Problem with iPhone 4s searching for signal, than to full signal, and back again?

Hi michaelcooney,

Have you checked this tutorial, http://iphone-and-i.blogspot.com/2011/12/fixing-iphone-4s-signal-problem.html that me and unicohijo86 posted? My searching issue was fixed after I read this tutorial and folowed those instructions. It's not about the VERSION 5.0.1. It's about the build 5.0.1 (9A405).

When I changed my build to 5.0.1 (9A406) my searching trouble had fixed right at the moment.

Hope I could help you.

Thank you for the reply. Im DEFINATELY aware of the new build. A apple employee installed it for me during one of my numerous genius appts. This does not solve the issue that myself and the other person are experiencing. Are issue is related to receiving an MMS from an android user that upon them sending usually locks our phone causing a need to restart and once restarted the phone searches and then has signal in approx 60 sec cycles over and over. Only a full restore of the iOS temporarily solves the problem.

Hi michaelcooney,

I got it. Then your searching issue is not the same as many here. It's happening when you need to receive an MMS from android's. Well unfortunately I haven't heard about it yet but if I knew something about it I'll come back here and share it with you. However you could open a new discussion on this forum. Good luck!

Cheers.

i have spent over 10 hours in the car traveling back and forth to apple retail store for genius appointments to mitigate this issue of constant toggle between "searching...", "no service", and a variety of bars indicating service both with and without 3g/E. if i had hair i would rip it out.

granted, apple has been extremely helpful and gracious, but STILL no resolution.

i thought i was fortunate to be able to retain my iphone4 after purchasing the 4s in the case i dropped the 4s in the toilet or lost it. however, the problem has moved over to the iphone4 now.

i have also traveled to at&t 5 times. i had to purchase another phone line and "go phone" in order to be able to place telephone calls. at&t reports that the issue has been reported on all three iphone networks (at&t/verizon/sprint). and at&t has told me that other people have experienced the problem effecting other owners' iphones. as other users have reported, i have had at&t reprovision my account to no avail.

i suppose what bothers me the most is that over the five visits to the genius bar, nobody at apple suggested that this was a known issue that even a small percentage of 4s users were experiencing (myself included obviously). had they expressed that the (9A406) re-write was happening (which actually is not a solution to the problem as the issue persists) - at least i would have been an informed consumer who could elect to make a educated decision.

i am getting ready to take my story to the press to see if we cant get apple to respond to the known issue. and disseminate the plan to solve the problem.

I too have traveled to the Apple and AT&T stores multiple times in a futile attempt to fix this issue as well. My phone will randomly go into "searching" then a little bit later get re-connected. It still happens with the 9A406 version as well. It beginning to **** me off.

This probably will help. In my case it does.

Hi! I'm writing to you from Russia (Moscow) Have the same problem. Bought Iphone 4S on November 27, 2011. In a couple of days it started to loose network. For a month and a half I tried to cope with this problem. I've tried everything described in the Internet!!! Tried to change sim card - didn't work! Update from 405 to 406 also didn't help! Before Apple always used Nokia... Very disappointed in Apple!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guys. I'm sorry to hear you're having the same problem that led me to cancel my contract before they sucked me in for another 2 years. I had originally had the iphone 4 and all the sudden it started happening on Halloween. They couldn't give me my upgrade until November 21st, so I went and got Tmobile for 3 days and decided it sucked so I tried to deal with the phone and I changed my phone number to a local number and the phone continued to work like nothing was wrong up until November 17th. I went to the corporate store, told the manager my story about the searching and how I had already changed my sim and nothing worked, and that I was 3 days away from my upgrade so he agreed to do it a little early. After push and pull, my new iphone 4s showed up in the mail and it was awesome... until a DAY LATER the same thing continued. New freakin phone, obviously a new sim... same problem. Went into them, they told me to go to apple b/c it was the phone... so I got a replacement totally knowing it wasn't the problem. It might have worked for a few days and it happend AGAIN. I went back to them and they didn't get the problem, so they had me call support from their store phone and the woman walked me through steps and she changed my number.... it worked probably 5 days I think before it occured again ... and I went back.... they didn't know what to do ... stopped doing it. I'd called 611 and they sent updates... they put me through to apple and the guy was like "well you already did all the things I told you to do so my job is done." ... they had no idea nobody else had the problem. So I called the support again and they reopened my case to check my service near my home and near my job and that day ... after all the trouble I went through, i cancelled.

WHATS THE WORST PART IS ... since i had 3 different phone numbers, there were 3 different bills with all these annoying charges andI had to fight with people on the phone and I also just had to fight the cancellation charge which I shouldn't have been charged becasue I hadn't had the upgrade for more than a month.

GOOD LUCK. I have a sprint iphone 4 s and I'm happy. I hope you all can be as well.

it's an att incompatibility problem that they can't sort out -- that was what the support lady had suggested.

I've been having the same problem since last night. The phone keeps searching for a signal. I reset it back to factory and set it up as a new phone. Didn't help. This morning, it seemed ok but my phone shut off a couple of hours later and wouldn't turn back on. I did the soft reboot and it still didn't help. Tried hooking it up to iTunes and that didn't help. Finally after numerous attempts at rebooting it I got the phone on but it was stuck on "searching". I took it to AT & T and was told I was the 5th person to come in today with the same problem. They changed the sims card but that didn't help either. They reset the settings and that didn't help either. Plus while they were doing all this, the phone got really hot.

