Staying with AT&T After Switching From the iPhone To Nexus S

Since I already commented on a couple blog posts at TechCrunch and All Things Digital on the new Verizon iPhone, I thought I should provide more detail here.

Two years ago, after switching from my Blackberry on Verizon Wireless to an iPhone on AT&T Wireless, I was dying to switch back to Verizon. It was a few months in and like many others I suffered from an infinite amount of dropped calls and missed calls that never showed up on my caller ID. Numerous stories where I would have full bars and my friend would have full bars on our iPhones and we still were dropped from our call. I bought a phone not a mobile device.

I would curse AT&T and assumed many things about their ineptitude. I also questioned how they built out their infrastructure. About six months ago, one of our daughters broke my iPhone, so I decided to change to a Galaxy S. I took out my iPhone SIM card and place it into the Galaxy S, so I continued using AT&T. A couple weeks later, she broke my Galaxy S so I switched to a Nexus One. This is where I realized that the dropped calls weren't solely AT&T fault. The dropped and missed calls came less frequently on my Nexus One.

Recently I upgraded to the Nexus S and one month in I haven't suffered from a dropped call so far. I was planning to switch from AT&T to Verizon within a couple weeks since my contract runs out, but now I decided to stay with AT&T. I don't have hard evidence, but logic would lead me to believe that it wasn't all AT&T's fault but something with the iPhone's design.

Since AT&T now sells Android models, they should really do a study on the number of dropped calls between the iPhone and a few of the Android models. They might be able to redeem much of their good will that they lost over the past few years with iPhone users.


Disclosure: My wife works on the Android team at Google. I have been a Apple user and fan since the days of the Apple IIe, many Aldus products and an early gamer on Apple computers. I love my MacBook Pro, iPod Touch and Time Capsule.

iPhone 4 Reception Problems... Maybe It Isn't All AT&T's Fault?

Numerous reports are coming in about a couple major problems with the new iPhone 4:

"Apple iPhone 4 problems crop up: screen discoloration, reception issues" VentureBeat

"IPhone 4 users reporting reception problems when holding phone" SF Chronicle

"Some iPhone 4 owners report discolored screens" CNET

After reading these various stories, I think there is some validity to my friend's analysis that the dropped calls and bad reception isn't all AT&T's fault. He believes that it's also the issues with the iPhone itself. Whose ever fault it is, I'm so tired of having full bars on my iPhone and still getting poor reception that I'm switching back to Verizon when my contract expires.