iPhone 12 losing service

I have spoke with Verizon about issue and also tried all the fix ideas to no avail however last night I spoke with Verizon support and they said they have a open ticket with Apple who is now working on a fix for us. Don’t know when or how the fix will come but at least they are working on it.

Don’t fool yourself. They are not working on a fix for you. Just return the phone, get your money back and wait. It could take months. Just not enough people with this problem for them to create a fix. There will be plenty of iPhones available when they do.

I have no intention, or license, to give you, or anyone, legal advice. But if someone sells you a car that doesn’t work, ever, and you try to make it work for 14 days, and in good faith, you cannot make it work, I don’t think any court in the USA (you might be in another country) is going to enforce the sale and the 14 day return period. You were never delivered a working product and the seller never held us their end of the bargain.

Apple has a "no questions asked" return policy of 14 days, however they will easily accept a return within 30 days of date of order. Also, if you've got an open support case with them, they can make an exception and will accept a return beyond 30 days. Call support, give them your case number and ask for level 2 support, and then ask them to initiate the return process. Be polite and assertive if you're asking for an exception to their published return policy.

I can confirm that both Apple and Verizon (at least at the level 2 support teams and engineering teams) are aware that some phones aren't working properly and they are working to address the issues. Front line support folks seem to still be in the dark, however.

Here's an update for anybody that has Verizon. I have the 12 mini and over the weekend I phoned Verizon to report the problem, after 2 hours with a level two tech, the decision was to send me a brand new 12 mini phone. Received the phone today, phoned Verizon tech support and we activated the new phone via a call.

Now I have to return the "broken phone" within 5 days.

Anyway, I can't say for certain what Verizon is doing that other carriers are not and I can't say for certain this new phone is going to avoid all the issues I had previously. Only been a Verizon customer for 3 weeks and this is not a good beginning but I have to applaud their service for sending me a new 12 mini phone within two days.

I urge you all to call your carrier, demand a new phone or the right to return the phone and get a refund. No reason to toggle with airplane mode, turn the phone off/on to restore service. Phones are NOT supposed to work that way.

Good luck!

I’ve been experiencing this issue since the first week of November.

iPhone 12 Pro on T-Mobile

When it first happened I reset network settings, which solved nothing. My SIM card had been swapped from my “old” iPhone 11 Pro so after the issue persisted for 2 weeks I went to T-Mobile to have the SIM card replaced with a new one. The issue returned within 24 hours. A few days later I caved and wiped the phone. I spent an entire day with a factory-restored phone, no data restored from backup - I didn’t even login to iCloud. Actually I only spent a about 2 hours like that because the cellular signal started dropping again pretty quickly after the phone was wiped.

Having ruled out a SIM card issue and a software issue I thought I’d see if eSIM had the same issue. Spent another hour at T-Mobile getting the eSIM activated and then the rep and I both laughed as we saw the same thing start to happen with the eSIM, whether the physical SIM card was installed or not. It didn’t matter if we switched everything to 5G, Auto or LTE only.

FWIW, toggling airplane mode on/off rarely brings back cellular connectivity for me. Only a full reboot will and then only for a few minutes, whether I’m idle or out and about (I’m in NYC so I’m easily bouncing between dozens of towers all day).

I made a Genius Bar appointment and 2 employees confirmed they have the same

issue with theirs, but they were still more than happy to replace the phone for me - just in case I might get lucky.

Naturally, replacing the phone has made no difference :)

I’m now biding time until someone figures out a fix. My workaround is to carry my Netgear Nighthawk LTE hotspot in my coat all day, making myself a walking WiFi network and I just leave it on so that my iPhone stays connected to WiFi rather than relying on cellular, which will inevitably show “no service” when I need to use it.

sigh...

Galefrompaducah wrote:

Unfortunately past the 14 day return period

When did you buy it, from whom and when did you take delivery?

I ask as:

Items purchased at the Apple Online Store that are received between 10 November and 25 December 2020 may be returned up to 8 January 2021.

This is also true for items purchased at Apple retail stores.

victuals wrote:

I have no intention, or license, to give you, or anyone, legal advice. But if someone sells you a car that doesn’t work, ever, and you try to make it work for 14 days, and in good faith, you cannot make it work, I don’t think any court in the USA (you might be in another country) is going to enforce the sale and the 14 day return period. You were never delivered a working product and the seller never held us their end of the bargain.

This makes certain assumptions.

For example, if the device would work on another carrier, that means the product works, but the carrier's network is to blame.

Five people in our shop bought IPhone 12’s 2 of these phones work fine one on AT&T and one on Verizon. 3 of them work for crap one on T-Mobile and two on Verizon we can’t get any of the three to stay lock on a signal as a matter of fact most of the time we have no signal. We have changed sims reset the phones toggled airplane mode off and on and it is ridiculous what is going on. We all have had IPhones before this without any issues I really believe this is a hardware problem because two of these phones work fine. Please Apple get this figured out!

That is a false recommendation. You should be able to use ANY reputable VPN on ANY iphone. Why would you want to? Becuase EVERYTHING sent from your phone over public networks can be seen by people like ME that have ability to read traffic. You dont need for private networks obviously, but anything public should use VPN if you can. Doing anything like banking over public net is plain dumb. Apples technology and infrastructure has NOTHING to do with data sent over public networks.

Four carriers to fix a problem that affects only a single model of hardware vs one hardware manufacturer to fix a problem that affects all 4 major carriers (in the US at least, not counting outside US).

I’m betting on the one hardware manufacturer.

In actuality it’ll likely be a joint effort.

Truth is: I don’t care. WHO fixes it isn’t of concern to me as long as it gets fixed relatively soon.

I doubt it's hardware. Most likely software. Either iphone has some sort of connectivity glitch, or the provider, or some compatibility between the 2. Apple should be able to see the issue by replicating the issue and capturing the telco data being exchanged and/or iOS log. HOPEFULLY soon.

I'm having the same issue on Verizon 44.0.1 and iPhone 12 Pro Max. Its frustrating. I have to tap on/off cellular to get it back working or reboot the phone. Apple are you listening? Calls dont work on a $1300 phone.

Apple support ran diagnostics remotely on my device today and found no problem. Directed me to my carrier which sounds like a waste of my time given this is affecting many carriers.

i saw new iOS update coming out but no mention of this in the release notes unfortunately

Multiple carriers are making the same bad assumptions, and/or it may be limited to one vendor of cellular base station controller.

Carrier updates and/or new SIMs have resolved this issue for many.

Were it the phone itself, everyone would have this issue and only a small percentage of users do.