Is the title too harsh? You tell me. I mean, I love my iPhone 3G. I do. It’s an amazing piece of technology that offers almost everything I’ve always wanted in a phone and more. Unfortunately, Apple really screwed up on one important feature of the iPhone : the phone.

Widespread problems
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, take a look at just a few of the mentions in the news and blogosphere about the iPhone 3G’s problems with actual phone calls:

• User anger: iPhone 3G problems emerging
• iPhone 3G Issues: The Plot Thickens
• FAQ: iPhone 3G reception — What’s the problem?

In short, the iPhone has been sporadically doing a horrible job of acting like an actual phone for many people, myself, included. What’s odd is that both my home and my office should have “Best” 3G coverage, according to AT&T’s coverage maps, yet the results are black and white. At home, I have no problems. At the office, I might as well sit on the roof and send smoke signals, because if you call my iPhone, only frustration comes from it.

Let’s point some fingers
I’ve read all sorts of theories in the last week or two. The top three possible causes are:

• AT&T can’t handle the load
• iPhone 3G switching software or the firmware is flawed
• The iPhone 3G hardware is flawed

I have money on the software/firmware, and it seems Apple does, too. After rumors of an impending update, Apple finally came through today with an update. What’s in the update? Your guess is as good as mine, because Apple sums up the whole 248.7 MB update as “Bug fixes”. Whatever the fixes are, I hope they allow me to use this pretty little toy as an actual phone from my office soon. If not, I’ll remain nervous that it’s either the network (which could take ages to update if that option is even pursued) or the hardware, and if it’s the hardware, I can only imagine the new iWait every iPhone 3G user will have to face.

AT&T + Apple = D-

Even if everything works swimmingly after my update installs, which is taking forever, both companies get a D- for failing to remember who made them filthy rich : their customers. As a Verizon wireless convert, I feel a little ashamed of what I left behind in the area of customer service. Even though Verizon was slipping just a bit, they’ve always seemed to have the customer’s needs in mind. In my first month as an Apple/AT&T customer, I’ve called AT&T twice about the horrible reception and was told that there was something wrong with my office building, even after I explained that every other phone on other carriers works like it should. Instead of opening a trouble ticket and looking into the problem, AT&T blamed my building and the “angle” of their tower. Apple’s closed-lipped take-no-blame approach to trying to quietly fix it hasn’t been quality customer service, either. Any believable theory had to come from unrelated experts and the general public.

Does the 2.02 update work?
It’s hard to say, but it’s not looking too impressive yet. Now that I’ve updated I seem to be at two bars, but it has dropped back down to zero bars and it jumped up, once, to 5 bars. Switching manually from 3G to Edge (or the other way around) still seems to take a couple seconds, so I can’t imagine the automatic switching has improved, but I’ve yet to test it. I just has a 12 minute phone call with my sister and even walked around the office without any problems on one bar, so I’m ever so slightly optimistic. Then again, I did drop another call after only a few minutes, so there’s obviously still some room for improvement.

How’s YOUR phone?
Moving from Verizon to AT&T, I’m beginning to feel like I left the better network behind for the shinier phone. If you have a cell phone, what phone do you have, who’s your cellular provider, and how’s the service and customer service?

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