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

Hi I'm the guy who started all this. There is for sure an issue with T-Mobile My Touch and iPhone 4S and MMS.

You're friend simply SMS (text) shouldn't have a problem. It's MMS (pictures) that cause the problem. The ONLY solution is restore your firmware on iTunes and ask your friend to ONLY email pics to you. But NO MMS from him!!!

Apple store said theres nothing they can do. It's not the phone or sim or second build of iOS 5.0.1. It's some comparability issue which honestly I hold Apple responsible because there's no way in **** we should be so vulnerable that an MMS from outside can criple our phone. We must take this problem beyond the so called Genius and go to Apple directly.

Hi michaelcooney, thank you agian for posting that comment about T-Mobile My Touch being the culprit of sending my phone into search mode. When I asked my friend if he tried sending me a MMS the first time my phone went into search mode, he said he didn't. The first time my iPhone went into search mode, we were texting a lot and he told me that my iPhone kept sending him 2 of the same messages, shortly after that my phone went into search mode.

I've told him not to text me (don't want to take a chance) and def not to sending any MMS. I agree with you, our iPhone shouldn't be vulnerable that a simple MMS can basically criple the phone. I did go back to the Apple Store and spoke to the manager who helped me and told him what I had read on here and my own experience with my friend who has the T-Mobile My Touch. What are the odds of 2 people, possibly more having the same issue with a friend who has the T-Mobile My Touch...oh and ironically, my friend who has the T-Mobile said his ex-wife has the iPhone and is always having the same issue. I told him it's his phone!

I'm still having battery issues. Don't know if it's because it's the 32G. I first had the 16G and had no problems but since I needed more GB, I swapped for the 32G and ever since then the battery life dies farily quickly 😟

Thanks again for posting your comment! I followed your instructions and was able to restore my phone. You made my day 🙂

Yes thanks! This happened to me today after a friend tried to send me a picture for the first time while having my new iphone 4s and they do have the tmobile phone. ATT couldnt help and i didnt thnk of calling apple. I just figured it was software and not hardware and reset the phone, i had to use the content and full reset, and then it gave me my signal back. Then i went through the inital phone setup again and restored my last backup from itunes and was back to normal. This is pretty horrible! Hopefully it gets fixed in some way soon. Hope hackers dont figure out a way to abuse this and terrorize the 4s users.

Update: It wasnt a slide touch phone it was another tmobile phone

The temp solution after restoring your phone (i dont think you should back it up first

As it might back up the problemed message too im not sure. Use the last good backup if you can)

Is to go to settings and messages and turn off mms until apple provides a solution

Have friends email pictures for now.

FYI, I posted the same article to another related forum called Signal Search Loop in iOS 5.0.1

Signal search loop returned today for me 1/19 and yesterday for my wife 1/18. I've given up seeking help from either AT&T or Apple and just go back to the restore process to get my phone up and running as quickly as possible. Major pain in the rear but what else can a person do. My wife on the other hand is well known by both Apple and AT&T. Last night she had a long call with AT&T and they decided to send us a femtocell box to improve the 3G signal strength in our house. They are suggesting that because of the weak signal in our area the phone is constantly bouncing between towers and this is causing the problem. Could be a valid theory since the 3G service at our house is very weak. I don't quite buy it because I'm not at home this week and have been in a strong service area this whole week. But I'm happy to have the femtocell in our house to improve our home service quality. There is nothing that gets my wife's blood boiling faster than seeing her phone go into the signal search loop. I don't know how much longer she will remain an iPhone user.

It's odd that both of our phones consistently experience this problem within a day or two of each other and this happens no matter where we are geographically located. Meaning we've both been in the same city when it's happened and we've been in separate cities and both experience the problem within a 24-48 hour period of the other. Equally as odd, neither of our kids phones has ever experienced the problem.

Breaking news, my wife's phone is back to signal search loop after being restored yesterday. She's on the phone with AT&T who now has provided her with an "enhanced iTunes" install. Not yet sure what that will do but will report back as I learn more.

