iPhone 4S drops 3G, have to restart phone to get it back

My 4S started doing this last week, seemingly whenever moving between areas of poor (or no) and good signal. The 3G symbol doesn't show when a signal is re-acquired but it returns after switching to/from airline mode. Before last week it worked fine, so I don't know what's triggered it. I've restarted the iPhone a couple of times with no improvement, and upgraded to 5.1.1 yesterday but had a repeat of the issue this morning.

Same issue here, FW is 5.1.1, it has been about a week since I need to turn Airplaine mode on/off everytime the 3g connection drops (at least 3 times a day). I have not found a particular app / reason thats causing this. I have called Iusacell in Mexico, they say they're upgrading some antennas, which to me sounds like BS, given that people are having exactly the same issue in other countries AND the fact that my iPad 2 is with the same exact carrier and the 3g is working flawlessly.

I am using t-mobile in the Netherlands.

I was in Prague and it jumped on and off with the 3G network. Sometimes no network picked up.

Then airplane mode multiple times to reset connection.

2 weeks ago I was in Sofia and at a certain moment I had no connection to any provider at all. And could not even make an emergency call.

I have reset my iphone nothing worked. My collegue who has a Iphone 4S also standing next to me had no problems at all.

I think I have to swap my Apple Iphone when this happens again.

I didn't pay 799 $ for a crappy phone.

Its been about 1 week since I did the new OS upgrade.

Wow, same results from BEFORE and this bug still exists.

I have to reboot my phone twice a day.

Apple please fix this frakking bug!

There are apparently several threads all dealing with the same issue of lost internet. Some think it is related to wi-fi and have posted under this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3470007?answerId=18410651022#18410651022&ac_cid=tw123456#18410651

I think we need to both give feedback to apple but also call at&t (or other carriers) so this starts getting more exposure.

For at&t just call 1-800-331-0500 enter cell phone number when prompted and then [6] then [2] through phone maze for internet support.

For apple just leave feedback at: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

same issue on my iphone4s with OS 5.1.1, no service is shown when i pass by a no single place, i wonder why it can't get the service back except the only way to reboot the phone, I'm using china telecom and have a call with them, but didn't get any useful response, I think this is a bug of OS, Apple should give solution ASAP, i don't have time to squander on rebooting the phone every day, i don't even know how many calls missing because this problem.

Same problem here. I am in Ireland on the '3' network. In my case simlock was already off so I think there's a larger issue than whatever is going on with simlock.

Same issue here with two iPhones 4s in our household. Only reboots solve the problem temporarly.

Feedback this issue weekly! Apple has to react!

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

im with you 41000+ views, massive problem. I am telling everyone i know about this issue hopefully it will cost apple some sales as i dont want them to rip off anyone else.

For the worlds (supposedly) premier smartphone 3g not working is a joke!

Same issue here. I primarily use my iphone for internet & email and 9/10 it's useless when I'm out and about. The other evening even a hard re-boot didn't do the trick. I've posted my feedback to Apple using Stema001's link. There are loads of discussion threads on this issue and it's a global problem - so clearly not network related. I've tried all the fixes suggested and none have worked.

Apple, are you even listening??

It came to the point where I changed operator to see if that would do any difference... and it did! I hate to admit that.

When I confronted the earlier operator with this, they told me they talked to Apple about the problem, but either of them could solve the problem.

I then asked them if they would try to use another operators carrier profile as some sort of template, to see if that made any difference... I don´t know if they did this. It´s just my thoughts about this problem.

If it helps anyone reading this thread, I live in Norway and used Onecall (pinned to Telenor as network), but then switched to Djuice, which is "fullfledged" Telenor network and uses another carrier profile than Onecall. That solved the problem for me. When I some time get my hands on iPhone 5, I´ll try going back to Onecall once more to see if anything has changed...

Hi I had the same problem but I now have received a new type of sim card from T-mobile (didn't even knew there was a new type) but it works fine now when I lose my 3G it just comes up again.

got a new sim from t-mobile and reset my phone software and still having the lost data issue!!!

updated from 5.1.1 to 6.1.3 and now i have issues. 5.1.1 is fine.....

I thought I'd post my unusal experience with this aweful problem just in case it helps anyone who is desparate to try something unorthodox; or clues anyone tecnhical in to the cause of the problem. It's a bit unusual but a few months back ( after a new replacement phone exhibited the exact same problem and i was starting to blame by provider ) I was getting angry with my provider for how they were not deailing with this problem and to cut a long story short I wouldnt pay and they cut me off. ( could still receive but not send ) ... then after a week or something I thought better of this and paid the balance and my service was restored ... but here's the kicker ... this problem has completely vanished since and I haven't changed any other factors that i'm aware of.