iPhone 4s losing data connection multiple times/day

I am one that has had my 4 replaced several times and is working now. For the sake of your test, here are my details i work in a building with no att or verizon repeater or signal booster. Only standard interoffice wifi on secure network. The wireless router is in the middle of the building and i cannot connect to it (low signal) from my office. I work 100 yards from an att tower that i can see from my window. So i had full bars but no connectivity. When i would go home, the nearest tower was about 8 miles away. Still had same connectivity problem although wifi worked just fine. Also to further placate apple and att tech support i drove around town for an hour hitting various towers and still had connectivity issues. Wifi always worked. To further placate them i took my sim card out of my phone (experiencing the issue) and put it in an att iphone 4 test phone at the att store and had zero issues.

5d Mark - Thanks. Your detailed story tells me this is absolutely a different problem than what I'm having.

Mine is location specific, on iPhone 4 and 4S, only on 3G/4G. Unfortunately, I think this makes my problem harder to solve since I'm in downtown Houston and would never find the source of interefence. Nonetheless, I'll try with the experiment on different phones. I know it's 3G/4G only since EDGE works fine and my ATT iPad LTE works fine also.

I'm doubtful getting my phone replaced a bunch of times would work becuase we have many many iPHones in the building that have no connection but say 5 bars. Seems like I'm defeinitely seeing intereference, whereas others in this thread could have bad phones.

I read through the majority of these replies and found the following possible solutions it appears:

1. Trade in your phone for a replacement numerous times until it hopefully works.

2. Restore it to the factory settings and then add apps slowly to ensure that if there is a problem app you can realize this and delete it to avoid the problem.

3. Toggle Airplane Mode to refresh network.

4. Do a "Hard Reset" so that your phone works when it is rebooted.

4. Replace SIM card

I tried a number of these, but after reading the posts it looks like most of the above solutions have not been successful and perhaps it was a fluke that it started working (for the time being) in some cases.

I took my phone into the apple store yesterday since I couldn't just email them my questions apparently and found out another possible solution that did work for me (for the time being) as outlined below:

"Reset Network Settings"
- Go to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings**

- This will essentially just reset the cell network and wifi networks that you use (**beware it does delete stored WiFi passwords**)

- After this your phone will reset kind of like when you do a hard reset and then reconnect to the network. My bars actually went from 2 to 5 after this was done and I was able to use Maps, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the web like I used to be able to prior to the problems.

I hope this helps and let me know if it works for you or any of the above solutions worked for you!

This is not a solution. This is already a known. This just resets your network connection. It will get you back online, but if your phone has the problem, you're going to get knocked back offline soon enough.

BTW, I worked through AT&T this time, got through 2nd level tech support after dealing with a customer service manager. That person kicked me through to Apple 2nd level. I explained the problem to the guy, told him how many phones I have replaced (I am on my 5th phone right now) and he went on hold for a few, came back and the 6th phone is on the way in the mail right now. That was a little bit too easy so I'm starting to think they may actually know about the problem internally. I couldn't get him to say anything or acknowledge any known issue, but having worked as an engineer for 20+ years, your QA will not simply replace product like that unless your description pings something in the database.

Glad this is working for you. Keep at it.

Agree, 2nd level techs should be requested from the get go. My Att tech was awesome and even credited me for being patient. Another interesting tid bit, when I was on my 3rd replacement phone and was transferred to Apple, the Apple tech ran through several of the steps as listed by DanBabyCham. In my case it did nothing and the battery drained 13% while I was talking to the Apple tech. Based on my circumstance, I would agree that they most certainly know about it!

Also, when you get your new phone, double check that the screws are seated correctly...they sent me one with loose screws.

My phone is still working just fine BTW.

So you think that so long as it's working now it will still be faulty? I understand that there must be some sort of large problem judging by how many people it appears have the same issue with all of the different carriers. I just feel that having to go through 5 replacement phones might just be the fact that one of those times you get lucky and something that happens involving the software, settings, or someother non-hardware related problem gets resolved without the direct intention of doing so. I am thinking about going to get a new SIM card after work just to be sure since I have had this one for a couple of years now, but in my case by resetting the network settings I have enjoyed the use of data for a day now, I will check back if anything else changes or I have any other input, but in this case I think it may have worked.

Same issue different thinking in another post its a much bigger issue than people think.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3470007?answerId=18949586022#18949586022

Some dev has said an update to ios6 beta 2 has fixed it for him. i am waiting for others to confirm this. It looks like a software issue (i hope)

Apple have kept quiet (surprise) and will make us wait for a fix until ios6 (i again hope)

peter

I think you can only turn off 3g with at&t 4s's..i have a verizon one and i cannot..I have the same issue, i lose all data connection except no reset helps, it comes back on when it feels like, I didnt have the chance to try the airplane mode fix because i turned off the location system services and it has yet to happen again(its been about 3 days)..I have called apple and verizon support and they either point the finger in the other direction or try to help to get it back on(which is pointless when it keeps happening over and over). I havent had the iphone 4s vey long and this is already my second one becasue the first one had an error where it would lose 75% of battery overnight no use..not happy currently.

Hi guys,

I'm with T-Mobile using unlocked 4s with the same data connection drops. A couple of days ago I read one of the early posts suggesting disabling 3G and location services. I did both the same day and now have not had a signle data connection drop for two days. Amazing... At some point there was a glitch and I though that's it, it failed again, but then I checked the 3G and it was 'on'. I turned it off and everything got restored.

Thanks for making it so simple.

As far as I understand, the 3G data freeze of iPhone is a problem that is known all over the world. Lot's of people in USA, Europe, Russia face it. I first had it on my iPhone 4 and now the same for 4S - it's terribly annoying !

When you are using the Internet from time to time the whole day you face it many times and even switching Airplane mode off and on becomes a very time-consuming procedure. In addition to data freeze my iPhone 4S adding problem that he doesn't want to search for the signal, after he has lost it. When I going to/from office by underground or I am in lift or basement where my iPhone looses carrier - it shows "no signal" long lime after I am in coverage area again (I realize that it saves battery, but it can not find network for 15 minutes and miss many calls at this time!) I also need to use Airplane mode switch to make him find network.

This all is really frustrating to have the phone (second phone, by the way, the first was iphone 4 with its well known antenna problem and 3G freeze problem too, iPhone 3G worked well but I didn't use 3G at that time) from such a customer-oriented company that is always loosing carrier and data (never heard other brands working with network this way). This is not the only problem of iphone but this one is the worst for me, the thing that Apple surely knows about this issue but totally ignore it makes me sad. May be as usual "this is the problem of cellular operators, not apple" - as they say about the most of their technical issues, but I am not going to buy the next iPhone 5 if it's going to work with internet like iPod.

noticed my data connection was out yesterday on my 4s. Verizon.

Works on WiFi. Still no 3g data.

What the **** is going on?

Hi all. Reporting in... after suffering with this problem for months, I finally asked my IT department to get me a replacement phone, as this one was still under warranty. I've had it for 2 weeks. One dropped data connection, one lost cell connection. Not a complete cure, but a BIG improvement.

we have replaced dozens of 4s and still have this issue, 30 second reset some times makes it work

users keep complainng no email unless on wifi, the 3g signal gets lost for data but voice usually works.

we are not having this issue with other 4g device brands and we are holding it corecctly

I live near Detroit, we have 2 4S phones, a 4 and a 3GS. Only the 4S' have the problem, and I have had it in Newark, LA, Phoenix and Wichita. It is not related to location.

Looks like the problem is back again with IOS6, just have to power the phone off and back on before data services start working again.