iPhone 12 losing service

Just wanted to provide my experience, in case it may be of any help to others.

• purchased 12pro/Verizon/128g
• immediately encountered same issue as described in the threads (phone randomly looses service and does not automatically ‘reconnect’ to service. Only fix to re-establish service was to toggle airplane mode on/off.
• Had multiple chats with Verizon and Apple, and agreed to try a few solutions.
• 1st, went to Verizon store, who provided new SIM card. Problem persisted after installation.
• Went to apple, who ran diagnostics and factory reset phone. Problem persisted.
• went to apple again, who provided a brand new phone. Unfortunately, problem persists on phone #2.
• The issue is remarkable (to me) because my old iPhones worked just fine in the same exact spots. Furthermore, I’ll be in the same room as my wife (who has an 11) and I loose service, while hers is completely fine. Similar story with my brother, who has the X (same room, mine looses service while his is fine).
• From my personal observation, I’m concluding this is likely an IPhone 12 specific issue, not a Verizon issue. Hopefully, a fix is on the way because I can’t keep monitoring my phone to see if I need to toggle airplane mode on/off!

Lastly, I will say that Apple has provided great customer service, and I have faith this issue will be resolved, as enough people have encountered a similar issue.

I don’t think that person was saying every iPhone 12 made was affected but that the problem isn’t limited to the type of 12 series. For example 12, 12 mini, 12 pro, 12 pro max. Also there’s no need for your sarcasm “if you worked for press you would be sued.” Well that person doesn’t work for the press so your comment is irrelevant grammar cop.

iPadSam wrote:

Got the Verizon iPhone 12 mini delivered on launch day and have been plagued with this problem. It’s so frustrating. It seems like it can’t switch from tower to tower? More frequently happens when driving. Tried turning off 5g went to LTE only (no luck). Seems like the 5g signal is constantly weak.

confirming what others say - the only way to fix the phone is to go to airplane mode for a few seconds then back on

The Airplane Mode toggle forces the phone to renegotiate its connection to the network, and this should automatically pick up the best signal. This is a huge clue that the problem is in the radio links, although it only narrows the possible causes a little. It could be failed handoffs between towers, inappropriate channel selection to something the phone does not support, poor network coverage, reflected signals causing multipath interference... and these are just a few of the network-side possible causes. On the phone side it could be poor sensitivity in the receiver path - but this seems less likely if you ever see full strength signals, and there are many thousand (millions yet?) users not reporting the problem so it is unlikely to be a design fault.

For my guess this will turn out to be mainly a network issue. There seems to be a trend for Verizon users to see more problems than other networks which might suggest Vz has some issues still to fix on their 5G rollout. 5G itself is also new in the cellular world, working on new bands at much higher frequencies which always adds to the pain because they are more sensitive to problems.

I doubt my observations will add much, but here goes. I bought a 12 Pro. Immediately brought it home and noticed that my LTE signal was weaker, in that people couldn't hear me when the phone was exactly where it's been for years with my X. We have almost no 5G in my area, but I noticed when I drove to areas that were supposed to be 5G, I never saw the icon. After troubleshooting with Verizon, they finally admitted that the old plan I was on, that clearly shows it should work with 5G, actually didn't. At that point I upgraded my plan (almost no price difference). Since then I have driving through 5G areas and it shows up and works very well. I have not had any "no signal" messages or loss of service, but the signal is still weaker in my house than before, suggesting at least that the antenna isn't as good in this phone. But here's the deal: if this is due to the carrier and not the phone, why not just find others in your area that also have the phone and see if they have the same problems in the same area? If they do, but it works in other areas, then clearly it's the carrier and the specific towers. Certainly some of you must have two new phones in your house (if you have I didn't see it in the thread). To me it makes sense that the phones are not the problem, since so many aren't having the problem so it's not likely to be a hardware problem unless it's only present in a few phones; that's certainly possible, but I'm betting it's the towers and the channel switching that's the problem.

davidra wrote:

I have not had any "no signal" messages or loss of service, but the signal is still weaker in my house than before, suggesting at least that the antenna isn't as good in this phone.

