Peter

My girlfriend has had this for a year and has this problem frequently.

I see the Apple forums are full of such reports, too.

It seems to be cured by a cold switch off and switch on - something
very few people do.

The phone often doesn't display a network name or signal level - again
this is cured by a cold power cycle.

She is on the UK Virgin network, PAYG.

We took the phone back to the "Genius Bar" just before the warranty
expired and they reproduced the problem OK. They reset the phone, did
an OS update, but it still did it, so she got a new one. Now, a few
months later, the new one is doing it too.

Apple obviously seem to have problems locking onto certain GSM
networks in certain circumstances. As I said, the Apple support forums
(which Apple don't ever read, evidently) are full of these reports.

Any suggestions?

IOS5 is not reported as making it any better.

Alan Browne

On 2011-11-17 03:50 , Peter wrote:
> My girlfriend has had this for a year and has this problem frequently.
>
> I see the Apple forums are full of such reports, too.
>
> It seems to be cured by a cold switch off and switch on - something
> very few people do.
>
> The phone often doesn't display a network name or signal level - again
> this is cured by a cold power cycle.
>
> She is on the UK Virgin network, PAYG.
>
> We took the phone back to the "Genius Bar" just before the warranty
> expired and they reproduced the problem OK. They reset the phone, did
> an OS update, but it still did it, so she got a new one. Now, a few
> months later, the new one is doing it too.
>
> Apple obviously seem to have problems locking onto certain GSM
> networks in certain circumstances. As I said, the Apple support forums
> (which Apple don't ever read, evidently) are full of these reports.
>
> Any suggestions?

I would bet that the issue is the network, not the phone.

I'm on a GSM network and I've never had issues that required a cold
start of any phone, nor the iPhone 4 since February when I bought it.
I've done a couple cold starts of course after an iOS update and 1 or 2
just to see how it was done.

--
gmail originated posts filtered due to spam.

BreadWithSpam@fractious.net

Alan Browne <alan.browne@FreelunchVideotron.ca> writes:
> On 2011-11-17 03:50 , Peter wrote:

>> My girlfriend has had this for a year and has this problem frequently.
>> It seems to be cured by a cold switch off and switch on - something
>> very few people do.

> I would bet that the issue is the network, not the phone.
>
> I'm on a GSM network and I've never had issues that required a cold
> start of any phone, nor the iPhone 4 since February when I bought

I have found that where 3G is flaky, sometimes I'll have
much better reception and more stable connections if I
switch to Edge only. Slower data, of course, but well worth
it in those instances. I also sometimes switch off 3G and
leave Edge-only if I'm not going to be able to charge my
phone's battery for a good while. It seems 3G sucks the battery
down a lot faster


--
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.

Peter

BreadWithSpam@fractious.net wrote

>Alan Browne <alan.browne@FreelunchVideotron.ca> writes:
>> On 2011-11-17 03:50 , Peter wrote:
>
>>> My girlfriend has had this for a year and has this problem frequently.
>>> It seems to be cured by a cold switch off and switch on - something
>>> very few people do.
>
>> I would bet that the issue is the network, not the phone.
>>
>> I'm on a GSM network and I've never had issues that required a cold
>> start of any phone, nor the iPhone 4 since February when I bought
>
>I have found that where 3G is flaky, sometimes I'll have
>much better reception and more stable connections if I
>switch to Edge only. Slower data, of course, but well worth
>it in those instances. I also sometimes switch off 3G and
>leave Edge-only if I'm not going to be able to charge my
>phone's battery for a good while. It seems 3G sucks the battery
>down a lot faster

In this case, GSM voice and SMS failed to get an incoming connection
(signal level displayed as zero on the phone too) but email (3G in
this case) worked.

I've never seen this on any other phone either, in many years of
having GSM phones.