iPhone reception issues – Who’s to blame, Apple or AT&T?

Moody Thought: “If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again.”

- Aaliyah

Wasup People,

A lot of folks are out talking about potential reception issues for iPhone4’s when you hold them a specific way (resulting in connecting stainless steel antennas).  I find it rather interesting that many of these folks are secretly Apple haters. I think Steve Jobs and co. are aware of that thus explaining his response to customers, “It’s a non-issue.” Although I didn’t like Steve Jobs response and understand his rationale, I do think people are missing a bigger picture here. The truth of the matter is this; the iPhone4 is getting the best reception of any iPhone on AT&T’s network. Which leads me to this question, is AT&T’s network solely or largely to blame for poor reception on iPhones?

Now, if I haven’t made this clear in the past, I am not nor do I ever plan to be on AT&T’s network. Nothing against AT&T, I’m simply a faithful Verizon customer. With that being said, I do find it interesting that iPhone has an exclusive contract with AT&T considering Verizon’s network reputation. When we look at the reason for this it’s not because Verizon or any other cellular provider didn’t have the opportunity to have the iPhone on their network four years ago. After further investigation, we find that all the major carriers had an opportunity but choose not to carry it. Now, this is purely speculation on my part but I think the reason why Verizon and others turned down Apple was because the iPhone when it first came out wasn’t much of a phone. It was a gloried iPod that could make calls. Let’s be honest, iPhones have lacked many features that other phones have had for a while (MMS – wasn’t available till 3^rd generation, Multitasking – wasn’t available till 4^th generation – just a to name a few.)

So, with that being said, it brings me back to my question: “Is AT&T’s network solely or largely to blame for poor reception on iPhones?” I do think that AT&T is partly to blame but Apple is also largely responsible as well. We forget that Apple just got into the cellular industry recently. Apple has a history of making solid hardware and software for computers and media devices but not cell phones. I’m one to believe that Apple has been learning the hard way how to properly make cell phones while it get’s all the praise for the good and AT&T get’s all the blame for reception issues. Poor AT&T but then again, they’ve made a killing these past few years. So, I don’t really feel sorry for them. Anyhow, it makes me wonder though. Now, that Apple may have addressed some of their internal issues on proper cellular function will it finally migrate to other providers? I wouldn’t be surprised to see an iPhone5 or whatever name appear on Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile within the next year.

These are just a few of my thoughts on this topic. What do you think?

TruEngineer