Why My iPhone Makes Me Long for Verizon

It has nearly been a month with my iPhone and I must admit, at times I get home sick. I miss the old neighborhood where everyone came out to play ball and you could hear every word they said. The clarity was great and no matter where you went on the block, you never lost or skipped sight of your pals. But now in my new neighborhood, it just ain’t the same. Some of the kids are rude and just leave in middle of a conversation. Others fade in and out, never repeating what you missed. No, life in the AT&T neighborhood has been tough. Real tough.

I was with Verizon for nearly four years and outside of the hardware selection, I loved my service provider. The Treo and Q are solid smartphones on its network and the RAZR is just a slam dunk for great sound and reception. Plain and simple, I never had issue with Verizon Wireless. Ever. Now let me tell you, my day job takes me all over the place. I’ve been all over Northern California from the Oregon border to the Central Coast. I’ve traveled in L.A., Pasadena, San Diego, through the Southern California desert, and throughout Arizona. I’ve even been through AT&T’s home base of San Antonio, Texas, and even there, Verizon never gave me a brick. I’ve only been one place where I had no signal and that was deep in the eastern hills of Northern California. My wife’s RAZR did get a signal, though.

Now let me talk about my four weeks with AT&T. It is the norm to find myself saying on calls on a major California highway (CA-99), “Could you repeat that again?” due to skips or degrading audio from a poor signal. This is in Stockton area. A large city where you know towers are plenty. Well, maybe for Verizon but apparently not AT&T. I find myself wandering outside of friends houses many times as if I’m searching for exotic coins on their lawn with a metal detector as I randomly bounce in an erratic direction searching for the strongest signal point. You can find me in the most unusual isles of the store due to it being the place for the highest bar reading. In short, I find myself concerned about signal strength on every call I make on my iPhone. I never had this pressure with Verizon.

I love, love, LOVE, my iPhone. It is the best phone I’ve ever had. No issues with what’s on it and even with the short-comings, it’s still one of the best phones I’ve ever had. It just does not disappoint like my XV6700, Treo 700w, Motorola Q, and Samsung 740 did. I tell people all the time, “The iPhone would be perfect if it were on Verizon.” Man, VZW, you guys blew it!

Sure, AT&T isn’t always bad. There are a few areas I have no issue at all. In fact, in my new home in a town of 900 just south of Sacramento, I get better signal with AT&T than I did with Verizon. But at the end of the day, I do find myself wishing I was still on Verizon’s network. I really do miss it.

I haven’t been too many different places with the iPhone yet, but in the coming weeks I will be going to Santa Rosa, Napa, Fairfield, Chico, Half Moon Bay, and some other far out areas and I guess that’s when I’ll get some real testing done on the signal. Then I’ll be able to see if Cingular really did raise the bar before becoming the new AT&T or if it just made me long for Verizon even more.