Iphone 4S wifi problem

Absolutely agree re: the ridiculousness of suggesting we buy new routers to make our iPhone 4Ss work. I had a Time Capsule (2nd gen) and thought that if I bought the newest generation Time Capsule and Airport Express, that these two together would surely fix the problem. Guess what? I still have the same problem, with iPhone 4S connecting to the wireless network but then slowly the signal degrades, slowing to a crawl.

I even bumped up my wireless plan through AT&T U-Verse to the highest data plan (18mb/sec), and this didn't change the situation.

I did try changing the channel to 3 in Airport Utility as people here suggested, which did fix things for about 30 min, then it was back to the same slow internet. What gives, Apple? Please fix this, if anyone from Apple is reading this, PLEASE!

So, my replacement phone should be here on Monday. I stopped by the Apple store today and jumped on their wifi with my 4s. Got on their wifi network fine and proceeded to doing internet stuff on the phone. After about 5-10 minutes, guess what happened... yep, wifi froze. That helped me to definitively say that there is a problem with my iphone 4s. It's not my router, it's not my network, it's not ios5.

For those of you who have bought new routers and are happy, that's great for you. You may have had some other issue that is not the same as what i, and some others, have been experiencing. My testing for my specific issue does not lead me to think that my router is at issue. I have an Apple Time Capsule. It would be absurd to say that an Apple router doesn't work with an iphone... And, my iphone 4s worked great on my network for close to 2 weeks. Seeing the issue happen at the Apple Store today confirmed it for me. I get my new phone on Monday, hopefully that will be that. Although, after hearing so many others experience the same thing, I'm a bit skeptical and wouldn't be surprised (although a bit sad) if the new phone develops the same problem, too. time will tell.

Same wifi issues as reported in various guises by many. It's the iPhone 4s as everything else works fine.

Reset of the router works temporarily but it is not a fix because doing this every day is not acceptable.

After reading through complaints in all iPhone 4S wifi it is clear that even replacing it with a NEW one is only a temporary solution.

Is apple monitoring this??

Get on with it Apple and acknowledge and fix the problem so that we can all stop wasting our time.....

So I'v been following all this Wi-Fi business, too. Surprise, surprise . . . another life long Apple fanatic having the same issue. I, too, experience a dropped Wi-Fi signal from time to time. I have a mobile hotspot for my internet. It's actually quite fast. Unlimited data, too. Thank you, Clear. I'm also an employee. But that's neither here nor there. I've taken many of the suggestions posted. I do have a static IP address on my hotspot. So I'm good there. I do not want to make my phone static because I'll have connection problems on other networks. One other thing that I did that I have not seen mentioned anywhere is using OpenDNS on my iPhone as well as on my hotspot. I just thought of it and I'm trying it now. So I'll report back in about 12 hours or so and let people know if that did anything. Cheers, Apple family!!!

As promised, I am reporting back. Since I activated OpenDNS on my 4s, I am getting download speeds in excess of 8 MB/sec. I don't know why it worked; but so far so good. I hope I am not jumping the gun on this. I am just going to hope for the best. Apple definitely needs to address this issue, though. We cannot lose to Android. I will NEVER own an Android powered device.

Well, after a very frustrating day, I finally have a new iphone 4s. The frustrating part was that Apple sent me a phone that was initially setup for Verizon (I'm on Sprint). While a Verizon iphone *should* work on Sprint, the folks at Sprint could not get it activated for me. So, I had to send that back and then ended up going over to the Genius Bar, where I finally got a replacement phone.

Anyways... after getting everything all sorted out, I can report that my wifi has been working fine on the new phone. Of course, my old phone worked fine for almost 2 weeks before it suddenly started this behavior. I'll be sure to post back here if I start to see any similar wifi behavior. But, for now, things are looking good.

It's intermittent. I had the problem after one week and it went away and returned only once since I got the phone on October 14th! You are bound to get it... just give it time.

iOS 5 is still in beta form... 😉

Same problem here. Wifi "freezes" atleast twice a day.

Not iOS 5 issue as my iPad2 and my wifes iPhone 4 both run iOS 5 and have never had an issue. Only the iPhone 4s has this issue.

I have bought a new modem/router (Netgear N600) to replace the standard router that came with my broadband package, and it is still happening. The other 2 devices worked fine on both routers, and the iPhone 4s freezes on both routers, so definitely an iPhone 4s hardware issue in my opinion.

The iPhone 4s shows it connected, and the settings show an ip address etc, but can't actually access the internet on any apps or safari.

Only way to fix it is a hard reset. But doing that atleast twice a day isn't really acceptable.

I had no issues with my iPhone 4. It can be a bug within iOS 5 that pertains to the device iPhone 4S. Wait and see... if Apple does not address this issue very soon with a patch, I can assure you I will be exchanging my unit and so should others! Maybe a recall should be in place?

I firmly believe it is a bug within the iOS system and Apple shoul;d release an update ASAP!

The frustrating thing is that it was fine initially, having it next to the router makes it ok, hard restarting the phone makes it ok, sometimes turning the wife on and off makes it ok, forgetting the network can make it ok but all of this only for a short while. So is it worth me raising a call? How long does it take? Can you do it online or is a phone job (I'm in the UK). It's the same problem with both my new 4s's of them so I don't think a new phone will fix it.

