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Thanks Swordmaker. So we don’t know how many were AT&T, and how many were the phone. There are basically three general cases:

If they were predominantly the network (AT&T), then the 3GS was doing pretty good, meaning the increase in drops from the iPhone 4 is significant (going from 1 per 100 to 2 per 100, still small but a doubling in the number of dropped connections, NOT an improvement from a magical antenna).

If they were equally the fault of the phone and AT&T, then you get about 15 drops per 100 from the 3GS unit, and about 16 per 100 for the iPhone 4. Both are quite bad numbers, but the iPhone 4 is only 7-8% worse than the 3GS.

If it was predominantly the phone, then the iPhone 4 is about the same, but both are incredibly bad, with about 30 per 100 calls dropped.

I don’t think your stats show the “gotcha” that Rachel thinks it does...;)

Puget, I read a report last year that stated that the iPhone's dropped call rate on AT&T was actually about average among all phones on that network, showing that the fault most likely was inherent in the network's overloaded status than in any inherent weakness in the iphone's abilities to send or receive signals.

"...ChangeWave Research surveying 4,040 smartphone subscribers claims that AT&T's voice network metrics are actually getting worse. From March 2009 to March 2010, the study claims AT&T dropped calls rose from 3.3 percent to 4.5 percent."

Combining these two data, along with the fact that the iPhone 3Gs was reported to have a better connectivity rate and a lower dropped call rate than did the previous iPhone 3 and 2G models, one must assume that the iPhone 3Gs had a dropped call rate somewhat less than 4.5%!

During this same period, Verizon's dropped call rate, according to then ChangeWave survey, was a mere 1.7%.

However, adding to the factors that should have been mentioned in considering why the iPhone 4 would have an increase of "less than one additional dropped call out of every 100 calls," on March 26th, when ChangeWave found the AT&T dropped call rates were highest, the Apple iPad 3G had yet to add 2 million new data consumers onto AT&T's already over loaded network... but by late April iPad 3G owners were swiftly becoming the largest mobile content consumers in the US, surpassing both the iPod touch and Android OS phones Web usage combined in just one month!

Then, on top of that, AT&T added 3 million iPhone 4s, most of them in urban areas, all demanding large amounts of bandwidth that is shared with the voice phone calls! AT&T literally is attempting to handle an influx of 7-8% more demand in just two short months on a network that was demonstrating it wasn't growing bandwidth fast enough to meet its needs as shown in the ChangeWave study. Yet you persist in blaming the iPhone?!?!?!