How to turn off 3G on the iPhone (and reduce dropped calls!)

"How to Turn Off 3G?" Are you kidding?! The world waited a whole year for Apple to add 3G to the iPhone, and everyone's paying AT&T a lot more money for the privilege of getting 3G. Why on earth would you want to turn it off?

Because 3G is a power hog; it cuts your iPhone' battery life in half. Therefore, be grateful that the iPhone even has an on/off switch for its 3G radio; that's a luxury most 3G phone owners don't have.

You might consider turning off 3G when, for example:

• You're not in a 3G area anyway.
• You're not using the Internet.
• You have a long work day ahead of you, and you can't risk running out of juice halfway through the day.
• You're getting the "20% battery left" warning, and you're many hours away from a chance to recharge.

In those situations, from the Home screen, tap Settings-->General-->Network; where it says Enable 3G, tap to turn it Off. Now, if you want to get online, your phone will use only Wi-Fi and the slow EDGE network.

Joe's Note: I've had plenty of dropped calls with both my iPhone 3G and more recently my iPhone 3GS. After digging around a bit I discovered that if I turn off 3G the dropped calls go away. This may not prevent all dropped calls but I can say that since I adopted this approach I haven't lost a single one. So if you seem to be encountering too many dropped calls, give it a shot.