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Am I the only person having issue with horrible reception on AT&T in the Dallas area? I think not, since pretty much everyone I know who uses an iPhone is having issues.

Let me preface this by saying that despite it’s obvious shortcomings, I still love my iPhone. However I dislike the reception & rates. Data is fast, stable and works well almost all of the time. Voice is bad to the extent that I can’t (this is not an exaggeration) get through a call without some garbled crud on the other end. I’ve obediently followed the upgrade path as mandated by Apple. Bought the iPhone 1st gen, thought it sucked as a communications device but great for everything else. Held out on the 3G since I suspected something else would be coming soon so I jumped on the 3GS 32GB version.  3G was a huge upgrade in data but the voice started having issues right away. Went to the Apple store and they gave me a new one (kudos to Apple) which quickly started having the same issue. Went back a week later and they told me to reset the network settings and even suggested I turn off 3G and use the “older more stable Edge network”. That didn’t go over too well so they suggested I wait for AT&T to upgrade the system since that would “resolve any issues”. Reluctantly I agree but should have taken that nerd to the mat and made him give up a new iPhone on the spot.

Fast forward (2) weeks.

Tuesday – September 29th, 2009
I’ve struggled with the reception non stop for the past 2 weeks and someone told me today that they had reception issues, get a new iPhone from the Apple store last week and it works perfectly. So my guess is that Apple is instructing their staff to keep the masses at bay with the “AT&T upgrade” spiel in hopes that AT&T will actually do an upgrade one day. My other guess is that the hardware has an issue on certain lots of iPhones (like mine) and getting a new one that was manufactured in a different Chinese factory by a different child, just might do the trick. So I plan to bum rush a mac guy tomorrow morning and not leave his side until I get a new iPhone.

I’ll update this post in a couple days after I’ve had a chance to use the new iPhone for a while.

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Wednesday – September 30th, 2009
Quick update from the Apple store..

Currently waiting to speak with someone for almost an hour now at the Apple store and jumped on a demo MacBook Pro since they have Wifi here . Will update later to see what happens, but I’m sick of waiting.

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Friday – October 2nd, 2009
Two days later I have been using my new iPhone with much lack of success. This tells me that that iPhone itself is probably OK but as I suspected, AT&T still sucks. So there you have it, AT&T sucks and my iPhone is jonesing for a new provider. Somewhere I read that Verizon is getting it soon so instead of hearing nothing on the other end you can hear, “can you hear me now” over and over.

My three suggestions
1. AT&T should stop spending money on crap like this and upgrade their network
2. Apple should offer the iPhone through multiple providers and create some much needed competition
3. If you have a real job, get a Blackberry. If you’re an unemployed person with money, get the iPhone

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Update – Sunday October 4th, 2009
After having spent the weekend in College Station (about 200mi S/W of Dallas) I can confirm without a doubt that the problem is not the iPhone, it’s AT&T. While driving back to Dallas from College Station I had a 2.5 hour call with no drops, no static, no in and out audio and it was crystal clear the entire time. That is until I got within about 20 miles of downtown Dallas and then the reception was very poor and the calls dropped twice until I got home. Unlike North Dallas, South Dallas is very undeveloped and one of the first signs you see of urban sprawl is the downtown skyline. So you are in the country and suddenly you see downtown. Point is I would assume that as my call jumped from tower to tower in the country, they were likely not oversubscribed to death. However the towers that carried my call into Dallas were probably oversubscribed more than AOL in it’s heyday.

So it’s official, AT&T sucks and the iPhone does not.

Now back to the iPhone issue:
My wife has a 3G and I have a 3GS, she needed the 3.0 update so she could copy, paste and a few other cool new features. She uses a Sony Vaio and I use a MacBook Pro so everything works differently when you have an issue. So I connected her iPhone to her notebook, started up iTunes, clicked the update button and watched in awe as it took a digital dump. Not only did it render the phone useless, iTunes could not see the phone at all. I tried reinstalling iTunes, rebooting the PC, restarting the iPhone, reinstalling the USB drivers, tried two different USB cables, used msconfig to stop all services except for ituneshelper and qtask and nothing. Having tried everything I knew and after scouring Google for answers I quickly realized it was going to be a long day and that I was NOT the only person suffering from the dreaded 1604 error.

This left me with no alternative but to call AT&T because I assumed that Apple would be unreachable only (2) days after the release of a new iPhone and iPhone O/S.

611 is the number you call from your cel to get AT&T support so I called and started navigating the prompts until I heard “for Apple iPhone support press 1″. Then I took a deep breath, settled back into my chair, took a sip of water, closed my eyes and reluctantly pressed 1. To my amazement within a single ring I was greeted by a friendly voice who appeared to speak English as a first language. He was friendly, calm, helpful and determined to resolve my issue quickly. We ended up doing basic troubleshooting and he quickly understood that I had a clue and had done everything correctly up until this point. He eventually confessed that Apple had no resolution for this error but said there was a work around and all I had to do was restore the iPhone on a different computer  and my Mac happened to be in my lap at the time. He stayed on the line as I did a quick restore and then plugged the phone back into the PC so it could sync again. It worked flawlessly and I was grateful but sure wish that tip had been in the FAQ on apple.com. It does say “try a different computer” but it doesn’t say “restore to factory settings on another computer and then sync to your normal computer” which would have been clear enough for me to figure it out without calling in. Either way my blood was starting to boil as I navigated the voice mail prompts but it quickly cooled off when this Apple rep (yes he worked for Apple, not AT&T) took charge and led me to the promise land.

Way to go Apple for excellent customer service and thanks again for not forcing me to speak with four different people who all call me Mr. John.