AT & T told me they suspect there is an issue with the antena. So on top of having serious battery issues, I now have a faulty antenna? About amonth ago, I took the phone to Apple because the battery was draining super fast. I did all the things they told me to do but that didn't fix the battery issues so they gave me a new phone. Now I can't even use the phone because it goes from a signal to no signal fairly quickly. Can't make phone calls or text either. Super annoying since I rely on my phone for work. I don't know if anyone else is having this problem, but people that I text (when it's cooperating) are telling me that they're receiving 2 of the same texts.

AT & T told me to take it to Apple and made the appointment for me. They wrote notes on the appointment telling Apple what they did and how evreything they did, didn't fix it. AT & T said I would get a new phone since I'm still under the warranty. I'm not sure if Apple will give me a new phone again or not but I suggest if people are still under warranty, take it to AT & T and have them make the appointment for you with footnotes. I don't plan on leaving there without a new phone though.

This is the last straw though. If I have any more problems with the 4S, I'm for sure going to demand AT & T change my phone to anything other than an iPhone if not I'm cancelling my family plan with them and taking my business somewhere else. This is ridiculous and super annoying.

Come on Apple, start fessing up to the real problems with the iPhone 4S. My 3G which is still in working order, was much better and never gave me problems...arg.

Well I went to Apple store again for another Genius Appt. Based on all of this experience here is what I have figured out.

My problem is caused directly from receiving an MMS from my friends T-Mobile My Touch Slide (Android) phone. The moment she sends it my phone will either immediately go to "Searching" or will shut off, needing a reboot to come back on. The problem will then continue until the firmware is restored.

I have had 3 x 4S's, 2 X new sim cards, 2 fresh restores not from a back up but set up as a new phone, numerous normal firmware restores, and the new build of 5.0.1, I've had AT&T reprovision my line twice...NO posted solution solves the problem.

During the appt at Apple I had my friend with me and had her send me an MMS in front of the Genius person, to demonstrate what happens. Basically Apple Genius people can reinstall your firmware or swap your device if they determine it may be the solution, beyond that they can't do anything else. He suggested that I contact Apple directly and explain the problem, and to continue posting on the forum here because according to him Apple does read it, which I've read otherwise in another post, so there you have it. NOTHING they can do, his fonaly suggestion was I'll probably just have to wait until a new firmware is released that may or MAY NOT solve the problem. I'm so upset because I have had iphone's since the first one was released as well as many other Apple products and have never had an issue. I have no big challenge with the fact that a man made deivce can have issues, I'm upset that the Apple Genius threw the responsibility of finding the solution back on to me. Shouldn't an Apple employee be closer to possible solution than the customer? He didn't even offer a phone number to call or anything and seemed put off by problem.

Let me save you guys a lot of searching. Just back up and restore your phone in iTunes. I have been having this problem for a while and I found two things that work, turn off WiFi when you dont need it, and get the 9A406 patch. The only way to get the patch is by backing up and restoring your phone. However, I did read something interesting about android users (tmobile myTouch 4g) trying to send pictures and when they do it sends your phone into searching mode. My wife has a myTouch 4g and she tries to send me pics all the time and I never get them and then my phone goes into searching mode. I'm just gonna tell her not to send me pics anymore and see if it works.

Hope this helps,

Danlyle

When employees talk about problems, they are nowhere near as passionate as consumers. Keep letting them hear about the problems, just as I intend to do, or they will suffer from bad word of mouth.

I got all the way up to a software engineer, and they blame 3rd party apps. I saw that at conceivable, yet the apps are supposed to be sandboxed.

Well today, loe and behold, it does it again. Now my phone is being wiped. Again. WHAT A JOKE.

This is STILL an ongoing issue. I get "Searching" or random signal bar fluctations or "No Service".

The new build 9A406 didn't help.

The problem isn't with my SIM card because I didn't cut it down from a full sized one; I bought a proper micro-SIM card from my carrier (Rogers, a GSM operator in Canada).

The Android MMS issue doesn't affect me because none of my contacts use Android devices, yet I am still experiencing the above problem.

Still waiting for a fix.

So I took my phone to the Apple Store and the techie who helped me immediately said I probably had significant water damage and that's why the phone was going from "searching to no signal". I told her there was no way I had water damage but she was pretty insistent on proving it had water damage because according to her that's the only reason for it to be searching for a signal. Long story short, they swapped my phone for a new one. About an hour later I was at lunch and the phone started searching for a signal again! It kept searching the whole time I was at lunch and the phone got very hot. Let me back up for a sec, the girl who helped me said it was doing that because of significant water damage and because of the water damage the phone was getting hot.

Luckily I was still near the Apple store and asked to speak to a manager. I showed him the phone and told him what had transpired earlier. The girl who had helped me initially came over and was whispering something to him. I showed her the phone and asked her to explain the searching mode this time. She said it was my sims card. The manager was very gracious and told me I'd probably feel better with a new phone so he swapped it again. I asked for a different techie to help and he took my sims card put it in his phone and everything was fine. So I got the phone all set up and everything was fine.

Get home and a few hours later while I'm texting my phone goes into search mode and no signal again! I reset network and that didn't help. Came on here and saw a post about tmobile my touch slide affecting the guy's phone. I asked my friend what type of phone he had and he has the Tmobile my touch! I reset my phone back to factory and told him not to text me anymore. When I thought about it, the first time it happened he was texting me. When I was at lunch he texted me and right after that it went into search mode! That night as well he tried sending me a mms and it went into search mode. Btw, I never got his mms and he said he tried a few times.

Just want to thank the guy who posted about tmobile causing his phone to go into search and what he did to fix it. I was able to reset it and haven't had a problem since. My friend is not allowed to text me and when he does I just delete it and don't respond. Don't know if that is what's causes other iPhone users to lose signal.