Monday, October 08, 2012

My iPhone 5 experience so far (problems connecting with LTE vs. 3G)

I've had my iPhone 5 for several days and I really like how it's lighter, thinner, and faster compared to my iPhone 4S. The elongated screen doesn't do much for me - I would have preferred to see a wider + longer screen. I had gone back to using my Android smartphone for a few weeks and I was reminded of how much I appreciate the larger 4.5" screen that is wider and taller on my Android smartphone compared to my iPhone. My eyes aren't bad - I just prefer not to zoom to read tiny font.

I have the Verizon iPhone 5 and I've been experiencing some strange connection problems when the phone is in 3G mode vs. 4G/LTE mode.

When I "enable LTE" I also find that the reception bars on the top of the screen may drop from 4 bars down to 2 bars. This same issue has been reported online among other iPhone 5 users. I also find that sometimes my iPhone 5 says that it's not connected to the network when it's on LTE mode. But then I'll turn LTE off and it has no problems connecting (and staying connected) on 3G. If I toggle around with airplane mode, I may be able to re-establish broken LTE connections, but that's no fun.

So, for now I leave LTE off and the phone works fine on 3G. My hypothesis is that this "bug" is driven by power-saving features built into the iPhone 5. I wonder if it reduces power to the antenna when it's in LTE mode and if it sends more power to the antenna when it's in 3G mode.

No comments:

Post a Comment