iPhone 4S unable to turn off 3G?!

L.A. here too. I switch to EDGE to make and receive phone calls. If I do not, calls are garbled and dropped. I literally cannot have phone conversations on 3G. I still have my iPhone 4 and there is a 30 day return policy on the 4s. I will wait until the 29th day to see if there are any software updates for this and battery life. Otherwise, I will be saying bye-bye to Siri and a better camera.

I returned my iPhone 4S this afternoon because of this exact scenario. I went back to my iPhone 4 because I can turn 3G off/on when I want/need to. I really hope they allow this in the future. If not, I'll keep my iPhone 4. 😟

After calling Apple Care 3 times, I was just informed by a senior advisor that they will NOT be able to change this feature via an update, since it is hardware related. They said that feauture will no longer be available in new phones unless Apple changes its mind and releases a new model with that feature. As of now, if you own a 4s, you will not be getting that feature.

I am pretty upset about this, becuase it means I have to return my 4s and exchange for a 4. My battery drains rapidly and I can't get a good enough signal to make a phone call in my house.

That is interesting because I have an iPhone 4 and I updated to IOS 5 and the 3G toggle has disappeared. How does Apple explained that.

I'd seen a couple other people with the iPhone 4 complain about this - but the strange thing is, my husband, my brother, and my best friend all have a 4 and his 3G toggle did not go away after the IOS 5 update. I wonder why it's happening to some people and not others....

Hmmm wish they would officialy post something about this.

I keep getting mixed responses.

Really want a certain answer so I know whether to send my 4S back before it's too late.

I imagine the networks are going to get so much grief on this.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4203

Looks like there is an official post.

Well this piece of junk can go back.

I'm going to switch to Droid or M$.

RIP Apple you absolute idiots.

I honestly can't believe they did this. There are many many people who need to be able to turn off 3G, both for battery conservation and to make a phone call when they are getting a crappy weak 3G signal. I am so annoyed that I will have to return. Drats.

Just spoke to support rep who a) had not heard of this issue, but b) mentioned that Sprint and Verizon have moved away from Edge and cannot function without 3G. If true, it would explain why some iPhone 4 users have the option (AT&T) and some do not (other carriers). He also mentioned that the 3GS and 4 both had different hardware for different carriers, but the 4S has one hardware model for all. This might explain why it's off across the board, rather than enabling it per carrier.

I found the tech note interesting, that SMS will still work even with "cellular data" turned off. Perhaps this will be good enough.

If you can't turn it off how do I get 14 hours talk time?!

Can't believe it.

*If* you choose to turn cellular data off while making a call, what network are you making a call from? Still 3G?

Oh yeah. Sorry. Retard moment.

Haha! No retard moment! ;)

I'm so conflicted now. I still have my 4. I haven't sold it yet because I was waiting to see if there was going to be a software update. 3G and battery life. I had faith in Apple all would be fixed.

Same issue here.. Speed tests give me like .02mbps download and at times people can't even hear me when I'm talking to them.

Please please bring back the option to turn off 3g apple 😟

peelmanG4 wrote:

Not true. Voice and text are sent over the cellular radio, separate from data. This is quite simple to prove. Turn off cellular data. Your phone will still make a voice call and send texts.

ONE radio. That cannot be made clear enough. Your voice data is all digital now. Its being turned into 1s and 0s on the phone, and shipped out over the same network protocols used to relay HTTP requests and iMessages.

While your voice is digitized, that does not mean it is transmitted over 3G; there are different communication paths for voice/text and data. To prove that, on my Verizon iPhone 4 (a CDMA phone) I have the ability to turn off 3G but still make phone calls and send/receive SMS texts. In this mode I can make calls and SMS texts, but I have no data so I have to turn 3G back on to surf the web, send/receive e-mail, or send/receive MMS texts.

Apparently this is not possible with the 4S, but you can still do this on the iPhone 4 even with iOS 5 installed (Settings/ General/ Network/ Cellular Data/ Off), at least you can with the CDMA iPhone 4. Perhaps Apple re-named the setting (I honestly don't recall what it was called before since I never use that feature).