My 6S looses call quality and then call drops,, this NEVER happened with my Samsung's ???

[thebizz]

I find it odd that it only happens with iPhones and not any other phone that you have used. Sadly it could be a network compatibility issue in your network. Your cell tower could be overtaxed. The iPhones may not be as good holding onto weak signals. Really any number of things. If you love your iPhone and want it fixed your best bet is to get Apple and t-mobile involved. I remember having to work with att about my dropped calls on my old 5c. I would track every dropped and att would look to see what happened on the network side when the call dropped. Honestly up until this 6s on t-mobile every iPhone I had dropped calls like crazy. That's with using them on att Verizon and sprint.

 

[Branta]

I ALWAYS have 5 full dots on my iPhone, T-Mobile was kind enough to give me one of their just released brand new LTE cellular booster for my house,,, I went from 1 or 2 dots to 5 dots all the time, still didn't fix the problem though.

Cheers
Davyo

That tends to point more at the network and less at the handset but it also raises other questions.

Your description hints that the problem hits mainly in or around your home. How does the phone behave if you relocate do you are using different cell towers? (Try to rule out a defective tower. I had one for several months which behaved almost like your report but the drop was after 1-2 minutes)

Which model number is your phone? Look on the back of the device, A16xx and check the carrier lists for frequency support on the list at iPhone - View countries with supported LTE networks - Apple

 

[IAmSixNine]

As i stated earlier it does point back to an iPhone issue with TMobile.
Verizon and Sprint users have chimed in and said they have no issues. Tmo guy also said he has no issues. But i have a coworker with a TMO iPhone and at work no issues but at home where signal is a bit weaker lots of problems.
He too had android devices and didnt get dropped calls at home. Same with OP.
My gut tells me its a phone issue probably dealing with VoIP on LTE or LTE to GSM hand off not working correctly with TMO / iPhones.
Over on Reddit there are several threads of similar issues with iPhones. Its not affecting everyone but a small percentage of people.
The OP has been with TMO 5 years, in the same geographic area, had many android and iphones, seems to know his calling habits, and has even been given a cell spot and still has issues.
Hopefully TMO and Apple work together to update carrier settings as this makes TMO look bad because the majority of people blame the carrier when a call drops. In this case its not necessarily a carrier issue but a carrier and handset issue.

 

[Branta]

My gut tells me its a phone issue probably dealing with VoIP on LTE or LTE to GSM hand off not working correctly with TMO / iPhones.

You might be right, and a combination problem specific to (phone+network) is plausible but a generic problem involving all iphones on TMo is relatively unlikely to have escaped testing. My gut says there's more to it - I think the problem is more specific, like one cell node going bad, or software version related issues. Maybe phone version compatibility for LTE bands. I asked a few questions now we wait for the answers - which might raise more questions...

 

[Chargerman165]

I carry two iPhone 6s and wife carries two iPhone 6, my young daughter has iPhone 6 and young stepson iPhone 6+. Live in kind of a rural area and on VERIZON and have been since 1998. Zero coverage issues with either iPhones and all of us have iPads with zero issues. I once was an Android person and had zero issues with coverage. Sound like might be your area or carrier. In my area T-MOBILE and all other carriers suck when comes to coverage in a lot of places. I have stayed with and paid more to Verizon primarily for that reason and along with the fact they have always have provided me with excellent customer service and no they have not compensated me for saying so nor do I work for them. As big an Android fan as I once was you could not give me one for free. I will say and found out as you stated 'Apple Products just work' and I hope you get your issue worked out. The SIM card thing sounds like a good recommendation or switch carriers.

 

[Davyo]

I carry two iPhone 6s and wife carries two iPhone 6, my young daughter has iPhone 6 and young stepson iPhone 6+. Live in kind of a rural area and on VERIZON and have been since 1998. Zero coverage issues with either iPhones and all of us have iPads with zero issues. I once was an Android person and had zero issues with coverage. Sound like might be your area or carrier. In my area T-MOBILE and all other carriers suck when comes to coverage in a lot of places. I have stayed with and paid more to Verizon primarily for that reason and along with the fact they have always have provided me with excellent customer service and no they have not compensated me for saying so nor do I work for them. As big an Android fan as I once was you could not give me one for free. I will say and found out as you stated 'Apple Products just work' and I hope you get your issue worked out. The SIM card thing sounds like a good recommendation or switch carriers.

When I got a new SIM card a few days ago I asked my T-Mobile friends if they had had any other iphone users having my same issues and they claimed not,,, I have well over a 5 year long business account with my local corporate T-Mobile store and we all know each other very well on a first name basis, so I'm pretty confident with any information they give me.

As far as phone love I'm both Apple and Samsung, the deal breaker for me is with the iPhone there is a company called Zoom that makes a very cool tiny external microphone called the iQ5 that plugs into the lighting port, my night gig is a Pro musician and I'm constantly using my iPhone with that iQ5 mic to make video demos for my band, plus the video I shoot with my iPhone works so quickly when I WiFi transfer my iPhone videos to my iPad Pro to do video editing with iMovie, as a working musician the iOS platform and available accessories definitely blow away Android.

On a side note, that Zoom iQ5 mic records iPhone video of live music with almost studio quality sound, I could go on forever about all the benefits there are with iOS used with live music situations,,,, if it wasn't for all that I would probably just jump ship and go back to a Galaxy or a Note.

Excuse my rant (hehe)

Cheers
Davyo

 

[IAmSixNine]

I carry two iPhone 6s and wife carries two iPhone 6, my young daughter has iPhone 6 and young stepson iPhone 6+. Live in kind of a rural area and on VERIZON and have been since 1998. Zero coverage issues with either iPhones and all of us have iPads with zero issues. I once was an Android person and had zero issues with coverage. Sound like might be your area or carrier. In my area T-MOBILE and all other carriers suck when comes to coverage in a lot of places. I have stayed with and paid more to Verizon primarily for that reason and along with the fact they have always have provided me with excellent customer service and no they have not compensated me for saying so nor do I work for them. As big an Android fan as I once was you could not give me one for free. I will say and found out as you stated 'Apple Products just work' and I hope you get your issue worked out. The SIM card thing sounds like a good recommendation or switch carriers.

Its a TMO iPhone thing.
Now if were talking Verizon, Over on the Galaxy S7 forums, ive seen may complaints of dropped calls and poor call quality related to advanced calling feature. But it seems as if they may have it figured out now. Calling customer care and asking them to refresh the account and update the advanced call settings has fixed it for several of the people in the group.

quirky things like that really suck but there are so many cogs in the wheel its not suprising to me these thing dont happen more often.

 

[eve6er69]

This is just odd. I'm not on T-Mobile user but I'm an att user and I can say that coming from a note 3 to an iPhone the signal has increased slightly. I'm not going to say significantly but I usually never got any type of service in my grocery store but now if someone calls me I can answer the phone, it may sound choppy here and there but the fact of the matter is it's slightly better.

I know you said that you've gone into the store, I ised to work for T-Mobile so I kinda know their procedures. They have a dealer line into corporate and you can have them monitor your call logs and see when and where the dropped calls are. It took me awhile to et to the department but they're like a tier 3 technical department. They are the ones that can look at the live and past data and possibly help you.

I know some people say this sounds like fanboy war stuff but these oddball issues happen. It's odd that it's iPhone only and you only which leads me to believe it's something to do with your settings and your account but it's giving Apple a bad name when you talk about it as well as T-Mobile for not being able to fix the issue.

If I were you I'd call up and explain everything and request to speaks to tier 2 tech support and call them every 5 dropped calls so it shows a history on your account.