Using 5G iPhone where 5G is bad
Short version: There's an area of southwest Florida where there is a strong 5G signal, yet terrible 5G service. 4G works great, though. How can I force a 5G iPhone to revert to 4G, in a way that nothing - not iOS, not the cell carrier, not the SIM card, nobody - can override?
Long version: Dear Apple,
I am writing to ask for help with an unusual - and profoundly frustrating - situation involving the use of an iPhone with Verizon cellular service in Marco Island, in Collier County Florida.
In spring of 2021 my father attempted to upgrade his aging - but capable - iPhone 6 to an iPhone 12 mini. To our surprise and dismay, the 12 mini seemed far LESS reliable than the iPhone 6 with both inbound and outbound voice calls. Calls frequently dropped and had audio issues that the iPhone 6 had never had, not even when used from the very same house.
We visited the local Verizon store for help - and received a startling bit of information from the staff there: Verizon’s 5G tower serving Marco Island was known to be malfunctioning, and had been for months. Although the tower's 5G signal is strong throughout most of Marco Island (four bars at my father’s house) the tower simply does not work well, apparently with any 5G device. The dropped calls (and calls that fail to connect at all) were not caused by poor communication between the iPhone and the 5G tower, rather the issue is apparently “upstream”.
Verizon’s staff on the island are aware of this, but they can offer NO timeline for resolving the problem. As I recall, they cited difficulty of accessing the tower site and labor shortages. This is infuriating considering that just disconnecting the power to the tower's 5G transmitter would yield much improved service!
With Verizon offering no help of any sort, I attempted to resolve the problem by searching the iPhone’s settings for some way to force it to use the older (and functional) 4G network - but without success. A search of the web offered a few suggestions for accomplishing this, but none was effective; even when I believed we had forced the iPhone 12 mini to use 4G, service did not improve. At the same time (and same place) my own AT&T iPhone Xs was working flawlessly.
In the end, my father returned the 12 mini and resumed using his iPhone 6. You will of course understand that this is not a good long term option. My father would like to get the new iPhone 13 mini, but only if he can be absolutely certain of a resolution to this problem.
My question is this: can Apple provide steps we could use to unfailingly force an iPhone 13 mini to use 4G even in the presence of a strong (but unusable) 5G signal, steps that cannot be overridden by any other factors - not by the cell carrier, not by the SIM card, and not by anything iOS might do behind the scenes?
If not - know that Marco Island, Florida is a near dead zone for Verizon customers with 5G iPhones.
(Note: inevitably, someone will probably reply telling me their 5G iPhone works fine there. That's great, but doesn't help me - unless you have a trick to share that made it work.)
