Poor wifi reception on new iPad

PS the fan a a Macbook have more bars 4 I think. The iPhones and iPads have 3 bar fans....

I don't thnk it's a wide spread problem. It just appears that way because of this thread. My iPad 3 is working flawlessly as is many others. There seems to be a bad batch that got in the works. No sense in Apple making a statement about that. Easy fix. When you get a good one your going to be SO impressed. This thing is AMAZING!

Marvso, with the greatest of respect, we know that there are 4 or 5 million happy customers out there. This forum is not really for them, we would never find the issues amongst all the back slapping of how good this is if they all made a post.

In summary this is one small (and difficult to find forum) there are over 100 complaints, but that does not in any way allow us to assess the scale of this issue. Only Apple can know that based upon returns (even then it's not clear cut, as my first faulty one is still here awaiting collection by Apple, even when they receive it they will have no idea why it was returned as they do not ask that question) i accept it will be some time before ANYONE knows if its 1% of 5M units or 20% of them. However in the meantime they could put an immediate end to ALL forums like this with a simple acknowlegement that they are dealing with a possible issue, and what data they have on it so far.

I can't see how you assess this to be an 'easy fix' or 'bad batch'. Faults are showing in multiple countries, with every varient and purchased at every kind of outlet. That's one very very big batch

when i buy a product for £400 or more, i expect it to work, if it does not then i expect the supplier to show at least a modicum of customer care skills, not just to run away and hide in a corner as Apple are doing now.

Is that really too much to ask of the world's largest company?

Amen, also its not tested till you test it on all bands 2.4 and 5. You may have a hidden issue and don't see it till you do the test.

Here is a good site to test for dead pixels as well. Enjoy!!:

http://www.net-tracker.net/ipad/2011/05/how-to-test-your-ipad-2-for-screen-bleed ing-issue/

I managed to play with an ipad 3 today... you wouldn't believe how hard it is to get your hands on one - that and the fact that the nearest Apple shop is quite far away.

Well anyway - i tried to replicate the death grip in HMV with their test ipad 3. Honestly speaking - their AP would be more than likely within a few metres of the ipad because the signal was VERY STRONG and even tho i tried to replicate the death grip - it just wouldn't give in. I MUST ALSO STRESS AS WELL that they just took it out of the box. the plastic was still on the screen and they haven't entered the password for their AP in HMW.

Interestingly tho - if you do the deathgrip on ipad 2, it also loses signal but not as drastically as the ipad 3 is being portrayed.

But wait there's more.

Throughout the shopping centre there is more than one wireless hotspot. In the UK our hotspots range from names but one of the most common ones would be BT Openzone (Similar to AT&T). When i stood there playing with the wifi it managed to pick up 4 other hot spots... One was called public.

Anyway i managed to get a video of it... at that point the AP's available were the HMV apple demo wifi and the hotspot called Public. Once i applied the deathgrip - public disappeared but the apple demo wifi was still immensely strong.

Whether that was a massive coincidence or not i'm not sure, but i think that the deathgrip does have something to do with it. As i was testing it out on ipad 2 as well - i noticed a drop. i think it is a design flaw.

Here's the video - it's a twitvid video.

http://twitpic.com/909q5n

Here, here, hitcheak! I agree. Comments like Marvso don't do anything constructive, other than be apologists for the company, and a naysayer to those like us who are having issues. I also found the note annoying and patronizing.

PS sorry the video was on my iphone... the strong signal obviously was Apple demo - the second one was the AP called Public

Apple is certainly aware of the issue and tracking it closely. I took my ipadinto the apple store last night. Showed Them the wifi issues and my ability to kill wifi by just holding it in landscape. Within 5 minutes I had a new iPad which at least to this point is working flawlessly. The rep told me they have been asked by corporate to track these specific issues. I had one of the very early ones so my guess is that they did have a bad batch. Just wanted to let everyone know that they are watching and are willing to help. Despite the disappointment with the original I was truly impressed by how wonderfully it was handled in store. They may have just created a new fanboy customer. ;-)

I concur with the earlier reports. I bought 2 iPad3's on the opening day (one week ago), both LTE 64GB models, one on ATT and one on Verizion.. one white and one black.

Both units have now been tested on two different WiFi networks with similar results. Holding them lightly by the lower left corner (in landscape with the Home button on the left) vs laying flat (or holding on the lower right corner) yields substantial differences in performance based on Speedtest results. One has a case and one does not, but that did not seem to make any difference.

