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iPhone 3GS WIFI Connection Instability Problems

Hi guys

I have just recently purchased an iPhone 3GS 32GB Black, and I am experiencing problems with connecting to WIFI networks. I have a wireless connection at home and one minute I am connected to the network just fine and the next it has just totally disappeared. At first I suspected that the issue may be down to my router, as I have never previously experienced this problem with my first gen iPhone or my iPhone 3G.

But it seems that the router is working fine as I have been browsing the internet on my laptop while my iPhone 3GS is still not acknowledging the existence of the same network. However, sometimes suddenly it will decide to connect to the network at it's own will, so one minute I'm on edge and the next on the WIFI.

What is also annoying is that when I do manage to get a connection I can be sitting on the same spot and initially I may have three bars on the WIFI icon at the top of the screen, and this will fluctuate between two and one bars when I am not even moving so the connection shouldn't be disrupted.

Just to make sure that it wasn't a problem with my home wireless connection, I have tried this out at my friend's house who has WIFI and I still have the same issues. I have even tested to see if I would have the same problem on a public network so I attempted to connect to the network at my University. Although I managed to connect to the network, it did not take long for my iPhone 3GS to decide that that connection was no longer available.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues. I'm just curious to know whether it's a general fault or maybe it's just my handset or possibly some sort of settings/software problem. Either way it is quite odd that I am experiencing these problems with my iPhone 3GS as I did not have any such issues with either of the first gen iPhone or the iPhone 3G.

Please can somebody get back to me on this. Look forward to reading your comments.

Kind Regards

Anees Younis

iPhone 3GS 32GB Black, iPhone OS 3.0

Posted on Jul 4, 2009 1:30 PM

89 replies

Aug 19, 2009 3:07 PM in response to bruinsrme

Hello Apple your iphone is broken can you please fix this... every one is calling you out! Just give us the truth.

Brand33

Level 1

4 points

Aug 23, 2009 2:59 AM in response to 4Fabulous

I am having the same problem with my iPhone 3GS. The constant instability of the wifi connection is starting to really annoy me, so I finally decided to do a little research about it. WOW! I guess I am not the only one. HELLO APPLE IS ANYBODY THERE!!! My old 3G phone & my wife's 3G phone work perfectly with a wifi connection with no cuts to the wifi connection. All the iPhones have been updated to OS 3.0.1. I called Apple tech support several times making me restore my phone, resetting my network setting, resetting my WEP password, resetting my router & nothing worked and the only solution left was to swap my brand new phone for arefurb. My 3GS works perfectly fine on a 3G network, I can browse on safari with no signal disruptions, but as soon as I connect to wifi the signal keeps cutting for a few seconds and comes back. Apple tech support treats this defect as if it had never heard of this problem before. Hoping Apple is fixing this problem with the 3.1 OS update because I don't want a refurb phone. I spent over $50 for the screen protector and a stick-on body shield that can't be re-used. If Apple would at least acknowledge the problem I would feel a little better about this situation.

Aug 24, 2009 2:31 AM in response to 4Fabulous

Hi,

I purchased the 3GS 32gb White a month ago. In the beginning the wifi issue wasn't very obvious. Not until I finished my business trip and returned home using my home wireless router. Strange enough I was sitting next to the router and I only receove 1 block of the signal, the problem went on even I reset or turn on/off with the wifi in the iphone. Then somehow I change the Channel setting in the router (from 5 to 12) and that worked like a charm and problem solved at the moment.

However, when I had the chance to hit the coffee shop (starbXXXX) with many wifi connections. I discovered I can only receive the minimal signals and they were all showing up and disappearing constantly. One minute I tried to connect the A network, it kept loading/connecting then after a while it disappeared totally for that connection!!! I desperately tried all the methods mentioned by the forums to reset the phone but none worked. So i used back my EDGE in the end. I guess changing the Channel can help as I did before with my home network, but sorry, I am at the outdoor which I couldn't control the network setting in coffee shops!!XXXXXX This happened not only once, bit several times already!

So at last I took it to the service centre for a check-up. And one day later, they said my device is problematic on the wifi hardware. And they replaced me a "New" one. Tricky here, what is meant by "New One"? They call this new one a "Service Unit" with no box, and within could possibly be some refurbished parts compiled together to make it a new unit, as this is said by the service man at the apple service centre.

See, the point here is: I paid for a wifi-problem iphone and after one month's usage, they returned me a refurbished one. I have no say in whether fixing the original one or at least offer me an option to choose, sigh...

Aug 24, 2009 2:35 AM in response to Brand33

"Apple tech support treats this defect as if it had never heard of this problem before" thats exactly what I asked them and what they replied me back in HONG KONG!!!
Now I am replaced with a refurbished one called "Service Unit" after one month's use on my previous brand new iphone!!

