Thanks for the data!
I hear you on Verizon, too... I use them, and I cannot remember the last time I had a dropped call - we’re talking months here, and I’m not a light user (2100 minutes a month, and usually push that limit).
I know every year at CES and NAMM and AES the guys with iPhones are always complaining about dead connections, dropped calls, no data bandwidth, and I’m just humming along with my Verizon HTC phone. Even open up my built-in WIFI router so they can at least use Skype to make VOIP calls out...;)
Can’t get a Verizon signal out here on the rugged Oregon Central Coast.
But the buy minutes wal mart cell phone work wonderfully.
I just dropped my Verizon contract and the blackberry.
No signal at our place and being homebound for the most part it is a useless tool.
Went back to using calling card and landline.
But honestly I don’t need a cell phone/blackberry.
And the places we drive around to here on the coast are not cell phone signal friendly.
Radio signal is nill too out here.
When we do go to the Willamette Valley listening to Rush/Lars ect...is a real treat.
And those long late nite drives back to the coast Coast to Coast is fun entertainment.
Listen, AT&T has been dropping calls FOREVER. This ain’t a new problem.
10+ years ago, we had AT&T as our cellular carrier before Alltel had a cell site in central Nevada. AT&T purported to have US-50 and I-80 ‘covered’ with their cell sites throughout Nevada.
After that 2 year period when we had AT&T, we will never have AT&T as a carrier again. To say that AT&T “sucked” would require re-defining suck as “pulling large hoofed mammals through a bent drinking straw with negative air pressure.”
The #1 reason why I won’t get an iPhone is that it would require going back to doing business with AT&T. Been there, done that, won’t do it again. They’re a horrible carrier, and their response to customer issues is even worse.
We had dropped calls a-zillion in those days - with a Nokia analog/TDMA phone that had an extendable antenna. After the third call-back per month where we reported a dropped call for credit (which our contract specifically stated we could do), they’d fight us tooth and nail before giving us credit for a dropped call. After two years of this BS, when they upped the expense and changed the plan, we jumped on another carrier ASAP.
As far as the iPhone 4 goes - I think their antenna design is bleeding edge. Every now and then, mistakes are going to happen, but Apple clearly “has a better idea” on the type of antenna system they’re using. Remember, there’s much more than just the voice call going on for the antenna today: there’s the GPS reception, there’s WiFi, there’s Bluetooth.... they all have to have an antenna.
The old “pull out the whip” cell phones had it *easy* compared to today’s phones. Today, the regulatory environment is limiting any gain you could design into the antenna, they’re limiting field strength measured X so many centimeters from the handset (ie, where your brain would be), consumers no longer want pull-out whips anyway, yadda, yadda. A very challenging environment for any antenna designer. And the GSM frequency band is getting to the point in the spectrum where wet tissues (like flesh and brains) start absorbing quite a bit of the signal. From a radiation standpoint, we (the users and the phone designers) were better off on the old cellular frequencies in the 850 to 920Mhz range. Today’s freq’s up in the 1.8GHz range are getting closer to the “water hole” where wet tissue will absorb radiation quite nicely.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I think now that AT&T is breathing down our necks here in Wyoming (AT&T got the rural areas of the Alltel network in MT, WY and CO), I think Verizon and a Droid are in our future.