Q: How do I turn off 3G on the iPhone 4S?

I live in the UK.  I have a 4S and Ive been in areas that have patchy or no 3G coverage and my 4S has no problem switching to an alternative connection method when the 3G signal fades away or is non existent. I find my 4S much better at holding onto a 3G signal longer and getting a stronger signal generally than my iPhone 4 was.

I think your comment 'if you are in a area with poor 3G coverage it will render the phone useless' is a bit overboard and not necessarily correct. 

According to Apple's website, the iPhone 4S supports:

UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz);

GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

CDMA EV-DO Rev. A (800, 1900 MHz)3

802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz only)

Bluetooth 4.0 wireless technology

So, it can not be a hardware problem.

I too live in the UK, and have a 3GS & 4GS. My kids have the following: 1 x iP4S; 3 x iP4.

Putting the phones in the same room, the 3GS & iP4 with 3G turned OFF and running only on 2G have demonstrably better signal reception. The iP4S drops to 1-bar and drops calls but takes a long time auto-switching to 2G.

Also, the two iP4Ses are on Orange/T-Mobile, as is the 3GS. If the Orange signal is lost, the 3GS immediately switches to T-Mobile but the two iP4Ses don't.

And, to cap it all off, a two year old 3GS has better battery life than the iP4S, most likely due to the iP4S constantly hunting for a decent signal.

Well I have 3 employees plus myself who would beg to differ. I. Don't spend my time complaining for the sake of it. If you find that you can't make or receive calls and your battery is dead after 8 hours then I think that makes the the device fairly useless as a phone! As a wifi device, yes superb! Receive emails, surf the web, great! Make phone calls on my mobile phone when I work? ****** useless! If you don't believe me then I will gladly send you the post code, you can drive here and find out for yourself. If you think a saying a £500 mobile phone that I can't use to make phone calls on is a bit over the top then you need a reality check! Until 2 weeks ago I had an iphone4 with 3G turned off, great, best phone I've ever had. Now I have an upgraded phone which cannot make calls from my plaice of work, where I spend 50% of my life. I call that pretty useless!

He is right.i work at she same place as he does and my signal is terrible.i rely on my phone for the whole day and when your expecting a call then it goes to voicemail it's pretty annoying.its ok for everyone who has a strong 3G signal but where we are it is non existant and the phone is constantly trying to connect to it. once it has established a connection the signal is so weak it disconnects and then try's to reconnect to the weak 3G signal yet again,I spend more time calling people back and appologiseing for the fact I didn't answer my phone as it had no signal than i do recieveing calls.Please apple bring back the 3G toggle switch.There is still a huge part of the world relying on there 2g signal,iknow 3G is slowly taking over 2g but not for a long time yet.

I have patchy 3G coverage on O2, phone lasts almost two days with about 6-7 hours of use, wifi on all the time using siri etc, not having the issues you are though.

I see the same as you.

Its obviously an issue for some people no denying it, but not everyone, perhaps its isolated to a certain batch of 4S's?

This would explain why not everyone is having a problem?

Or one last thing.

I was looking on another forum, and someone mentioned about switching the carrier (in settings) from automatic, and choosing the carrier from the list which is the same as your sim card. Hope it helps somebody.

I find it very hard to belive it's a bad batch of iPhone 4s as myself plus 3 of my colleges have upgraded and we all have the same problem.i think it's more where u are located.when I go home I get a good signal in 2g and in town there is a weak 3G signal but my phone picks it up fine and connects to it,you see where I work the 3G mast is 7 miles from where I work so the phone knows its there and try's to connect but it's that faint it can't actually get a signal from it.whatever the problem is I don't think it will be sorted until apple give us the option back to turn 3G off.

Paul-k2011 wrote:

 

I find it very hard to belive it's a bad batch of iPhone 4s as myself plus 3 of my colleges have upgraded and we all have the same problem.i think it's more where u are located.when I go home I get a good signal in 2g and in town there is a weak 3G signal but my phone picks it up fine and connects to it,you see where I work the 3G mast is 7 miles from where I work so the phone knows its there and try's to connect but it's that faint it can't actually get a signal from it.whatever the problem is I don't think it will be sorted until apple give us the option back to turn 3G off.

I expect Apple will release a software update that will fix this issue and or alter the level of signal required to switch over to another connection method.

I agree that it is handy to have the option to switch 3G off altogether, and I have left feedback. The iPhone 4s will switch over to 2G if there is no 3G signal. I have 2 bars 3G upstairs and it switches over to 5 bars 2G when I go downstairs, or outside until I get towards the top of the hill. 

Smashmedia wrote:

 

No sigh!

When turn off "Disable Cellular Data" iphone close communication with "apn" but continue use 3g... is not good

 

There is no logical expectation the "Disable Cellular Data" will force the iPhone to revert to EDGE.

All "Disable Cellular Data" does is disable cellular data.  Cellular data can be accessed via GPRS, EDGE, and 3G which are all flavors of GSM.  The only way to disable 3G would be an On/Off switch for 3G.

Why Apple chose to leave that setting out of the 4S no one here knows... maybe Apple will see fit to put it in with a future software update, but not unless enough people complain about it.  Complaining here will not have any affect though... leave feedback for Apple here.

Your feedback link goes to the wrong place. It links to the Pages for iOS page instead of the iPhone feedback page. People should be leaving feedback by going here- http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Thank you for catching my oversite.  I thought the iOS feedback page would be appropriate, but iPhone feedback is probably more accurate.

I have iOS 5 on my iPhone 4 (GSM). The option to toggle on and off 3G is still there.

The iPhone 4 (CDMA) doesn't have this option because of the nature of the network technology used.  The iPhone 4S may not have it for similar compatability issues or the new radio manufacturer chipset (Qualcomm) might not support it.

Apple stated that the option to turn off is removed from iPhone 4S.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4203

This is not a software or hardware issue. Rather it is a configuration due to the model of phone we are using.

I still have my 3GS which is on iOS5 and the option to turn off is still there.

I agree we need the option back. While it is less of poor 3G coverage here but heavy 3G data congestion.

It can be so bad that I can't even send a msn msg over 3G while it works fine on 2G even though the 3G signal can be 3-5 bars.

The other point is always abour the batt. On my 3GS running on 3G the whole quarter day.... yeah.. I ever used my 3GS from 100% batt to 20% batt in 3-4 hours.. while the 2G will last me 6-8hours.. I have to charge 2 - 3 times a day which is frankly ridiculous.