other words, everyone said the original iPhone would be 2.5G (EDGE) because 3G phones ate up batteries. Now we have a 3G iPhone that is barely living up to it’s battery claims of life, yet suffers from weak 3G reception.
Hmmm…if the engineers cranked up the power from the amplifier that’s on the chip board, the 3G reception would be MUCH better, but at the expense of what battery life the 3G iPhone maintains. And, since Apple corporate didn’t want to mar their beautiful industrial design with the ability to replace the battery, the comprimise was to only allow enough amp power to receive 3G signals to provide, in theory, TWICE THE SPEED.
Guess what? 3G is MANY times faster than EDGE, but the signals need to be strong enough to support this, and the iPHONE chip amplifier has throttled (strangled, really) it’s ability to provide this data.
My guess? A software update…but it won’t really solve the problem. It’ll change the point at which the phone jumps off of 3G and goes to EDGE, but you’ll spend more time on EDGE at the expense of 3G connectivity. Apple needs to allow the little 3G amplifier to give enough signal to the Infineon chip to do it’s job.
Please feel free to cross-post.
That is a very good question David. I had read that the 3G chips were the same between the iPhone and the Samsung devices but I had always assumed that it was somehow AT&T’s fault that the iPhone had these problems while similar problems reported by Samsung users are virtually non-existent.
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