Signal Search Loop in iOS 5.0.1

Restore just completed and so far so good on my signal retention.

Friday night out of the blue my phone (iPhone 4) locked up, I restarted it and the signal loop problem returned. Tried various things to get the signal problem corrected but nothing worked. I don't know what brought the problem back, I haven't done any OS updates or even any application updates on that day. Problem was still there Saturday morning when I woke up so I did another restore. Once again, this corrected the issue.

Now here is the real mind twister, same day my wife's phone also goes into signal search loop. She has a 4S. Problem also remained until morning so after I did the restore on mine, I restored hers as well. We sync to different computers so there is no common root that we share.

I don't know what triggers this but it is a very frustrating and time consuming resolution.

Made an appointment at the Genius Bar today and this is the story I was given. First I would like to say that the guy at the Apple store was very nice and seeking to resolve the issue. According to the Genius, the problem with my phone and my wife's phone is that we both upgraded from our 3GS iPhone's to our current iPhones. He claimed that the restore process brings with is firmeware from the old phone's hardware onto the new phone's hardware. This firmeware wasn't meant to be on the new hardware so it causes application crashes and other nefarious issues like signal loop search. So he switched out my wife's new 4S for another 4S, since hers was under warranty, and instructed us to not use a restore process but rather set it up as a new iphone. For me, he wiped it back to bare OS and instructed me to also set it up as a new install rather than using a restore. I'm going through that process now and will report back if I continue to have issues.

Lesson learned here, when you take this approach, make sure you have photo's, notes and other things that may not be synched directly via iTunes backed up to a location you can bring forward after the new install setup.

I'm happy to say that since I went through the "setup as new device" on 11/27, I haven't had the signal search loop problem return on my iPhone 4 or my wife's 4S.

From my perspective, the phone swap the apple store did, didn't do anything other than save them the time from wiping the phone back to bare OS which of course I could have done myself. Of course, my iPhone 4 was not eligible for a free swap and they said if I wanted to swap it out, I'd have to pay for a replacement phone. I knew I didn't need a new phone so I opted for the bare OS setup as new solution. I'd suggest this approach for anyone else experiencing this problem.

Of course before you do this, make sure you have copies of all your pictures and backup's of your notes and other in application files because this type of restore will wipe everything out.

This problem is not new to 5.0.1, it definetly existed in 5.0 as well so it is safe to say it wasn't cause by an OTA update. I personally experienced it with 5.0 and again after the 5.0.1 patch.

Princemon wrote:

so how is your phone now?

My phone is still working perfectly.

Well, I'm back and once again my iPhone 4 has the signal search loop problem. Unfortunately this is after going through the "setup as new device' process that the genus bar instructed me to do back on 11/27. Looks like I can't get through a month's time without having to do a restore. Very frustrating. One day it works fine, then out of the blue it gets in a signal search loop.

Today I did see something weird happen, I was making a call and during the call the signal was lost. The phone app dissapeared and it went back to the home screen showing the green bar at the top used to return to the call. When I'd touch that green bar to return to the call it would flash a white screen like it was trying to go to the call screen but then would go back to the home screen with the green bar. The call disconnected but the green call in progress bar remained. Had to reboot the phone to get the bar to go away. After the reboot, I noticed the signal search loop had returned. rebooted again, turned on and off airplane mode and signal search continued. Now I don't know if the signal search problem is what caused the original call to fail or if it started after the call failed.

Going through the restore process now so I can get another 24 days of usage out of my phone.

APPLE PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE AND CORRECT THIS ISSUE!!!!!!!!!

Signal search loop returned on 12/25 on my wife's 4S. We are not at home so she couldn't do the restore process. Today she took her phone to the AT&T store who claimed the problem was with her SIM card. They replaced the SIM card and not so surprisingly, the problem remained. AT&T was unable to provide any further assistance and stated we needed to go back to the Apple store. In the meantime the AT&T store sold her a pantech phone so she could at least make calls.

Today my phone (iphone 4) went back into signal search loop. In the past, our phones have gone into the search loop on the same day, not sure what caused them to separate by 2 days. Fortunately, I have my laptop here so I can perform the restore to get it functional again. Looks like we will be going back to the Genius bar whenever we get back home.

Hopefully we'll get another step closer to a fix. Overall, this has been a terrible customer experience. Nobody seems to know anything.

Went to the Genius bar again yesterday. Started by reviewing my case history with them:

• Signal search loop first appeared on 10/15 with iOS 5.0, restored to resolve issue
• Signal search loop returned 11/12 with iOS 5.0.1, restored to resolve issue
• Signal search loop returned 11/26 with iOS 5.0.1, restored to resolve issue
• 11/27 had first appt with Genius bar and was told to "setup as new device" instead of restore. Suspected firmware drivers from prior iOS versions remained in my backup and were causing corruption. Iphone 4s is replaced by Apple just in case. I setup both my iPhones as new at this time and established a new backup baseline.
• Signal search loop returned on 12/23, setup as new did not resolve the issue. Restored from backup to get device working again.
• Signal search loop returned on 12/25, activated 3gs to have a usable phone
• 12/28 signal search loop makes 3gs unusable as well

12/31 back at the Genius bar. This time I'm told the problem is with the provisioning on the phone, they say it's an AT&T problem. Genius Kenneth is very helpful and calls AT&T on our behalf to verify ICCID and IMEI numbers. Genius Kenneth suspects that since the problem is following the phone number across multiple devices that the problem is due to provisioning issues. Genius Kenneth requests that AT&T reprovision the phone and resets the network settings on the phone. AT&T agent was rude and not customer service oriented but eventually reprovisioned the phone. Now we're back up and running but we all know that only time will tell if the fix is permanent.