Poor signal with iPhone 12 Pro Max

Same issues here. I bought myself, my wife and my son all iPhone 12 Pro Max (512GB) in December. We were all upgrading from our old 7 plus models. All three of us get crap reception at our house where it used to be just fine. No way that is a coincidence. Pretty bummed to pay over $1,600 for each phone to get worse calls than my super old phone. You would think for that kind of price tag it would work better than my Dad’s prepaid Walmart phone when making calls. Carrier is Verizon with unlimited plans. Come on Apple!

I have had the same experience with my iPhone 12 Pro Max. This has been the most upsetting and most disappointing experience I have had with an Apple device to date. I regret "upgrading" from my iPhone 8 Plus. While reception was not always great with that phone in my area, I have gone from being able to make calls to dropping calls frequently and not always being able to even make calls. I'm glad I have a landline in case of an emergency! The 4G coverage in my area is terrible and it is a thoroughway between cities where many people travel. Not having 3G on my phone means the coverage is now even worse than it was before and the cell companies don't care about coverage in my area... You are definitely correct @R Cripps that your coverage has gotten worse. It has been my unfortunate experience and it seems that Apple, Samsung, Verizon, AT&T, etc... no longer care about the little guy or the consumer, they just care about their bottom dollar. I would be very happy if they came out with a phone that would actually make phone calls and not drop them constantly.

I have owned the iPhone 12 Pro Max since last November. Came from the 11 Pro Max before, and before that the XR. The latest is obviously Qualcomm, with the prior's Intel.

My signal and call performance are exactly the same on the 12 pro max as they were on the others. Exact same RSRP's, number of bars and resultant call performance. No issues at all. When testing FirstNet on ATT, the signal and call performance were exactly the same as an iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone 7 on ATT (same residence location).

In fact, my data speeds are better despite no signal strength change, perhaps due to Qualcomm? That and the XR was I believe 2x2 MIMO.

I hate to hear of so many issues people seem to be having. Makes me nervous in a way (ha). But I have not had anywhere close to, the experiences you all are having. This phone has been rock solid in calls, data, texting, etc. In fact I even tested T-Mobile (forgot about that). Same thing. No issues. It performed exactly the same as an iPhone SE 2 on T-mobile. All of these side by side tests were done at my residence. And, SIM vs. e-SIM, no difference there either.

My IPhone Pro Max 12 does the same thing. My husband and I travel a lot and his older Samsung has more bars, can receive calls and texts and my new Apple phone has none! I waited over ten years to buy a new phone and I am so disappointed! My local Verizon told me basically they are sorry, they know this phone is a dud, and that I should try to sell it Facebook market and get something else. My 20 year old trac phone got better service than this phone!

Please let Verizon know the name of the employee who said that and the location; I'm sure Verizon corporate would like to have a chat with their manager.

You can't compare "bars" as they are only relative signal strength on that particular model of phone.

Ultimately, though, if another phone serves your needs better, sell your iPhone and buy something else.

Everyone here is just an Apple user, so it doesn't affect us at all.

So why are you posting here?? Strange

Many of us live in areas where reception may be suboptimal where our prior phones had ZERO issues and now have issues in the same location.

You obviously have no issue in your location. Great.

I should have said that my husband’s phone can receive calls and texts when my new IPhone 12 Pro Max doesn’t. His is an older Samsung. My IPhone also drops calls. It disconnects from wifi. People try to call me and I never know it because it just sends them straight to voicemail and it doesn’t show any missed calls or the voicemail messages. In researching this I discover this happens when I am out of service range. I never know this because I don’t always know when it drops my wifi or I drive out of service. I have had this phone for three months and have not driven anywhere new. I had an older iPhone for a few years and never had any of these issues.

What does your cellular carrier say about it?

You cannot directly compare two phones like that because you don't know what your local cell tower is asking the phone to do.

There are a range of frequencies that the cell tower can ask the phone to use, and it may be asking your iPhone to use a frequency it is incorrectly configured for. This would cause your iPhone to fail when a different phone has no issues.

For example, the 11 Pro Max supports FDD‑LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 29, 30, 66, 71).

The 12 Pro Max supports FDD-LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 32, 66, 71).

