3G data speed on iPhone 4 is painfully slow

My iPhone 4 won't even connect to 3G at work anymore since iOS4.0.1! It was connecting to 3G ok on iOS4, but not since I upgraded. My iPhone 3GS connected just fine to 3G in the office so this really pi$$es me off. I sure hope it will be fixed with AT&T's HSUPA glitch.

Just got off the phone with tech support and from what he told me is that AT&T is running into more software bugs regarding other HSUPA devices now. So a few more weeks?.......

I'm fixed! I had sporadic download speeds. Sometimes 400Kbps, sometimes nothing, sometimes almost 2 Mpbs. Upload was never above 100kbps. I called AT&T tech support and the lady was confused and hadn't heard about the problem with the Alcatel equipment, etc. She did however escalate my ticket and tell it me it would be 3 days. 5 days later LOL I got a phone call that I was fixed (whatever they did they did not say) and I ran a test. Sure enough I was up and running. I now get almost 2 Mbps down and around 1 or 1.5 Mbps up. Maybe not screaming fast but I'm happy with it now.

I would call in to AT&T and if you don't get it escalated call back!

I'm in Columbia MD by the way. In between Baltimore and DC.

Speeds are fixed here in the SLC, Utah Valley since last Friday. I'm getting between 2-3 Mbps down and 1.4-1.8 Mbps up. Awesome. I love my iPhone 4 and believe it or not I love AT&T now, too. Speeds will just be getting better in the near future.

I'm in Columbia most of the week (for work) and my speeds are also fixed. Closer to home and in the Annapolis area last night, everything seemed fine there too.

Bob

3G seems to be back and faster than ever for me too now!

I'm just east of Atlanta here.

I too have this problem ! No data. SMS, VM work, however I can't get data across 3G or Edge. I saw this solution below, and it reads like it'll work. I signed up and created an account here, just to pass this information along. I called Apple & Att, it's frustrating that Apple & Att weren't able to present this when going through their process.

Check this post out, it may work:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=946542

Jun 23, 2010, 12:00 PM #5
Trejodaniel
macrumors newbie

Join Date: Oct 2007

Solved! I have completely fixed this problem without losing any data (not that i've noticed yet anyway).

First, let me summarize the problem and briefly address the known solutions. There are multiple issues people are having with the update that -HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR PROBLEM-. Some people had theirs in airplane mode which apparently gives them a "no sim card" after update. not our problem. Some people can reset settings not our problem.

Our problem is corrupt APN settings after an upgrade, which can be worked around by installing mobileconfig updates or using the "iPhone Configuration Utility" to temporarily overwrite our APN settings. This is a temp fix that only makes 3g work, no MMS or Visual Voicemail.

We know that completely restoring the phone and setting it up as new resolves the problem. A lot of us are unable to restore any backups without re-introducing the bug. A lot of us do not want to lose our app data so setting up as new phone is out of the question. Some people have figured out how to set up as new phone and import SMS messages from corrupt backup to new backup. This is a good solution if SMS is the only thing you want…However, some of us want ALL our app data.

Now for the solution! First, go in to settings on your phone and uninstall any custom profile you may have installed to temporarily fix the APN.

Now, perform a full backup of your phone (you may want to delete your previous backups or move them out of the directory so that you're not confused with multiple backup files in your backup directory.

Go to your backup directory ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup/random-backup-name-here/ and delete this file 8218978e4ab0a48035bb92653145a6be872ea858
That file contains our corrupted APN information.

Now RESTORE YOUR PHONE and restore the backup. It will fully restore and then give you an error, ignore the error, it worked. Sync your phone to get all your apps back. 3g works, visual voicemail works, mms works, and i have ALL of my app data! all my contacts, all my photos, all my sms messages! BAM! I RULE!
If for some reason you don't have that file in your backup directory (i have no idea, maybe they are named differently with different backups) you can find it by entering the backup directory in the terminal and running the following

Reconsider...

It's the phone, not AT&T... Here is why:

I purchases a factory unlocked iPhone 4 and am using it in Costa Rica on the ICE network.
I am experiencing the exact same inconsistencies with 3G data as described through these many posts. You will also read reports of this problem by users in the UK.

