iPhone 14 Pro Signal Issues

This same issue comes up every time a new iPhone is released, and it occurs for the same reason:

Cellular carriers need to properly optimize their towers and antennas for the latest cellular frequencies.

When it comes to 5G, the iPhone 12 supports the following frequency bands:

• 5G NR (Bands n1, n2, n3, n5, n7, n8, n12, n20, n25, n28, n38, n40, n41, n66, n71, n77, n78, n79)
• 5G NR mmWave (Bands n260, n261)

The iPhone 14 Pro supports the following frequency bands (differences from iPhone 12 in bold):

• 5G NR (Bands n1, n2, n3, n5, n7, n8, n12, n14, n20, n25, n26, n28, n29, n30, n38, n40, n41, n48, n53, n66, n70, n71, n77, n78 n79)
• 5G NR mmWave (Bands n258, n260, n261)

When a cell phone connects to a cell tower, it tells the tower "Hi, I'm this kind of phone, and I support these frequency bands."

The tower says "Great, let's see what's least congested… OK, use frequency band (as an example) n48."

If the cellular tower isn't properly adjusted/optimized for the assigned frequency band (again as an example) n48, your iPhone 14 Pro may see little to no signal where your iPhone 12 on frequency band n28 sees full bars.

If the tower assigned your iPhone 14 Pro to use band n28 as well, everything would work as it did before, but because the newer frequencies are most likely to be less crowded, that probably won't happen.

Long story short, contact your cellular provider, only they can fix this.

I have battled this problem with my 14 pro max for months on calls and especially trying to open a page or app or website I can not begin to tell you how much time I have spent on calls to my carrier tech support and Apple support and about 3 weeks ago I was able to finally find a representative at my carrier who told me to check if I have a vpn on my phone and to make this post shorter that was the problem turn off vpn and disable the auto refresh on vpn and I have not had any problems with connectivity for 3 weeks now since then

Hi Dogcow-Moof,

Respectfully, individuals on this thread have asked you for guidance on how to convince the carrier to address this issue.

Since you are so familiar - and confident with this issue, I presume you are either in the mobile telephony industry, or have yourself addressed this same issue with a carrier.

Would you kindly share some thoughts on how to approach a carrier to convincingly drive this to resolution?

Thank you

That's why I've said multiple times to contact your cellular carrier to complain about the issue.

The only way to get the issue resolved is via changes the carrier needs to make, either by adjusting/reaiming the antennas at the tower or by modifying the BTS (base transceiver station) parameters to modify power levels or not assign devices to that channel.

Sometimes it can also be corrected if carriers issue a revised Carrier Settings Update, but that's quite rare as it would modify frequency band assignments for the entire network.

It's completely in the carrier's court and will not likely be addressed until they receive a sufficient number of complaints about the issue. The good news, if you will, is most carriers will log the complaint in an internal database, even if the rep on the other side says it's due to your choice of device.

No, I'm suggesting if you have an issue your carrier needs to correct it at the cell tower at which you are having difficulty.

All carriers have this same problem, and sometimes it's something as simple as the antennas were configured in winter and in spring tree leaves interfere with the frequencies involved; other times the inverse is true and snow interferes with the signal.

Sadly, Apple can't make any of the cell carriers spend money to correctly optimize their antennas; they've tried for years, but for the most part the cell carriers do things on their own schedule and one phone vendor isn't going to make them pay for the cost to send out a crew.

It can't be helped what people who don't take the time to understand an issue think about a device due to their own misconceptions, and if you do an Internet search you will find people with the same complaints about the latest Google and Samsung devices in various areas.

But as always, if you think there is something wrong with your phone, make an appointment to have it examined.

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

or contact Apple Support directly:

Contact - Official Apple Support

Just wanted to leave a update it’s been about 3 months and I have still not had any more connection problems since turning off the vpn

My iPhone 14 max pro has virtually no reception in my house. We have 3 other 5g iPhones in the house (12, 13 pro, and 13 pro max) all of which have a strong signal and no dropped call issues.

