jared79

August 25, 2008 at 11:55pm

You know, I have been using 3G phones for a couple of years now, and the reception has been no worse with my iPhone 3G than with any other 3G phone I have had. The only difference for me is that I switched to a different network that had a better plan, just not better coverage. So I was expecting it not to be as good. Here is my theory, 3G is reletivly new to the US. CDMA is large there and has better coverage than 3G. So to me it just seems that everyone is used to CDMA. The reason Apple went with GSM(3G) is it is used in many many many more contries than CDMA. We in Australia use to have CDMA, but they just switched it off this year and we have moved on to HSDPA (850MHZ, which by the way is what CDMA was, but they are not compatible), of which the iPhone does support. However, I am unsure if that is what AT&T is using or if they are using normal 3G (2100MHZ). In Australia the only network using HSPDA is Telstra, who have terrible data plans. So most of us are with Optus who have great data plans, but they are using the standard 3G network (2100MHZ) so signal not as good as Telstra. So what you want is HSDPA (Fastest) then 3G (Fast) then EDGE (Not as fast, but better than GPRS which is slow) Hope that makes it clear.

In my opinion, the iPhone has the same reception as any other 3G phone I have used. It all depends on which network you are with.