O2’s 3G is notoriously sketchy, however, there seems to be some inherent issue with selecting 3G ‘On’ with the iPhone 3GS.
Presently, if I leave 3G set to ‘On’ I get a ‘No Service’ message on screen about 60% of the time. In the same location, if I then flick it to ‘Off’ I get a signal (albeit a GPRS one - as expected). By the way, this is unrelated to the much publicised O2 data outages of late. This is cellular, not data related.
The problem is, when a 3G signal isn’t present the iPhone seems to fail to search for the GPRS network, meaning the iPhone spends more time than needed out of signal.
Anyone else experiencing the same problem? iPhone OS 3.1 is due soon so I’m hoping it solves the issue otherwise I’ll be taking a trip to the Apple store…
Update (11/09/2009)
In frustration, I phoned O2 to ask if I could get my device opened to other SIM cards. I was told that even though it was bought as a PAYG phone, it wasn’t possible. Apple had chosen to only allow the devices to be open to O2 SIM cards. Suspecting it may be a network rather than hardware issue I jailbroke and unlocked (using Redsn0w & Ultrasn0w) and my iPhone 3GS.
And guess what? No problems whatsoever using Orange. I don’t see any ‘No Service’ messages, it switches between 3G and GPRS seamlessly. Basically behaves as you would expect.
Now, that isn’t to say Orange is necessarily better than O2. However, if the areas you frequent have poor O2 service you will more than likely see the ‘No Service’ message more often than not. So, until O2 looses it’s exclusivity, it’s either buy a ludicrously expensive SIM free model or opt to jailbreak - something I’d really rather not do given an alternative choice.