I

The 14 also seems to have issues with Wi-Fi calls too, so I’ve had to revert to zoom calls on my laptop. My cellular provider is Verizon

Capcontulsa wrote:

Previous posts have strongly suggested the root of the problem is that the latest phones(Apple as well as Samsung) try to use a frequency that;

1) was not available on X, 12 and 13, and

2) has not been optimized by the tower operators.

To be clear, as Lawrence stated the phone does not "try" to use a frequency; rather it informs the cell tower of which frequencies it supports and the tower's base station controller tells the phone which frequency it must use.

The problem arises when carriers have updated the software to tell the controllers to use new frequencies but a crew has not visited the tower to optimize its antennas for the new frequencies.

It sounds strange, but there are all kinds of factors that come into play here, including one notable and not apocryphal story that a carrier updated a tower and users had no problem connecting during the winter, but in Spring they began getting complaints.

It turns out the new frequencies were in a range that got attenuated by leaves when trees between users and the tower started to leaf out.

Then you may want to have your device examined.

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

The 13 Pro Max and 14 Pro Max have been the best iPhones I've owned in terms of reception; there is an area near me where calls always used to drop and they haven't there on the 13/14 Pro Max despite the area still having a single bar of signal and no changes being made to the tower that serves the area.

Again, you can't make that assumption.

For example, looking at the LTE tech specs for the two phones:

iPhone 12 Pro Max:

• 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)
• TD‑LTE (Bands 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 48)

iPhone 14 Pro Max (differences emboldened):

• 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)
• TD-LTE (Bands 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 48, 53)

What this shows is that if your iPhone 14 is assigned to TD-LTE band 53, you will see an entirely different signal profile than anything you would ever see on the 12, as the 12 didn't support it.

Unfortunately there is no easy way for consumers to find out which band their device is assigned to as carriers don't generally want customers to have that information.

Yes, it is a cellular tower issue (not even a provider issue, but a tower issue - if you go several miles away you may have no issues with signal at all.)

I've mentioned before, the frequency bands for the 13 Pro/Pro Max (bands not supported by the iPhone 14 Pro/Pro Max in italics):

• 5G NR (Bands n1, n2, n3, n5, n7, n8, n12, n20, n25, n28, n29, n30, n38, n40, n41, n48, n66, n71, n77, n78, n79)
• 5G NR mmWave (Bands n258, n260, n261)
• FDD-LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 32, 66, 71)
• TD-LTE (Bands 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 48)

The frequency bands for the 14 Pro/Pro Max are (additions in bold):

• 5G NR (Bands n1, n2, n3, n5, n7, n8, n12, n14, n20, n25, n26, n28, n29, n30, n38, n40, n41, n48, n53, n66, n70, n71, n77, n78 n79)
• 5G NR mmWave (Bands n258, n260, n261)
• 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)
• TD-LTE (Bands 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 48, 53)

So what this means is that if the tower assigns your iPhone 14 Pro to one of the frequency bands in bold, you might only see one bar of signal where an iPhone 13 Pro would see full bars because it can't be assigned to one of those.

Likewise, your iPhone 14 Pro might see full signal bars but an iPhone 13 Pro might see one bar of signal if it were assigned to one of the frequency bands in italics.

There is nothing for Apple to fix, it’s your cellular carrier.

It’s explained in my post at the top of this thread.

Your Android has more range on the specific frequency it was assigned; if it were assigned to the same frequency band as your iPhone you’d see the same results.

Only proper configuration/tuning of the cell tower antennas and base station controller can change any of that.

I have been complaining about this issue and they keep telling me it’s the 5g well I have t mobile and 5g on my android Samsung phone works fine my older iPhone worked fine also i truly believe it’s the iPhone 14 is the issue I hope apple looks into this and stop giving excuses that it’s the 5g