IPhone 3GS displays "no Service"

This is a bonafide uh-oh on Apple. My wife and I are both experiencing this phantom "No Service" which required us to have to reboot our phones on a regular basis. ***? $750 for each phone so we can reboot every other morning.

Can any offer insight here? Apple seems to be suspiciously quiet on this one.

Not sure what you mean by that Apple are not supplying you with any service, your telephone carrier is. All iphones are the same but the same can not be said of the carriers.

i'm having the same problem, i beleive it too be a fault with the fone as the sim card has no problems in my other phone, all started when i upgraded the software.ive searched all over the net looking for anything that might help with no joy. found several forums of people complaing about the problem but still no solution or explanation, which is extremelt irritating. too fix the problem i think you need too contact apple suport by phone as there website is completely useless!!! and wee cant fone because the phone you gave us doesnt work. thanks apple!!!

I've been a Verizon customer for over 15 years and NEVER had service/signal issues. Finally, upgrade to the iPhone 4 for both my wife and I and suddenly we have these "No Service" problems. The Verizon signal is there. I know it's there because my while our $750 iPhones are inop, our son's $50 LG Ally phone is able to make calls just fine. In fact, we had to use his phone to discuss our problems with Verizon support. Verizon did send out two new phones and guess what... same issues.

Not happy. At best I might get Verizon to send out two new HTC Thunderbolt phones to replace these ones. At worst I'm stuck with these ones. Apple saying it's a Verizon problem, Verizon saying its an Apple problem (which I believe it is) and as always, it's the little guy who's taking it up the rear.

HELP! Someone have a solution here?

i have the same problem except i am with at&t. it just started this morning, service goes in and out and i am unable to open any apps. they crash a second into start up and anytime i make an attempt to call or text i lose service. it prompted me to restore which led me to believe it is a hardware problem. regardless, i tried calling my service provider and surprise surprise, the call was dropped. i was fed up and drove to the apple store for answers. just my luck, the problem with bad service stopped when i got here however i'm keeping my 5:30 genius appt to make sure it doesn't happen again. hopefully i'll have some answers for you all shortly...or a new phone!

also, my whole family has different generations of the iPhone (3G, 3GS, 4G). no one else is having the same problems and we are all on the same service carrier & plan. definitely an "uh-oh on Apple".

UPDATE: the associate i met with listened to me for all of 2 minutes and said all i needed to fix the problem was a firmware restore. he described it as "your regular restore, only deeper". he said it would only take 10 minutes so i was free to roam the store while i waited. once it was done i asked if the problem was solved and if i should expect it to return, he assured me it was taken care of and sent me on my way. at 1 am the service problem returned and my phone was once again useless. this time i took screen shots of every prompt and malfunction. i noticed that while it was searching for service an extra tab would pop up momentarily under airplane mode & wifi settings. it was labeled "network" or "service provider" something along those lines, when opened it was still searching. it took a while to settle on at&t. i took pictures of each screen and scheduled another genius appointment for sunday afternoon. i was determined to get answers or a new phone. i had a different associate this time, he listened and after seeing the pictures and listening he asked me to wipe my phone's memory and sign a waiver then without saying much else presented me with a new phone. he said it must have been a bad chip. that was the only explanation i got so hopefully you all have some luck. if you're still within warranty go get a replacement. remember, you are the customer! you deserve the product you paid for, not a second rate, unreliable, faulty device.

Try turning off 3G data (leave "cellular data", which is 2G/Edge turned on). Then power off/on the phone, and see if this solves your problem. I think you got bit by the same 4.3.3 software bug I did, and that's what "solved" it for me (until a proper fix comes out).

Brad.

UPDATE:

Apple walked me through a re-program. It's like a backup restore, only it's first a factory restore and you'll reset everything to the way you first got the phone. I'll recap the steps.

1) In iTunes, you should see your iPhone under devices

2) Right click or select control and click your iPhone and select "Transfer Purchase"

3) Right click or select control and click your iPhone and select "Back Up"

4) Click "Yes" to updating the latest carrier software

5) DO NOT restore from your existing backup, instead select the "New Phone" option

6) I had to re-update my photos and songs to the phone, but my apps that I purchased remained in iTunes and appeared after the sync.

These steps are from memory (i did this bout 4 days ago). We've had 2 "No Service" issues since the reprogrammings between both my wife's and my iPhone. This has improved from 3-5 times per phone per day. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions. Hope this helps.

Can someone could verify the appove steps? I'm about 95% sure though.

Frodo67,

We appreciate having you as a customer for all of these years. We have seen this issue reported on a number of iPhones and are currently working with Apple to determine what is causing this issue with the loss of service.

Thank you,

Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport

Thanks for the steps. For now I'm willing to live with 2G data, but I may eventually break down and follow the steps you've posted. We'll see if my patience runs out before 4.3.4 arrives. 😁

I'm curious though, after you've done that, what version of software do you end up with? If it's still 4.3.3, I'm not 100% confident that actually "solves" the underlying problem.

Brad.

Latest software for Verizon is 4.2.8. All I can say is that the last three days have been 100% good. I'm an electrical engineer and all I can tell you is that software bugs are very very funny creatures. It is impossible to anticipate and account for every fail scenario, and often times you can fix one bug but create two new ones in the process. Like you, I am not sold my problems have gone away, but I am enjoying this current stabilization. I'll report back in a few days to update on the service.

Very glad to hear Verizon chiming in.