So the cellular tower may ask an 11 Pro Max to use band 30, but since a lot of devices use band 30, it may ask a 12 Pro Max to use band 32, as relatively few devices can use it so it will be less crowded.

But if the antenna for band 32 isn't optimized it also means the 12 Pro Max will see little to no signal while the 11 Pro Max will have no issues.

I'm not saying that is what's happening, but it's one way issues could be occurring.

I would like to add i have a iPhone 12 mini and the signal is absolutely crap with this phone. I can hardly send a SMS message and my calls keep dropping or else don’t even connect. I don’t have 5g enabled either. On a side note When i am driving the signal is bad as well as it drops from 4g to 3g to 2g and the doesn’t seem to go back up again.

The iphone is so unreliable I’ve actually popped my sim card back into an old 2g Nokia phone i last used about 10 years ago and just use my 12 Mini at home on WiFi..it’s ridiculous i have crystal clear call quality, full signal and no issues sending SMS with the 10 year old Nokia! Very disappointed with this iphone 12 Mini..Apple you need to get the basics right.

There is no solution to this problem - I have contacted Verizon and tried everything there is to try on every forum and it boils down to the IPhone 12 5G service being absolutely horrific. This is by far the worst phone I’ve ever owned ... my service is always stuck at 1 bar anywhere I’m located in my apartment - and if it’s in my pocket or I walk into certain areas - I lose service completely and it won’t come back unless I restart the phone or switch airplane mode on and off ... I have already done the troubleshooting through Verizon and Apple ... I cannot believe I had to pay over $1000 for something that can’t make or receive phone calls or texts ....

Bars are not some absolute representation of reception quality.

1) Bars only indicate relative signal strength on the device. Two bars on one phone does not mean the same as two bars on any other phone.

2) Signal strength is frequency-dependent. If, as is the case with the iPhone 12, a new phone supports reception on frequencies older phones did not, if your iPhone 12 is assigned to a different frequency than another phone would’ve been you cannot compare signal strength because they are on different frequencies.

3) This is especially the case with 5G networks, which use a completely different signal strength profile than LTE, 4G or 3G.

So when you say your iPhone 12 shows a different number of signal bars than your iPhone 11 or any other previous phone did, I would completely expect that.

You answered your own question.

I offered another vantage point. That included comparing other phones to the 12. As I stated I hated to hear of the problems and was offering some hope that maybe it wasn’t the phone. Maybe it was. There’s a lot more going on with respect to band selections (carrier) and signal propagation and antenna characteristics that people don’t understand (and shouldn’t have to). In the end one has to be satisfied and if they aren’t do something about it. And Apple should help.

One person I work with didn’t understand that part of the year his iPhone would pick up band 13 or 66 switching back and forth on VZW due to green up and deteriorated propagation characteristics (lower bars) that primarily affected band 66 (higher frequency). He did not know the actual cause because he doesn’t get into the phone diagnostics and asses signal strength or band type. Just an example. It wasn’t the phone.

Well one should be able to buy a "new" phone, expecting it to make and hold a simple phone call. It's absurd that so many of us are having problems doing the most basic task that a phone was made for.

I am having same issue with two new 12 Pro Max phones & T-Mobile service. Spent 45 minutes on hold listening to a recording saying T-Mobile customers are the happiest cell phone customers… Not! Three dropped calls yesterday in the middle of very important conversations.

I have the same carrier and same location that I reside at. My iPhone XS Max does not have the low signal and zero call drops in the same house with same SIM card. However, my newest iPhone 12 Pro Max exhibits a poor signal reception in and around the house (wifi being turned off, as you suggested earlier) and frequent call drops as well with the same SIM.

I, in fact, requested a service call-back from the apple care call center and they sent an email that their call went to my voicemail while I booked a call-back from the same phone at same location just 15 minutes ago. The call center representative acknowledged that the call was dropped that apple made while trying to reach me. There was no change in location and no change in the carrier between my call and Apple's callback.

Apple care representative booked me a visit to the Apple service center to run the hardware diagnostics. I was told the tool did not report any issues with the Antenna. However, the center representative acknowledged the call drops were seen in the phone logs.

I was sent home suggesting to reset the phone and try using again. That's an attempt which will require a data backup and restore which I am avoiding.

Anything else that you could suggest which might help in this case before I attempt the suggested reset?