My iphone 4s just keeps losing signal (searching)

I do all the troubleshooting for my company and for my friends. Had about 10 iPhones come through me that had this problem. So far, the restore from iTunes worked on everybody. For some, the problem resurfaced after 1 week; for some, the problem never came back (several months already).

@samuelfromgeorge: First sync your phone so all the apps are backed up on your computer. Then you can get all your apps back on to your phone. If not, then you need to re-download all your apps. If you bought apps, you can repurchase them from iTunes (click on "Buy") and it will be free. The App Store keeps track of all the apps that you purchased on your account, so you can download all of them without paying again. The first time might be a little scary because you have to go through the buying motion, but a pop-up will tell you that you already bought this program so there will be no charge.

Well last night i had to restore and today about 12pm, the phone started doing the same thing again. I can't even get 24 hours out of the phone now.

To all who are having this issue, are you receiving text messages or picture messages from Android/Verizon customers? We are pretty we have narrowed down the problem with my Fiance's phone to this being the issue. Luckily we don't know anyone who messages him regularly, this just happened when he had things listed on craigslist and was getting offers and such. Hope this helps!!

Well actually today I have the day off so i slept in late. I wokeup around 10ish, checked my messages, all seemed fine, battery life was good. Went back to sleep. Then a few hours later a text message woke me up from my cousin. So i read it and noticed battery life was down and it was doing the SEARCHING thing. My cousin uses an android.

But the battery was about 50%, i wokeup immediatly when the text message came in. Yesterday at the mall when it happened, i didnt receive any text messages, that I know of. Maybe someone sent me one and i never got it but it killed the phone?

Restores have worked for me so far- I spent time on the phone with a senior tech Friday concerning this issue- he was mystified with this issue and passed the case along to the engineers, promising to let me know as soon as he heard from them. He also gave me his contact info, since I've spent so much time on this already.

To those of you who are saying restores aren't working, could it be that an Andriod user has sent you a photo and you just don't know it? Every time my phone goes haywire I ask around until I figure out that someone has indeed tried to send me a picture. It's ridiculous that this is happening.

Restores work for me, but they can work for an hour up to a week or so. I also have not gotten any answers from the apple staff in the stores... not sure what to do anymore, i rely on my phone for business.

Maybe the Android devs found a bug in iOS and they are doing this on purpose! That'd be funny. Ok, not funny for you guys going through this problem, but kinda funny in the bigger picture.

So now we're getting somewhere. I turned iMessage on and i had my cousin (android user) sent me a picture message. He asked "did you get it" which i did not. But what do you know, its now in the SEARCHING mode again... so i think we're on to something.

Im going to disable iMessage and have him send another picture message to verify this is the issue (issue being iMessage)

Heres another update. My cousin just todl me hes been sending me lots of MMS throughout the months. I havnt gotten a single one from him in MONTHS. So this must be whats happening.

Adam, it sounds like there's something there. If you don't mind, could you get the following information?

(1) Which Android phone does your cousin have?

(2) Which version of the OS does he have?

(3) What carrier is he on?

(4) Did he send you a photo or a video?

I ran some tests here, but the iPhone is still fine. The Android phone was HTC Droid Incredible, rooted, running CM7, on Verizon. The MMS file (photo) was sent to iPhone 4S on AT&T (this is a phone that had the "Searching" error a couple of weeks ago).

Yeah, I'm doing FREE DEBUGGING for Apple. That's what happens when you're a QA person.

Thx onstar20 will look into that

Hi kmmcgowan

I have not received any MMS or iMessage so in my case it does not seem to be related to that

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but no you would not be receiving any- when a non iPhone sends me a MMS I am not receiving them at all. AT&T sees it as being delivered on their end, but it never appears on my phone. It does throw off my phone into the searching pattern and I ask around til I find out who sent me a picture... We've tested this out with a droid incredible and a few other Android phones.

So my cousin is using an Incredible running the Frodo version of android. Hes on Verizon.

I tried disabling iMessage and he sent me an MMS, but i never got it. Instead the phone went into the searching mode.

So that explains it, we've FIGURED OUT whats causing the phones to go in/out like that. Its when we get MMS from outside iPhones... i dont know what other carriers/phones cause it to happen to us, but ive confirmed an incredible user on Frodo on Verizon causes it to happen.

This is at least SOME progress. Now everybody knows what is causing this, now for apple to fix the issue

samuelfromgeorge: I dont actually receive the MMS either, it never makes it to my phone. But my cousin says he DID send me it and has been sending me numerous MMS over last few days, everytime my phone craps out and goes into SEARCHING. I never actually receive the messages though, so never knew what was happening.