iPhone 4 signal issue with no bars

I just loaded it and I'm going to start hitting the ATT forums with the idea it is on their side. I'm sure Apple would tell me that anyway.

software related for sure. i experience something similar. airplane mode always fixes.

Since that's an SMS messaging application does it count against your text messaging allowance to send reports?

Apple needs an error reporting application for the iphone4 like they do in their Mac OS to be able to report problems, crashes and errors and send along a log dumb with it.

I am glad to have stumbled on this thread.. I have had bar issues for months.. even before I upgraded from iphone 3gs to iphone 4..I have been talking to at&t since March about this. I have always been with this company and have never had tower strength problems.. I have been told by several at&t techs that they are seeing what they call "degraded towers" in a 10 mile radius of my house and also in the 25 mile "snapshot" they are taking.. They are pretty much just keep telling me to keep calling every 2 weeks.. I had always had full tower strength in my house in every room. Now since March or so I am most always down a couple bars.. I am thinking though since I got the iphone4 it might be a little worse then it was.. I am sitting here in my den looking at my tower strength right now and seeing no bars but am connected to my network. That seems to be the norm anymore in my house. I am wondering also if all the hoopla over the "antenna" issues with the new phones is not that in fact is a tower issue with at&t. If they are upgrading all their towers to 4G could that be part of the problem.. When I made my biweekly call this week I spoke to a tech that said she is seeing no problems with any towers in my area and didn't seem to understand what I was telling her the other techs had said about taking a "snapshot" of a 10 mile radius and sending it to the appropriate people that would be addressing the "degraded" towers. The funny thing about that call was in the middle of my sentence the "call failed".. I was hoping she would call me back since it was obvious that I didn't hang up on her since I was in the middle of a sentence but she did not call me back.. I wonder if she convineiently hit the disconnect button on her phone since she didn't feel like dealing with my problem.. A good customer service rep would have called me back. My only choice was to start the whole call process over again and explain the whole thing again.. I am getting tired of telling the story each time I call. I have been contemplating going into the apple store and asking them to let me return my 4 and if they would sell me a 3gs to let me see if it is as bad. Oh I didn't mention.... my hubby usual has full tower strength when I am showing one or two or no bars at all and he is standing right beside me.. How could it be that my last two phones both had the same tower strength issues and he had no issues.... Oh great.. I just asked him how many bars he has since I have 2 and he said he has none so it is definately not the phones... He has not upgraded to the iphone4 yet...It has to be an at&t issue.... needless to say I am frustrated and almost out of my 30 day return period. Sorry I am rambling but I just was kind of glad to see I wasn't the only one but what can we do??? We can't climb the towers and fix things ourselves....

WhizKidX wrote:
software related for sure. i experience something similar. airplane mode always fixes.

All airplane mode does is force the phone to look for a new tower. It's a baseband problem most likely has nothing to do with the OS

I've never used airplane mode. I thought that put you in a no cell service state so as not to interfere with the airplane instruments

kimbra8 wrote:
I've never used airplane mode. I thought that put you in a no cell service state so as not to interfere with the airplane instruments

That's exactly what it does. But ppl flip it on and off to basically "reset" the phone part of the iPhone without a full on reboot if the iPhone.

Yeah I got the same issues but only on 3G I can have 2 to 4 bars and nothing! No data connection.. The only way I get connection is if I make a phone call wait 10 seconds hang up den go on the net and now the Internet works..I will only have about 5 min of connection
And then it stops! But if I switch to edge I'm always connected slow of course but I'll be connected at even 1 bar...
Now all of this happen after I updated to 4.0.1 and I have the iphone4

So, I disabled 3G under Settings\General\Network and I have gone in and out of known poor 3G coverage areas and my phone has not slipped into the "no bars" state. It gets down to one bar and holds. Using the suggested "Mark the Spot" app that AT&T provides, I marked where my issues have been happening and attached a detailed note and phone number regarding my issue. We'll see if anything happens as I will be doing it daily. I will turn 3G back on Monday and expect to see my issue happen again confirming it is a either a 3G network issue or the phone's ability to gracefully switch between the two. I'll report back then. It's happening on two iPhone 4s simultaneously. One phone has old 4.0 and the other 4.0.1, independent of WiFi as we turned that off to rule out. Only seems to happen in one area so far and that area is just out of good 3G coverage.

I'm just going to be lazy and copy/paste the post I made early this morning 😉



I just received my second iPhone 4 yesterday, activated, synced...