The weaker signal inside buildings and other structures is likely to be a consequence of the higher frequencies used by 5G. Quite simply, higher frequencies have higher attenuation and significantly worse penetration of obstructions, and many of the 5G assigned frequencies are at least 2x what any network has used in earlier systems. This is governed by the physics of radio waves and attenuation, there is nothing the networks and phone manufacturers can do about it.

The only practical solutions are higher power from the towers and base stations, either by reduced distance or by increased transmit power. However, increasing the Tx power is only half a solution because it doesn’t help your phone transmitting back to the tower, and increasing the phone’s output will reduce battery life. 5G coverage is (as I expected) not proving to be as great as the hype predicted.

I'm not basing my comment on signal bars. I'm basing it on the fact that I have used my phone in my study for ten years and had no problems with people not being able to hear me. The first time, and just about every other call I've gotten or placed with this phone has resulted in people saying "I can't hear you" at a time when I can hear them just fine. I have to walk outside to enable them to hear me. This has been reported by people in this thread. If that's not due to a weaker signal, how would you explain it?

I have explained this before - it's new phones being directed to frequencies they support the iPhone 11 did not, and the equipment for those frequencies is not configured properly on the base station controller at the tower.

I have placed hundreds of calls on my 12 Pro Max and have not experienced your issue, and in fact have held calls in areas older iPhones dropped them.

Wiliam Kucharski is correct. The carriers need to reconfigure their equipment for the new iPhones. Other than continue to contact Apple and ask them to work with your carrier and contact your carrier directly, there isn't anything I can think of that will make the new phones work properly on your network. For those who cannot wait, the older phones work correctly.

The problem persists when 5G is disabled on my phone and this is also noted in other postings on this thread. LTE bands and frequencies on the iPhone 12 are nearly identical to the iPhone 11 with the addition of two new bands and their associated frequencies.

I just updated to iOS 14.3 and noticed my modem firmware and carrier both updated as well. Mine only drops calls in certain areas near where I live when I’m driving so I’ll try it out tomorrow and see if it fixed the issue. Not getting my hopes up!

beveragizer wrote:

LTE bands and frequencies on the iPhone 12 are nearly identical to the iPhone 11 with the addition of two new bands and their associated frequencies.

Precisely.

When a cell tower base station controller sees an iPhone 12, it will likely assign it to use a frequency in the new bands because odds are few other devices support them right now.

However that also means tower antenna or configuration issues are most likely to occur in those bands as the others have been tweaked over time.

While you are correct that there are standards, unfortunately Samsung does not appear to publish which LTE bands their phones can access but given Apple' published specs there are obvious reasons say iPhone 11s would work but 12s would not.

You are correct that it doesn't hurt to notify both your carrier and Apple, though it seems when Apple has worked with a carrier directly for a customer, issues at that tower have been resolved relatively quickly.

Mine seems to be a little better after the update but when it switched from LTE to 5G the person I was talking to couldn't hear me but I could hear them. That's the same issue I've been having on LTE. I had 5G turned off. Now it seems to work on LTE only better but still not on 5G. All of this happens with full service/5 bars.

Beachwalker5-Interesting you say that because when I phoned Verizon last week they told me something very different. Their instructions were keep data roaming on, voice and date should be set to 5G Auto and Data Mode set to allow more data on 5G.

Has that worked for me? Not really because just today I had no bars when I went to my car. I ended up using some advice posted earlier and went to airplane mode on and off again. Took a few minutes but eventually I did receive bars/signal and back to normal. Tell you what-this is not how a phone is supposed to work. Especially for the price we pay to use this phone. I'm very disappointed with my carrier and with Apple because these sort of things should not be happening.

iPhone Mini

Verizon

USA

Did the update to 14.3. WAY better signal strength. Haven't dropped a call yet and it's making the handoff between 5g and LTE much much better.

The only weird thing I have now is when I'm on 5g and doing a speed test, it's only showing about 30mb down. I haven't seen anything faster. So really it's like having an LTE phone. No speed benefit. I do like the size of the mini though :)