3G on iPhone 12

Oh they have many times in this thread. I have been part of since the very beginning.

the option is obsolete to be able to manually select it.

if 3G is available the phone with switch to it automatically

Oour sims are 3g compatible - in a 3 g only area we have 3g service

telstra isnt turning off its 3g service till 2024 - vodafone have no plans to.

when travelling the country its highly advantageous to be able to lock 4g out and use 3g exclusively.

on my iphone xsmax 10 i could do this - with iphone 12 you cant

as a result i have to keep my iphone 10 and a second phone plan for country trips.

absolutely idiotic decision by apple to remove this functionality.

please fixup!!!

[Edited by Moderator]

Whilst out and about today, my phone certainly dropped to a 3G signal, as i went through some areas a little more rural and don't have a good 4G signal, so the carrier is certainly making 3G available automatically.

Whilst on 3G i had a full set of bars, but once i was through to a more populated town, it dropped to one bar, and 4G took over at 2.

As i said before, both data plans are locked to 4 or 5G but the Vodafone sim is 4G and less.

My wife also has the same 5G sim plan on an IphoneX, and yet that phone has the function of choosing 3 or 4G (admittedly it isn't a 5G phone but we got the sim in readiness).

Absolutely

im a communications tech specialising in remote mobile network boosting solutions - i can replicate this fault any time of the day ir night - i also know locking out 4 g fixes it instantly. Notably on the iphone 10 if you lock volte out - it still happens!!

this is some weird software issue apples have had for far too long now and apple needs to fix it.

[Edited by Moderator]

I don't thinks it is per se the lack of being able to choose 3G, but the iOS programming that chooses 4G over 3G 99% of the time and that is Apples doing. I thought that maybe Wi-Fi calling forces my phone onto 4G to have 3G to fall back to, but nope. It always chooses 4G over 3G no matter wether Wi-Fi calling is on or off (of course I know that call would be made over Wi-Fi but I mean the connection to the cell tower). I have full 4 bar 3G signal pretty much in my entire house, while on 4G 1-2 bar downstairs and at best 3 on the 1st floor. Someone said, a weak 4G signal is still better (faster) than full 3G, and that might be the case, but if I am home and connected to Wi-Fi I don't care about data speed, I care about signal strength and the battery that suffers tremendously if I only have 1 bar.

I do understand that Apple is not responsible for what options are selectable from the cellular menu and that those options get pushed onto the device by the carrier. But who decides wether my phone connects to 3G or 4G? Apples iOS software, modem firmware, carrier? I doubt that the carrier makes the decision of to what network my phone connects to. Isn't it the phone and its software itself that chooses?

And I am saying this only because when I am inside, switch on airplane mode and turn it back off, my 12 pro connects to a full bar 3G network and after 30 seconds or so switches to a (usually) 3 bar LTE. When I go downstairs (not basement) sometimes I only have 1 bar on LTE, but no matter where I am in the house its always 4 bars on 3G. The problem is just that the phone does not stay on that 3G network nor does it usually switch back. I don't even want a 3G-only option because I want LTE to be 'ready' as well, but it's just weird and not understandable that my phone simply does not prefer and switch to the strongest signal, even when that is 'only' 3G.

the iPhone 12 usually registers on networks with the fastest speed, not the most bars, I know that in some areas 4G/5G networks have not been completely deployed yet, so I suggest using the LTE only option, so it automatically switches from LTE to 3G, but you will never see a 3G option in settings anytime soon, it’s never happening, you will have to wait till 4G networks and 5G networks are completely deployed in your area, or by the iPhone 11, I know that here in the United States, when you call a certain number in the phone app, it sometimes drops to 4G/3G networks, I know that if you have a plan that does not support VOLTE, and you make a phone call, it will drop to 3G.

also emergency calls uses the strongest signal, that’s not a problem.

The only way I know how to fix the situation with only one bar of 4G/LTE is to download as many apps as you can on the App Store until the data connection fails and eventually it will drop to 3G and then after it drops to 3G, cancel the downloads of all the apps, another way to do that is to maybe watch a 1080 P YouTube video for approximately 13 seconds, if it’s keep streaming without any buffer, one bar of 4G/LTE is already enough.

I’ll give an example of what happened in 2012, in 2012 Apple released the iPhone 5 with LTE and there wasn’t an option to disable edge and yet no one was talking about that back in the days, but now people are complaining about not getting 3G, if you look at the signal measurements in the field test menu, you’ll see that even with one bar you can still get around -105, which is equivalent to two bars of LTE back in the day, as Many of us said before, A lot of bars does not mean the signal is good, for example, even with three bars of edge, you can’t even browse the Internet.

here are a list of bars that indicate Internet access is supported.

two bars of Edge: Internet access: not supported. call quality: some lag but often clear.

three bars of Edge: Internet access: supported. Call quality: extremely good

four bars of edge: Internet access: fastest 2G speed possible and full quality.

One bar of 3G: no Internet access, extremely low phone quality.

two or more bars of 3G: maximum 3G speed of 21.2 MBPS.

One bar of LTE/4G: with signal strength at -120/ 130 DBM: Data speeds around one, seven and 23 Mbps, average data speed at 14.4 Mbps.

One bar of LTE/4G with signal strength from -110 DBM to 118 DBM: average Internet speed at 20- 35 MBPS.

two bars of LTE with signal strength from -109 DBM to -106 DBM: average speeds at 35 to 90 Mbps at max.

three bars of LTE and full bars of LTE with signal strength from 105 DBM to 40 DBM: average data speeds will be from 35, 95 till 180 Mbps at max with FTDLTE bands one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 32, 66 and 71.

I haven’t used TDDLTE before here in the US, but I have seen it once with maximum data speed at 204 Mbps with full bars of LTE at -93 signal strength,

I have also seen two bars of 5G giving me data speeds at 54 Mbps to about 203 Mbps

In this case if there’s only one bar of LTE, and there was no Internet access, first check with the field test menu to see what band you’re using and how much DVM is within the signal range, after you found out that is higher than -126 DBM, the only way to work around this problem is to load certain websites and then if the network fails, it will automatically drop back to 3G. If Apple‘s website regarding wireless carrier support says that it supports 5G, then this carrier obviously does support 5G and maybe some users may not notice it, also some users may have other plans that do not support 5G but the carrier does, and that becomes a problem, the only option to resolve this issue is to switch to a carrier that does not support it, or you have said to ask a carrier to provision a profile that disables 5G connections all together.

Me too. I was using an iPhone 11 Pro and set in mobile data “3G” because at work 4g isn’t good. But now I have only 5g, 5g auto and 4g. Could you please give us the choice to use only 3g?

The problem is with your network provider and not apple. As we have seen from the specs the phones do support 3G but your network provider does not

Yep, it’s not possible to choose 3g on iphone 12 softwate.

I allmost bought iphone 12, but now I consider buing SE.

Its possible to choose 3g or 4g network with SE.

Matias

It has been mentioned many times here, they provide Apple with a Carrier File. You can see it by going to Settings > General > About > Carrier Settings.

Hi I had this worry to but I got the 12 pro max today and I live in a poor signal area so I thought I would see what the signal was like. Turned off WiFi and for the first time in a long time I had 3G signal in my house which never happens.

I think the worry over the 5G and 4G options is unnecessary as it will automatically go to what signal is available. I think the options are just there to help with battery life.

but everyone needs to remember 2G it always runs in the background and your phone will use it when 3G isn’t available too