Everything was fine until this morning when I came to work. Again, it immediately went from 5 bars on Edge to Searching.

Restarted phone, no change.
Turned on/off Airplane mode, no change.
Growled at it, no change.

Then I thought.. hm. I wonder if the antenna in this thing is so fine tuned, that it can actually just barely find a 3G signal close by, but the signal is so weak that the phone pops in and out of no signal/searching mode.

So I turned off 3G (wireless was already turned off).

It immediately jumped from 'searching' to 5 bars, Edge.

I did notice that while driving to work this morning, I stayed on 3G a bit longer then usual (my son was watching the signal so I could concentrate on the road). So to all of you with the same issues I had with my first iPhone 4 (which had other issues as well, hence the return after only 1 week), you may just want to give this a try.

Unfortunately, living in Arkansas means I have to content myself with the fact that AT&T just doesn't care about us redneck hillbillies and will not put in more towers (one of their reps actually blamed Arkansans for it.. ya, ooookay).
But, this Searching/No Signal issue seems to be an AT&T problem, not an Apple iPhone 4 issue.

I guess I will be switching to Verizon as soon as Apple decides to let them sell the iPhone as well... And I don't even care how long I have left on my contract!

(I haven't had it drop below 5 bars since I turned off 3G this morning. Sure, I'll have to turn 3G back on when I get home tonight, but at this point, I'm just happy my phone is even working..lol)

I am getting EXACTLY the same problem as you guys.

Added: to the guy above. I totally agree with you. The iPhone 4 picks up a weaker 3G signal that earlier models just weren't capable of. Its problem lies in the switching to the Edge signal seamlessly. Somebody please tell this to Apple!

My partner had the iPhone 4 a week before I got mine. Same problem... In our house actually. My 3GS never even picked up 3G where we live so always had a strong Edge connection. I think 3G was too weak.

Since we both possessed our iPhone 4s, we were luckily not affected by the "death grip" problem but instead, the network signal would jump from a very strong Edge signal to a very weak (one bar) 3G signal, then eventually change to "Searching" or "No service". This annoyed me as there was no need for the phone to jump to a weaker signal.

I thought it might be the Sim card, so, with the adapter, I switched the sim card from the iPhone 4 to the 3GS (also running iOS 4.01) and sure enough, no dropped signal except when I toggled 3G on and off. The 3GS quickly dumped the weak 3G signal in favour of the more reliable Edge and stayed strong.

I tried all the suggestions here including scrubbing my iPhone 4 and not doing a restore but I still get the same message consistently.

I took my iPhone 4 to the Glasgow Apple Store and the genius there looked surprised when I showed him my screenshots showing my lack of signal for 3-4 mins. He gave me a replacement phone.

Needless to say, I need to take this one back as the vibrate doesn't work, but I am also getting the same 3G problem.

Turning off 3G fixes the dropped signal problem, but it's definitely not a solution, seeing as my 3GS coped fine where I am.

So if Apple offer you a replacement, the problem will remain. The three iPhone 4s that have been in my household all encounter the exact same problem.

I'm sure this is fixable via a software update. I'm with O2 in the UK so this problem isn't just tied to AT&T in the US.

I really, really hope this is sorted soon because I love my iPhone apart from this very annoying problem.

Message was edited by: Deebers

Message was edited by: Deebers

Message was edited by: Deebers

Incidentally, I'm going to show this post to the Apple Genuis in the hopes he highlights it to the powers that be!

Interesting you said Arkansas. The place where I experienced the problem was just out side of Hot Springs Arkansas, it happened several times in the same spot.

It can't be just an AT&T problem because I had to use my wife's motorola flipphone when my iphone4 got stuck in "searching..." mode. Her phone didn't have the problem.

It may be a combination of AT&T and Iphone4. It's a software glitch somewhere.

Personally? I think part of the issue is that Arkansas has virtually zero 3G coverage. Look at their coverage map. I'm lucky enough to live just outside of Little Rock, but just a few minutes away at my place of employment, no such luck.

When I asked the CS Rep why we have so little coverage, he had the nerve to blame people who don't want cellphone towers anywhere on their property.

What I don't get is why they don't just upgrade the existing Edge towers with 3G technology. He tried to give me some other bull excuse. Honestly? I just don't think AT&T wants to spend the money on it.
I mean.. it's Arkansas ya know. Only thing that comes out of there is hillbillies and Bill Clinton.

=(

Message was edited by: Solarya