Poor iPhone Call Quality

Since I got an iPhone, one of my biggest complaints has been coverage and call quality. Like most, I get low bars and bad sounding calls a lot. What really got me ticked at my phone and AT&T was that over the past few weeks I have been getting bad call quality even when I have 5 bars! People that I am talking to on the phone can hear me fine but all I hear is garbled speech and drops.

I've heard about half of the people with iPhones that I work with complaining of the same issues so I'm going to document the steps I have taken and what has worked and not worked.

1. Do a hard reset. If you don't know what this is, you probably haven't done it. Hold down both the "Home" and "Power" buttons at the same time until your phone goes black. (Detailed Directions)
   
2. If that doesn't work (It didn't for me), then do a backup and restore in iTunes for your phone. This worked for a day or two but the bad quality came back. (Detailed Directions)
   
3. Go to a corporate AT&T wireless store and get them to replace your SIM card. This shouldn't cost anything. After doing this my call quality has been MUCH better. It could very well be a coincidence, so I'm going to have to give it a few days. You can find a corporate store by going here and selecting your ZIP and "iPhone" from the box.
   Update: Still having the same problem but a little less often.
   
4. If you have tried all of the above, go to the Apple store and get your phone replaced. If you go to the Apple store first, you will waste your time because they will tell you to do steps 1-3 above.

I'll let you all know if Step #3 works for me or if I'm getting a new iPhone. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Getting the SIM replaced sort of helped. I haven't gone in yet to get my phone replaced and I'm trying one last thing. Someone tipped me off to the fact that if you turn 3G off, your calls will magically be clear again. This has worked but obviously points to some issue with AT&T's network or a design flaw in the iPhone.

ActiveSync

The ActiveSync buzz has been going on here at The Chapel since Apple announce that the iPhone would now support it. We in the IT department wanted to try and get our systems setup before the launch but just couldn't do it with everything going on. The time has come though and we have now added another level of connectedness to our Windows Mobile and Fruit Phone friends. We wanted to wait until we made the switch to Exchange 2007, but just couldn't wait that long.

Good news is that we have it setup and working now! To be honest it wasn't has hard as i thought it would be thanks to a great how to I found at http://www.petri.co.il/. The fix was pretty easy and we can now get iPhone users setup pretty quickly. One advantage the iPhone as well as Blackberry has over Windows Mobile is the uniform platform. What I mean is that I have tried to setup a few Windows Mobile devices and depending on what brand and model it is, the setup screens are different.

So, another system to support but much happier iPhone users.

Am I the only one who hates iTunes?

Ok, I tried iTunes several years ago when the first iPods and iPod Nano's came out. Didn't like it. Now, for my birthday my wife got me a new 4 gb iPod Nano so I have to use it now. So I downloaded the latest (7.x) and gave it a shot. I thought they would have improved upon their offering in the last few years but it doesn't appear that they have. I don't claim to know iTunes in and out but here are my thoughts:

(After talking to my brother who works for the dark side at a Mac store and is a "Mac Genius" I have updated my list)

Dislikes:

• No "Mini" or small player mode like Windows Media Player or every other music player. (I think Win Media does a great job in putting it in the tool bar) There is a "Mini" by clicking on the "Restore Down" button but it doesn't look that good.
• Can't add play list by right clicking. You have to go to the menu or remember the hot keys. I guess that goes back to Mac's stupid single button mouse. There is one more way by clicking the "+" at the bottom of the screen.
• Most players let you view your music by Genre, Artist, and Album as iTunes does, they just do it much better. You can customize what you want to see a little more but I still don't like how it is laid out.
• No "Visualizer" as you would expect. I think they mean "visualizer" in the terms of video's. The Visualizations aren't big things, they are just cool if you are playing music for some sort of event and you want something showing on the projection screen.
• Isn't working with my iPod! It won't show up any more! It seams that whatever method they use for communication to the device is finicky.
• Doesn't sync with other portable devices without 3rd party add in.

Likes:

• Is supposed to work with the iPod.
• Has iTunes store.
• Can play video.
• The biggest like for me would have to be Nike + for the iPod. http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/

The likes are quite short but I could go on with the dislikes. I am just surprised that Apple is so popular with their iPod line and iTunes but their product in most cases is lacking. Feel free to disagree.