Q: Poor wifi reception on new iPad

Could be caveman. I hope you guys get the problem resolved. It's all working fantastic for me and I am not changing a thing. I haven't gotten less the 10mbps no matter how I held it or place my hands. I am not going to change settings trying to find a problem when it's working great.

Good luck guys!

I am having WiFi issues too, and I am using a case.  I had an iPad 1 that I used all over my house with a consistent 3 bars of signal.  My new iPad is all over the place with strength.

I tried out speed test last night and ran it 15 times in close succession with results that were often 1:10 in difference.  Ping ranged from 29ms to 349!, DL from 2678kbps to 21551kbps, and UL from 1042kbps to 10616kbps.  Weirdly, best cases and worst cases for each subitem weren't the same runs -- eg, the 349 ping also had one of the fastest uploads.

Right next to my router, I am at a consistent 3 bars of strength.  However, I don't accept that my new $800 device should be performing worse than my 3 year old device.

On the plus side, I don't have any heat issues.

It's like the antennas are not shielded at all, because it happens as soon as you touch the iPad, don't even talk about death gripping it.

This is not something software related, it is a hardware issue for shure, this happens to MacBooks that have peeled antena cables and touch the case, maybe they forgot to put the shield on the connectors?

More than a design flaw, it's an assembly issue for me, because it's not a problem for 100% of the new iPads... oh well.

I am my AT&T keeps loosing signal in and out all day I have ipad 2 and 2 iPhone 4s that have full signal and working fine ! But my new ipad is dropping my AT&T service quite a bit. Now my wifi has started dropping too ! I don't know what to do I'm about to take mine back to apple to see what's wrong. On my AT&T I still have the AT&T logo and like 3 bars when it drops I loose my 4g icon meaning I lost data service I have to reset my AT&T conection to work again. Then it's fine for a while then drops again ! Plzzz not my ipad 2 is fine full service and so is my 2 iPhone 4s there fine so that's how I know it's not AT&T end. I've tried everything looks like I'm headed to apple

It all makes sense with the RyanLucier video, rigth in that spot is the WiFi antenna, so it's maybe an issue with the cable shield or antenna poor assembly. If you look at the iFixit pics, the antenna goes from the down right to the down left (where it connects to the logic board) so I'm almost shure it is a hardware issue.

Take a look here where it shows where the WiFi antenna is located and where it connects:

http://guide-images.ifixit.net/igi/eyLICksCtBhxqKIJ.huge

http://guide-images.ifixit.net/igi/ctqRdHkjOEjCZy1K.huge

Now that is starting to make sense. Some must have shielding problems around the antennas. The point I was trying to make is the iPad 3 are not flawed by design because mine works superbly. Having a sporadic manufacturing flaw makes more sense. If you bought your iPad from an Apple store the odds are great that all of those iPads came from the same manufacturing batch. So if you test several in the same store chances are they all have the same flaw.

I'm having the same problem with iPad 3rd gen (16g+wifi+4g). I get excellent wifi on all laptops and phone outside my house, but very little  with new iPad. This is my first Apple purchase, and I am considering returning it because I love to work outdoors.

I just want to add to my post -- I didn't get mine from a store; I ordered it from Apple online.  It's a 64g Wifi only.

@gpco gsx

Thanks for posting the antenna info.

In my previous post, back on page 11, I noted that holding the lower corners in portrait would degrade my signal.

The antenna location is consistent with that result. I didn't see much of an affect in landscape, but I don't remember if I was gripping both lower corners.

I can't say if some ipads are worse than others--mine doesn't seem significantly worse than my iphone--but the fact that for a few, an exchange seemed to fix the problem suggests that it could be an assembly quality issue.

Ron

All, just got off the phone with Apple Tech. He would not comment to much on the issuse but had us send both units back to them for refunds and tech evaluation. He did offer to swap then out for new in the white box units but we have decided to wait about a month and see what else might fall out. As much as I and my friend want one of these it's just not worth the hassle yet. I didn't want to got through 5 or 6 new ones to get a good one like I did with the iPad 2 and the light leak issues. I'm sure they'll get it right in a month or two and we'll all look back on this and chuckle ( I hope)...... Thanks for all the input from everyone & hopefully the info I passed on to the Apple folks we'll  help out getting this resolved.

Just FYI, I went to an apple store today and was able to replicate the "death grip" on a BRAND NEW out of the box ipad 3 right in the apple store, in addition to the 2 other iPad's I've tried. So that's 3 out of 3 ipads that I've had my hands on that the "death grip" killed, from different stores as well. You can't possibly tell me I'm that unlucky, this is a problem and the tech at the store agreed with me. The antenna is under the left hand which ends up nuking the signal...

Very disappointed.

@Ryan, maybe it's your hand? 

Quick Update:

I went to the apple store and they played around with it a bit.  Nice guy who very helpful poked around the device.  He couldn't replicate the exact issue since the store is pretty widely covered with wifi, although my ipad 1 did have better reception than the ipad 3, but it was a minimal difference.  I also noted that the unit was crashing on new app launches and had some processing stutters during some gameplay.  The logs demonstrated this pretty clearly.

We reset the software back to OEM and I agreed to test it out again at a few different locations.  If I was still having an issue after a week they agreed to swap out or refund.  I'm going to refund unless I hear others are finding that new stock fixes the issue.  I doubt this will fix the issue but I'm willing to give it a shot.  I wish there was a screen capture utility for the iPad.  Would be good to get some of this documented without having to record on my iphone.

The apple "genius" was able to replicate it as well, so it wasn't just my hands

Same problem here. iPad 1 was fine and iPad 3 no or poor reception.  Look forward to solution.

@andrew Mclaughlin2 - Simultaneously press the HOME button and the Screen On/ Off  button at the same time, and it takes a photo screenshot.