Aug 31, 2009 5:04 AM in response to Jitterousperth

Hi,

Has Any solution found for this problem??

I bought a new IPhone 3GS 32Gb 4 days ago, and this problem is so annoying..

Aug 31, 2009 8:15 AM in response to cdemiroglu

I guess only way to solve is to replace it, if you only bought for 4 days, ring them up and got urself a brand new one from them.

Aug 31, 2009 9:40 AM in response to Jitterousperth

A replacement will not help... the reason this happens is the the wifi chip that they are using now in the new phones is not as good or robust as the older chip (good job trying to cut corners apple). Therefore if you have a router that is week as well you will have problems.

The only thing you can do is get a router that has a strong signal. The only apple router I have found that works is the AirPort Extreme (is any one having this problem with an AirPort Extreme?). Stay away from AirPort Express, and for some reason I can't figure out why the Time Capsule do not work as well ether. I would think that the Time Capsule had the same internals as the AirPort Extreme but my friend had problems with it.

If you think apple can help you with this: Think again...

I am amazing! I just came up with apples new slogan. Think again.
And to think I have been apples biggest fan for years, I have no idea what is going on over there but I sure hope Steve starts cracking heads and get them back into shape. Pleas........

Aug 31, 2009 10:05 AM in response to monkeywithagun

I have the airport extreme and have sat right next to the router and the results were equally as horrible as compared to sitting in the living room.
I have now tried Belkin, Netgear, various Linksys and the Extreme all yield the same results. My 3G phone skareams on downloads without any interruption.
Replacements don't help as I am now on my 3rd one.
The apple genius mentioned that when the 3Gs is jailbroken it damages the network chip. Who said anything about jailbreaking. He saw where I lived and I aked him to explain to me how I could drive 35 miles each way in congested traffic, jailbreak, do all the testing, restore and get back to the store in under 3 hours. His reply, you must drive really fast.

Luckily I have a new 3G tower literately in my back yard.

Aug 31, 2009 10:33 AM in response to bruinsrme

Ok good to know... does your airport extreme have the simultaneous dual-band Wi-Fi ? ( i believe this is a new feature) if not I think this might be the reason I was getting such good thoughtput.

And what's up with all the rude apple geniuses???

-patrick

Aug 31, 2009 11:12 AM in response to monkeywithagun

I can run speed test after speed test and get decent results. A 15 to 25 second test is a mere snapshot of the actual performance. The issues I am having with files 20meg or more. In my case I can not get a sustainable download speed and maintain a connection to complete the download. I have turned off the lock screen ( set to never). This even occurs downloading from iTunes. It happens with any wifi connection I have tried. With the 3g I never experience this anomaly.
I have worked with a couple of the forum owners and website owners on this. One of them told me that others were having similar results.
Like I said small files I don't have any issues. Large files are a no go.

Aug 31, 2009 1:00 PM in response to 4Fabulous

Same iPhone, same problem. My wife's 3G works great, but mine will fail to pick up the wifi network. Very frustrating. They need to fix this soon.

FABU

Level 1

10 points

Aug 31, 2009 3:49 PM in response to 4Fabulous

I have the same problem. No WIFI.
Also, I noticed that the battery drains faster when this symptom occurs.
Can anyone confirm this?

I have to reboot my iphone 3gs 32gb to get it to work again. My wife's 16gb does not suffer from this.

Delron

Level 1

4 points

Sep 3, 2009 8:32 PM in response to FABU

I had all these problems as well. I managed to find a work around, for me at least it works. I setup a static IP address for the iPhone with the router then manually added the IP in the iPhone. I have had no issues now for over a month. Now I connect every time with a strong signal.
Give it a try.

Sep 5, 2009 5:24 PM in response to 4Fabulous

I was experiencing similar problems to many discussed here -- at home, I had inconsistent/unreliable wifi. I could connect briefly at times but for the most part, would simply get an 'unable to connect' message. Disabling wifi allowed me to connect. My wife's 3gs (we bought them the same day) experienced the exact same behavior.

But I did not experience problems anywhere else when connnecting via wifi...the office, my brother's house, coffee shops...anywhere.

My phone said it was connected...and occassionally did get to web pages. I noted some people's success with setting up 'static' options for the network settings and it appeared to work for me. That made me take a closer look at the settings.

When I was using DHCP, the phone was showing the addresses I would expect for IP settings and whatnot...but my DNS setting didn't look quite right -- it listed two items instead of just the one I would expect to see.

I manually deleted the entry that didn't appear to be correct and the phone began working fine in DHCP mode.

The strange this is that the iphone seems to be the only device that took on that secondary DNS server address that appeared to be invalid -- none of my other wireless devices did.

I'm sure this isn't everyone's problem...but I thought I'd share. I hope it helps somebody!

iPhone 3GS WIFI Connection Instability Problems