iPhone 15 Pro Max cellular service issues

Same issue with our Verizon service. My wife and I have the same 15 Pro Max, and her Apps were working fine on cellular, and mine would not load up. I noticed she had her VPN turned on, but I didn't. When I turned it on It resolved most of Verizon's Data Throttling. That should be Illegal. We shouldn't need a VPN to use our phone!

I can now confirm: Problem fixed with a 2nd mobile card. I followed opolopos advice. Incredible. Thank you!

I found turning off 5G standalone made cellular connections more prevalent and have less instances of SOS. See if that helps Settings>Cellular>Cellular Data Options>Voice & Data.

I had a long telephone call with my service-provider, T-Mobile. The problem we found out is as follows:

When migrating from the iPhone 13 pro max to the iPhone 15 pro max, data from a mobile phone card that I used in an iPhone 11 in Australia was apparently carried along. There I used the device with an Australian card from Hutchinson. This card had htpwap as APN settings. These are exactly the settings that appear when I insert a T-Mobile SIM card into my iPhone 15 pro max and they are incorrect. Overwriting the APN to the correct setting solves the problem of the missing data connection, but the device still seems to get confused and whenever you lose the network, the device only gets an edge connection and only when you switch it off and on once or several times then finally a T-Mobile 5G connection. The question now is: how do you get this old setting overwritten? A solution that works is to completely reinstall the device without a backup. But I don't want that because then all the data will be gone. Does anyone know a solution? I haven't tried it with the 2 SIM cards yet, I'm still doing that.

I chatted with Technical Support today and I was advised to do the following:

Let's have you try doing a Reset of all settings for the iPhone. This reset will clear the underlying settings of iOS, including your home page layout, Touch/Face ID, Apple Pay, and saved Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections. Please make sure you have your Wi-Fi password handy before proceeding.

This will not clear any Apps, Songs, Photos, or other saved content from the device. You will perform the actual reset by going into Settings and choosing General, tap Transfer or Reset, choose Reset, then you should see the option to Reset All Settings.

The solution is working for me…at least thus far…the past 3 hours. I am sitting in my living room where I typically cannot answer a call. I just answered a call with no problem and I have been able to call others successful. I hope the solution works for you!

Melinda

magnum09, opolopo posted a few days ago that signal can be better if you use an eSIM rather than a physical SIM card. I just installed one from my phone company’s website & it’s fixed the problem. They say to remove the SIM card as it’s not needed ..

haven’t done that yet.

The bars aren’t the issue. It depends on the specific tower site. If it has the proper fiber, backhaul and density needed the tower site will perform properly on either 4G LTE or 5G. It really depends which 5G icon you see. If it’s just “5G” as an icon you see on any of the three Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T that’s their low band 5G which is barely a little faster than 4G LTE. If you see 5G UW (Verizon), 5G UC (T-Mobile), or 5G + (AT&T) then you’re most likely on their mid band 5G network the has more capacity for useable speed and data. Or you might tap into their millimeter wave spectrum which can give you gigabit speeds and a lot of much needed capacity that doesn’t lag. Also keep up to date on software updates. There’s always network updates to the phones cellular modem

One thing that helped me on iPhone 15 Pro was to switch the data mode to “Standard” (it was set to “Allow More Data on 5G” originally).

I don’t know how is this related, but the connectivity became better.

Settings > Mobile Service > the SIM card > Data Mode

Apologies I totally forgot to provide an update.

Yes: having two active eSIMs appeared to resolve the issue. One was my original SIM and the other a new Pay as You go from the same provider (Giffgaff).

I have since swapped my original SIM back to a physical one, as per the original workaround.

If you read through the comments and other threads about the same problem you would have seen that even with hardware "repair", swapping of components, and even full phone replacement, did not fix the issue. This is obviously not a hardware issue, its a firmware/software issue. Because people who had purchased the 15's with the initial iOS version had no problems until updates got released (with the majority of issues seem to be coming from 17.0.3 and onwards).

I am from India and using iphone 15 & i have the same issue.I tried all the reset and software updates.The carrier which I am using is Airtel and i am facing this issue in my office and home(both are at same area).In my house it does not work in my living room or in my bedroom but in the other bedroom it works good.If the problem is with the carrier,then my family members who are also using the same network are not facing this issue. If problem is with the phone,then the problem should be there in all locations. One more issue i am facing is,when i try to call someone the call connects after 15 secs,same when i attend an incoming call it connects only after 15secs.But when i tried another sim of a different carrier,it works fine.

I had this same issue as for some reason my phone was on T-Mobile towers they finally switched me to att towers (I’m a boost customer) and now my phone works great. I had to contact the bbb and the AGI and the FCC before they would do it

@opolopo: in my case the problem was fixed even if the second mobile card reception was completed turned off (without deleting the card)

So I tuned off private relay and my data speeds increased to that of my iPhone 14. Who knew it would slow it down that much.

Hello Disgruntled Over Cell Service on Your $1k+ Purchase World,

Quick recap. I have a 15 Pro with remarkably horrible cellular reception (on Verizon and in a city) and was considering changing to a Max in the hopes of the larger antenna and more PCB copper would increase my changes of better cellular signal but this thread leads me to believe not. So I went into Apple Store today off the street b/c if you try to schedule a Genius Bar appt over anything cellular, their app just says talk to your carrier.

So I went in cold, and they were clearly VERY well coached to again try to push me to the Verizon store but I persisted. Waited an hour (whatever) and someone put my phone on a diag tool. Said there was one finding in that my 5G was set to Auto instead of persistently on so we changed that (didn’t help - phone signal is still worse than my 14 Pro in the same areas in that I just loose coverage where I could reliably talk before). He showed me a suite of tests on the modem that passed but there was one, that looked to be the MOST significant and shame on me for not screenshotting it, that would never complete so there was no conclusion. To me that is a huge red flag. It ended in them asking me to go to Verizon to get re-provisioned. I will do this, and I will report back. But WTF, I’ve owned literally every iPhone and never had this problem.