Can anyone answer what is truly causing this 3g data problem with 100 percent certainty???

i just tried something. i don't know if this has been mentioned before but i tried shutting down the phone normally, taking out the sim card, cleaning it with a soft cloth to get rid of any finger grease that might have been on there and putting the sim back carefully.

i don't know if the reboot of the cleaning fixed it. but my speed test before was 81kbps and now it's over 1200kbs..

try this and let me know how it goes!

i just tried something. i don't know if this has been mentioned before but i tried shutting down the phone normally, taking out the sim card, cleaning it with a soft cloth to get rid of any finger grease that might have been on there and putting the sim back carefully.

i don't know if the reboot of the cleaning fixed it. but my speed test before was 81kbps and now it's over 1200kbs..

try this and let me know how it goes!

Seems that the upload data speed is still a bit slow here in Seattle. I'm consistently receiving .05 Mbps up whether at home via a 3G Microcell or around the Sound. Could anyone else confirm this?

My recent speedtests today via the AT&T 3G Microcell were as follows:

First test at 3:14pm:
Ping 478 ms

Download 2851 kbps / 2.52 Mbps

Upload 56 kbps / .05 Mbps

Second test at 4:08pm:
Ping 416 ms

Download 2851 kbps / 2.52 Mbps

Upload 56 kbps / .05 Mbps

Third test at 4:07pm:
Ping 413 ms

Download 1977 kbps / 1.93 Mbps

Upload 56 kbps / .05 Mbps

---
Speedtest via Wi-Fi AEBS through Comcast
Test one at 4:13pm:
Ping 46 ms

Download 12672 kbps / 12.38 Mbps

Upload 2473 kbps / 2.42 Mbps

Test two at 4:14pm:
Ping 416 ms

Download 15562 kbps / 15.29 Mbps

Upload 2495 kbps / 2.44 Mbps

I just posted to mobileinjapan about this problem and came here to see if other's were experiencing the same thing because I'm having the same problem with my iPhone 4 here in Japan on the SoftBank network - extremely slow 3G data speeds.

My iPhone 3G would get very decent 3G data speeds. In the U.S. I would get about 3 Mbps download. In Japan I would get slightly lower.

But since switching to an iPhone 4, the 3G data speeds have been painfully slow. The speedtest.net iPhone app is reporting like 0.05 Mbps download, with a Tokyo server connection!

(On wi-fi at home I'll get like 10.5 Mbps download on the same iPhone 4).

testmyiphone.com is reporting up and download speeds of about 384 Kbps. That's still 1/20th - 1/10th of what should be possible on the 3G network here in Japan.

What testing sites do people use?

I don't understand why my 3G data speed has slowed down so much since changing to an iPhone 4. I have a call in to technical support here and they said they would call me back tomorrow. I tried the usual suspects, like resetting networks and so on.

doug

You may be on to something. I just killed ALL my apps that were still alive in multi-tasking. There may have been 15-20. I didn't count, but it was a lot.

After doing that I tried speedtest.net again and this time got 1.02 Mbps down and 0.69 Mbps up. Nothing to write home about, but at least livable. (This is up from 0.05 Mbps down and 0.03 up in my previous tests).

2nd test: 0.79 Mbps down, 0.67 Mbps up.

3rd test: 0.46 Mbps down, 0.85 Mbps up.

4th test: 0.43 Mbps down, 1.03 Mbps up. (?)

5 strength bars were showing.

This was on the SoftBank 3G network in Tokyo, connected to a Tokyo server.

My iPhone 3G, which did not have multitasking capability, showed higher speeds all the time. So I wonder, like you said, if background apps are generally slowing things down.

Yet... I don't see my data packet usage going up really while the iPhone is just sitting there. So I don't see why multi-tasked apps would be causing congestion.


doug

I guess it doesn't make sense that it would have to do with multi-tasking apps. If it did, I wouldn't be getting such great download/upload speeds when connected to my wifi at home. It must have to do with the 3G connection itself.

doug

I had a friend, also in Tokyo, just try it on his iPhone 4. We both ran the download test at testmyiphone.com over 3G. He got 1.82 Mbps download and I got just 0.12 Mbps. His speed was 15 times faster!

doug