Basically do Apple read these threads or are they too busy concentrating on the faults that people call in?

The more noise... the more they hear it. They do read these forums. I would call in. If Apple wants to not address the issues then keep swaping the phone until you find one that doesn't have the issue! This will cost Apple tons of money and they will soon realize they got a problem on their hands.

Step 1. Write on the Apple forums.

Step 2. Contact the Mac blogs including Gizmodo, Engadget and BGR - advise them of the issue with a link to the forums and they most certaintly will publish the info as NEWS!

Step 3. Contact Apple by phone and advise them of the forums and blogs and your issue. Explain your issue and speak to a level 2 tech.

Step 4. Replace phone until you get it working 100% - Apple will get a bunch of Wi-Fi defective phones and then realize it's an issue!

All of the steps above will get the attention of Apple!

well, that didn't take long... my replacement iphone 4s started exhibiting the wifi freezing symptoms a couple hours later. before i bring this one back to apple to get replaced *again*, i'm going to do a little more testing.

I'm wondering if there's an app that i have that might be causing the issue? perhaps some sort of weird bug related to a combination of a specific app, an iphone 4s and ios 5? this morning, after repeating my wifi symptoms with consistency on my iphone, i did an Erase all contents and Settings. I did NOT restore from a backup, and set the phone up as new. After that, I joined my wifi network and surfed for about 30 minutes. I didn't get any of the wifi freezing behavior. Unfortunately, i can't go all day with my phone in this vanilla state, so i'm now restoring from a backup. Once that is complete, i'm going to do the following:

- see if the wifi issue comes back

- see if i can determine timestamps on when i've downloaded new apps as well as app updates. I know my wifi issues started for me after Wed/Thurs last week, so i'm going to look to see what apps i updated or downloaded around that time. Then, try and disable/delete those apps, to see if they make a difference. I'm just not sure if i can find that timestamp info?

If there's anyone on here who is experiencing this same issue, and can afford to do an "Erase all Contents and Settings" and leave their phone like that for an extended period of time, i'd be interested to hear if that "solves" their wifi issues. I only did that test for 30 minutes, but my issue has been typically occuring within 30 minutes of connecting to a wifi network.

I've found that in iTunes, you can show a List view of all of your apps, and add columns for "Date Modified" and "Date Added". These are the apps that have been modified around the time when my wifi issues started (10/26-10/27):

- Weatherbug

- Loopy

- Mint.com

- Amazon Mobile

- Army of Darkness Defense

- CameraBag

- Meebo

- Ski and Snow Report

I did not install any *new* apps in this timeframe, just updated existing. So, I'm wondering if there's an app commonality between all of us who are experiencing this issue? Reply to this thread if you're experiencing this exact wifi freezing issue and if you have any of the above apps. I don't know that the issue is being caused by an app, but it's worth investigating!

Hi DenverMojo,

I am having the same issues with my wifi, it won't work at all. But I don't share any of the same app's you have.

@ DenverMojo

Commendable efforts on trying to isolate the "problem", which is more than I can say for the deafening silence from Apple so far.

My current situation is now that my wifi connects to my home network only when I'm within 1-2m range from the router.The moment I step out of this range it loses all wifi connectivity - I have tested it by using airplane mode to make sure the phone isn't sneakily using 3G when wifi signal is lost. Actually, my 3G speeds are significantly faster than wifi.

Like others, I have tried all that has been suggested here - reset network settings, reset and forget all settings, restroing ios5, rebooting my router, trying another different new router, assigning static IP addresses, open DNS, disable/enable MAC filtering, assigning DHCP allowed clients, restoring as new phone. Some of these measures work temporarily at best, which serves to ramp up the frustration-o-meter.

I cannot connect to any public wifi networks, tried this at the Apple store in Leicester and they had one look (which took 2 seconds) at my Diagnostics & Usage screen and said "It's a hardware fault, get it replaced". I am awaiting a replacement 4s from Vodafone UK but they are currently out of stock (which is not what they told me last week!), but am not holding out for much with the replacement.

I don't have exactly the same apps as you do. Whilst it could be a possible conflict problem with certain apps, I still suspect it's a fundamental ios5 or hardware fault - or as Apple would call it, a "mathematical problem", much like their antennagate problem when the iPhone 4 was first release. Until Apple refutes this or comes up with a patch/solution, I don't see any reason to not suspect this.

My main gripe is this - why do Apple users put up with this substandard quality/performance everytime?? I absolutely love the 4s for what it tries to be and for what it could be, but I am beginning to wonder if I am just holding onto a romantic notion of an icon that should no longer have this iconic status due to its poor reliability.

As for the conflicting apps / router / interference hypotheses -- if I build a new road, I expect by default for the road to be able to be used by all current road vehicles, especially if I was going charge a toll to drive on my road. Our collective wifi / connectivity / poor battery performance issues suggests substandard planning / troubleshooting and lack of proper real-world testing. Is Apple too big to fail? I think not, is the answer. "It just works" just rings pretty hollow to me at the moment