1. In the struggle for battery life, they cut down the phone’s transmitter power by going digital.
2. In the struggle for channel capacity, they went digital.
Consequences:
1. Fadeouts and dropped calls became, if anything, more common.
2. Background noise at the talking end and fadeouts in the channel rendered the received speech unintelligible.
Of course, the marketing departments performed heroic feats in their panegyrics to the “New! Digital!! ModernUpToTheMinuteTechnology!!!” system.
I can say, there is NO WAY I’m returning my iPhone 4! I love it.