Yesterday afternoon my phone went back into signal search loop. I traced the timing of the event back to the moment a friend of mine on Verizon using a droid was sending me an MMS message. He sent me 2 text messages, one was only text which I recieved and the other included a picture. I didn't see the message with the picture but that's the moment my phone started the signal search loop. I believe this activity is closely tied to the root cause. It certianly explains why my phone and my wife's phone go into the search loop at nearly identical times. It's because this friend typically sends pictures to a group of us. Most of them are also droid users but me and my wife are not.

Seems crazy that someone on another platform and/or another network could have such an impact on my phone. I've now turned MMS messaging off to see if I can protect myself from this problem. I've also asked my friend to start sending me pictures via e-mail instead of MMS.

Well it seems to be the first apple virus ive ever seen

But i have not had the problem again after shutting off mms

Last night I was at dinner with my "droid" friend. I changed my settings so that MMS messaging was off. I asked him to send me a picture and, as expected, it didn't come through. The good news is my phone didn't go into signal search loop either.

Small price to pay for a little phone stability.

I am having this exact problem completely. I'm already on iPhone 4s number 2...it just started doing the "searching..." loop again. I replaced the phone last week.

Any idea what should be the next step?

I tried doing a full restore which worked. I've turned off MMS. But I think it's doing it again. I am so frustrated with this problem! What's the point of having an iPhone when you can't receive pictures from your friends?

Any other suggestions? Options?

I am half-tempted to go to the Apple Store and completely bag the 4S thing entirely. I never had a problem before with any of my other iPhones. When I replaced my phone the first time, the genius tech suggested that if the problem continued, that it was a problem with my service provider (AT&T.) He also said that the problem wasn't common which (from my internet research) is complete crap.

And I mean...Apple...cmon. No fixes?

I had a problem with this I turned the brightness down barely under half way haven't had the problem since wait about a hour after you turn it down give it a try hope this helps

I tried checking whether its the problem with my sim card or phone first.
I took off my sim card and try them on other iphones 4s, and put other sim cards to my phone. It turns out for me that it's the problem of my sim card because other sim cards work perfectly fine with my phone while mine doesn't work on other phones too. So I got my sim card replaced, i suggest u do the same checking i did first.

I don't know about you guys but I'm getting angry. It's been over 3 MONTHS and Apple won't even acknowledge this, let alone fix it.

In my country there isn't any official Apple Technical service. That's why i went to an unoffical one. i told them what my problem is (every 30 or 40 minutes service is going away and says "no service" but after appr. 30 seconds service comes back again intermittenly). They told me "if i understood you correctly it is an antenna problem".

can it be true? i am really wanna know what is going?

Ps: if we write like this, we will know eachother what kind of problems we have. Unfortunately, we will not know the main problem from apple?

Apple say something to us....

No, this definitely is NOT an antenna issue. Anyone who told you that is technically ignorant. If it was the antenna, you would get a poor signal most if not all the time.

If you had read the forum Terms of Use you agreed to when you joined, you would know that this is strictly a user-to-user tech support site and Apple does not read or respond to posts here.

My phone has been acting up since the last two weeks with this "Searching..." mode thing. It's trying to search for a network connection once it does, it fails again and goes the "Searching..." mode again! THIS HAPPENS ALL DAY LONG WITH THE PHONE AND IT DRAINS MY BATTERY SO QUICKLY!!! This is very frustrating because when this happens I can't receive/send text messages or even receive/make phone calls and not alone even use the Internet. It's not the the sim card that is having the issue it's the phone itself, because I have been to my carrier to swap out a new sim card and it does the same thing. This is the 3rd phone that Apple changed out to attempt to fix the problem. The same problem occurs after about 30 mins leaving the store. I have tried to reset all Factory setting, Apple tried to reinstall the updated software and still nothing works!!!!!! I called my carrier many times to check on any network towers failures in the area and everything seems to be fine. My carrier advised me to take the phone back to Apple and she mentioned that Apple is very aware this is a phone issue and not a network issue. I am sick of going back and forth between Apple and my carrier and it's a waste of my time! I am paying for a service I can't even use and this *****! I wished I never upgrade to the IPhone 4S. If anyone else is having this problem please share!!!!