My iPhone 12 is not gaining signal again after driving through dead zones, which happens a lot where I live. I have to turn the phone off and on again to get signal back. I had difficulties with activation and have also had iMessage freeze needing the same “fix.” Thoughts?
iPhone 12, iOS 14
So that would make sense, but the dead zones are short and the cellular service doesn’t come back on at all even after 5 minutes, or longer, of being in an area of full coverage. I checked the settings and all are good.
When your phone loses a cellular network connection it tries to reconnect every few seconds for about a minute. It then gradually increases the time between checks with no response, eventually reaching 5 minutes or more. It does this because checking for a network uses a huge amount of energy, and doing it constantly would quickly delete the battery, as well as cause the phone to heat up. If you stay within range of a network for those 5 minutes it will reconnect on its own.
You can force it to do a new search by turning on Airplane mode for 15 - 30 seconds. Yo don’t have to turn the phone off and on again.
One other thing you can do is make sure Settings/Privacy/Location Services/System Services-Cell Network Search is on, and that Wi-Fi is also on (it doesn’t need to be connected, just on).
Cell service after dead zone
