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

PINKY listend to ME!!!! and this is for the rest of you having the same problem

there is NOTHING they will or can do.

IT IS NOT YOUR PHONE

IT IS NOT YOUR SIM

IT IS NOT YOUR CARRIER

IT IS NOT ANYTHING YOU CAN FIX OR REPLACE

I am the original discoverer of this issue... i feel your pain.

When someone with Android (most notably a T-mobile type Android sends you an MMS (picture message) it begins the problem..

THE ONLY SOLUTION: O N L Y ONLY..... is to restore the firmware on your phone and tell that person not to send MMS anymore to you. If they want to send you a pic EMAIL IS OK... but not MMS.

Some people will even go into message settings and turn off MMS... I choose not to because I knew the person who was sending me MMS and it was easy enough to ask them not to..

Ok... i get frustrated reading peoples ideas of how to fix this when we explained the solution over a month ago.

IT IS WHAT IT IS... APPLE DOES NOT ACKNOWLEDGE IT AT ALL, their employees can do nothing about it, and neither can AT&T....

OVER AND OUT

Same issue with my iphone 4 since i upgraded to 5.0.1. all i can do is reset network settings and disable diagnostics and usage under location services, this is working for 3-4 days and then no network comes up again.I live in Greece and my carrier is vodafone. I have done a small research an the web and i relized tha many people around the world have the same issue. It is very dissapointing not to be able to use an iphone as a phone.. (i have this problem since november).

I completely agree with MichaelCooney. This is a cross carrier MMS compatibility problem potentially only between droid phones and iPhones. Best way to prevent the situation from recurring is to turn MMS messaging off.

I'm sorry, I don't agree with that.

I live in Brazil, the iPhone was purchased in Switzerland and even when I have MMS turned off (who cares about MMS when having a whole bunch of different options on iPhone) the phone looses signal and goes into searching loop. Also I don't use text messages often.

I changed the SIM twice for my same carrrier, and got a SIM from another carrier and the problem persist.

Im running iOS 5.01 (9A406) and I even installed 5.1 Beta 3 and same thing.

I've noticed that once phone goes into searching, even if I remove the SIM it says Searching and does not even show the message saying that no sim is installed, also something that nobody has noticed is that the modem firmware info (baseband) does not appear on the about screen when this occurs.

I spoke with an apple tech representative and they don't know anything about the issue, but they offered me to send the phone for repair. There is other people with 4S iphones that I know here who are not experiencing any problem, unfortunately I beleive it is a software-hardware issue but Apple has not have the balls to start a recall process.

michaelcooney. Take a moment to read what you just wrote:

[begin quote]

PINKY listend to ME!!!! and this is for the rest of you having the same problem

there is NOTHING they will or can do.

IT IS NOT YOUR PHONE

IT IS NOT YOUR SIM

IT IS NOT YOUR CARRIER

IT IS NOT ANYTHING YOU CAN FIX OR REPLACE

I am the original discoverer of this issue... i feel your pain.

When someone with Android (most notably a T-mobile type Android sends you an MMS (picture message) it begins the problem..

THE ONLY SOLUTION: O N L Y ONLY..... is to restore the firmware on your phone and tell that person not to send MMS anymore to you. If they want to send you a pic EMAIL IS OK... but not MMS.

Some people will even go into message settings and turn off MMS... I choose not to because I knew the person who was sending me MMS and it was easy enough to ask them not to..

Ok... i get frustrated reading peoples ideas of how to fix this when we explained the solution over a month ago.

IT IS WHAT IT IS... APPLE DOES NOT ACKNOWLEDGE IT AT ALL, their employees can do nothing about it, and neither can AT&T....

OVER AND OUT

[end quote]

Firstly, you write like a raving lunatic.

Secondly, you're wrong. You are making dramatic unfounded claims without thinking them through or backing them up. I resent you for spreading your misinformation to other users. Don't state something as fact unless you've done research to confirm that it is. At least a few Google searches.

If you actually read posts and search around the internet, you'll notice there are numerous instances where iPhone 4S users report the issue when MMS is not involved. I am one of these users.

Therefore, the problem is not restricted to MMS functionality. Android-to-iPhone MMS might be a cause but if it is, it is not the only cause.

I have been dealing with the same problem for the last 6 weeks. I am having all the same issues and have found that when my friend sends me a pict message from her droid and uses the default program there is not an issue, I receive the picture fine, but when she uses Chomp it sends my phone into the search loop!!!

TheRLM wrote:

I have been dealing with the same problem for the last 6 weeks. I am having all the same issues and have found that when my friend sends me a pict message from her droid and uses the default program there is not an issue, I receive the picture fine, but when she uses Chomp it sends my phone into the search loop!!!

Seeing this post about Chomp potentially being the cause of the issue, I reached out to my droid friend that causes my phone to crash. He confirmed that he does indeed use Chomp. When I have more time, I'll do some experimentation with him and post the results.

had my droid friend that has been causing my iphone to go into signal search loop send me an MMS using the normal droid messenger. Picture came through without any problem. Had him try to send the same picture through Chomp. Picture never came through, fortunately my phone didn't start the signal search loop either. But it's very suspicious that it wasn't able to be delivered. Maybe it's a sign that AT&T has done something on their network to filter out these offending messages.

its possible they are blocking them. Either way, its also possible there is more than one way to make your phone go in to the searching loop. We have identified to not get mms until this is fixed. So far from just tmobile unless someone claims a problem with another carrier.

Im waiting for someone to say they cussed out siri and now this happend 🙂

Apple probably isnt responding because its a huge hole of some sort and they dont really want that getting out. Im happy they are keeping it quiet, I like using my iphone 4s and dont need hackers trying to terrorize us.

Although, i think turning off MMS might just not allow you to send them. I think i recieved one while it was shut off.

Just keep a good backup, I havent had the problem again and havent allowed a tmobile user to send mms.

First of all I definetly agree with your comment about the techical ignorancy. 🙂

The other thing is, it was a little bit sarcasm, when I was calling Apple to say something to us. Of course, I wish Apple to tell us about what the real problem is, but not by replying my post, I think this is obivous. I meant Apple should release an official announcement about this problem. If this is a user-to-user tech support site founded by Apple, someone from Apple might "POSSIBLY" be following the forum (especially the topic discussing the problem of lots of people from different countries.)

So I think, we all have a right to say:

"APPLE SAY SOMETHING TO US!!!"

I totally agree with you inseng72 apple SHOULD at least inform us what is causing this problem (phone hardware / software / sim). Apple shouldn't treat customers like that since the problem occured months ago. I am very dissapointed as i use my mobile phone for my work and i constantly have the fear of losing an important phone call as the problem itself makes the person who is calling you believe that you are not picking the phone up (the person who is calling you hears the waiting tone as the phone is ringing).

try turning on airplane mode and wait a few seconds and turn it off see if that works good luck

"APPLE SAY SOMETHING TO US!!!"

Make sure the people around you are CPR certified if you're holding your breath....

If Apple ever does have anything to say about this, it won't be in this forum.

Message was edited by: modular747

There may be a problem with your SIM card because iOS 5.0.1 has been known to "fry" the actual sim card. Follow the instructions here to fix network and signal problems on the iPhone.

After months of insisting I'm just giving up my iphone 4s and returning to the Blackberry. It is unacceptable that a cell phone has reception problems without a resolution for so long. I think that after putting so many resources on the iphone 4s such as the Crab Apple forgot the true purpose of a cell phone. iPhone 4s 16G unlocked. Gone.