iPhone 4s continually loses connection with Carrier?
I recently upgraded to the iPhone 4s from a 3GS, and everything about the device is great - speed, screen resolution, Siri... however the phone part is not working as it should do. It loses the carrier many times per day, and only rebooting or rejecting/inserting the SIM card seems to find it again.
The phone will lose connection to the carrier, with "No service" on the top left. It sometimes spontaneously re-establishes the connection (I hear a beep and the phone vibrating) however most times I need to reboot the phone for it to find the carrier.
I decided to initialise the phone as a new device, and move over the apps that I was actually using from the set iTunes, in order the clean things up.
This is what I've tried so far:
Carrier
* I switch to manual selection, and it shows all three carriers available in my country (France).
* I force the carrier to be the one I'm subscribed to, which is accepted. The phone shows 4 bars of signal strength
SIM Card
* Ejected the SIM card (it seemed to be positioned just fine) and carefully cleaned the contacts with a dry, dust free cloth and re-inserted. The phone find the carrier and works for a while... before spontaneously disconnecting from the carrier and saying "No service"
* Tried another SIM card (A pre-paid one I was testing in the store) and it worked. Couldn't stick around for long enough to see if the phone lost the carrier with this chip too, but it seemed to behave the same as my normal SIM.
Testing other radios
* The Wifi and Bluetooth on the phone work perfectly.
Reception
* Other devices (a MiFi device that I use with my iPad) linked to the same carrier work fine in the same room as the iPhone 4s
* My previous iPhone (the 3GS) picked up the carrier reliably, albeit without a great signal strength
* My girlfriend's iPhone 4 never show this disconnection problem, nor do my colleague's
I went back to the store where I bought the phone, who said call the carrier, or go to an Apple Store. I went to an Apple Store, and the technician said he had come across a few other cases, and perhaps a restore might help. I am very doubtful of this, since the phone is new, and I've just configured the bare essentials.
So far, I'm inclined to think I'm unluckly and have a phone with issues that might have been missed by QA, but perhaps somebody has seen this and found a fix? Any tips on things I've missed before I insist on a replacement?