"Hands free" performance yields a download speed of 20Mb/s or better.. holding by the lower left corner yields a max download speed of ~5.5 Mb/s, or roughly a 75% degradation. Distance from router (both brands) was approximately 25 feet.

My iPad 1 (and iPhone4) does not have this problem...

I called Apple support today and advised them of the problem. The rep was very understanding, but after checking, reported that this issue has not made it to the internal Apple "Emerging Issues" list, so most likely the Apple Stores will not be familiar with this issue. After excalating to a support supervisor, they ran a remote diagnostic on my iPad but it showed no issue. They then recommended restoring the iPad to "New" and testing, to further rule out any issues with the IOS installation on the device..

I still have an appointment at a Genous bar tomorrow.. will report findings, but not optimistic.

My dad came a while ago from his work, so i was able to test side to side his iPad 2 and my New iPad.
I noticed that the new iPad performed some times better than the iPad 2. When they both were getting good signal quality, new iPad overcame iPad 2. When we went to a room that is far from the router, they both were with just 1-2 bars, most of the time 1 bar, switching from time to time to 2 bars.
In that enviorenment, iPad 2 overcame New iPad sometimes, but new iPad also was faster than the iPad 2 other times. Very unpredictable behaviour from BOTH iPads, sometimes dw5/ul1, dw1/ul0.1... you never know what's coming, even without moving them. Now i don't know what to think. When my dad grabbed his iPad 2 in the way of the "dead grip", it was algo slower than without grabbing it that way. Not so drastic that the New iPad though.

When i'm far away from the router, dead grip is "deathly" for my iPad, as much as the youtube video posted before, but when i'm close it doesn't even notice. I don't know if this is solved with a back protector.

I was thinking on buy it anyway (i love to protect all my products... i'm sure you too =) ), anyway, i don't want to have a product with some design issue. I had enough with iPhone 4. I'll be using it this 14 days and if we don't know anything from Apple, i will return it for another one and hope for the best.

I'm sure most of the people that says that their is OK is because they've one like mine, you don't notice it's not perfectly right if you don't run speedtest from the distance. Mine seemed to work flawlessly to me in the Apple Store this morning, even though i read about this issue from here and i tried death grip and everything i had chance to try.

Sorry if my english is bad, i try my best but i'm from spain.

This is ridiculous... My wife is using iPad 2 on the very same network as I do, and she have no problems at all, and my new iPad is loosing connectivity... Apple ? Any more surprises ? Please fix this !

The best thing to do at this time is return for a replacement or get a refund and buy another in a month or so. Some have had good luck with replacements so far. I'm waiting for 30 days then trying again..

I agree. Received my new ipad yesterday - ATT 16gb model. Played with it for hours and had the same wifi issues as described in this thread. i.e. in landscape mode, when you hold the ipad on the left, the wifi signal drops within 5-6 seconds. Then stays low, sometimes comes back, sometimes drops to even lower or totally drops. If you stop holding it on the left side and hold it just from the right, the wifi strength returns to full. I had an iphone 4S right next to it all this time and its strength always stayed full while the ipad's dropped. Also ran the speedtest app while the signal had dropped and it slowed to a crawl totally. All this time, I was in the room right above where the router is kept, so the distance to the router wasnt much either. The iphone 4S always has had a full wifi strength in this location and has never had drops.

Also found that on moving a few rooms away and when holding the ipad just on the right side (where the signal doesnt drop), the wifi strength on the ipad is not as strong as my iphone 4S. My ipad wifi became an absolute crawl while the 4S was still doing ok.

On a side note, I also noticed the ATT signal also degraded when the Wifi signal degraded. However, I cant be positive if it was linked or just random, since I wasnt paying much attention to the cellular signal at this time.

Returned the ipad to the Apple store today. Will wait and watch till Apple says something about it. Maybe I will just buy the ipad2 instead, even though I am in the market for the new iPad.

so Apple, the world awaits your response, what's it to be?

we hide in a corner? or we come clean?

just tell us. Apple your time is now, make something of it, or contimue to hide....

I just bought the new ipad 16 gig wifi vertion. Im experiencing poor reception as well.

Any reliable way of testing the wifi reception that would show the problem, to help explaining when I call support?

I have to call since there is no store I can walk into and talk to support around here.