Q: Poor wifi reception on new iPad

I was the first person to respond to the post and wanted to let you know that:

A) my new iPad was manufactured in week 7 (February) at DM (Foxconn)

B) I called AppleCare and have a Genius appointment today. 

I'll let you all know what happens.

That tells you there are a lot of non-techy people trying to be techy by blindfully and madly following the trend.

I do give credit to Apple of capturing the mass of all the foolish people.

"If you believe that the chip is responsible, why keep getting replacements?  You're not going to change the chip."

You are definitely right if all the chips were made identical. Do you understand what manufacturing defects are?

It_caveman knows what he's talking about and sorry, you don't.

I have had the new iPad since launch day, I bought it online.

At home, about 25 ft from my router, I didn't notice any problems with the wifi.

Today I leave for Afghanistan and I'm literally in the airport terminal waiting to leave. I decide to jump on my iPad and waste some time. It refuses to connect to any of the open wireless connections. I pull out my MacBook Pro and sure enough,  the MBP connects and gets full bars.

I've tried a network connections reset, a hard reset of the iPad, and all other suggestions on this forum and online.

Sadly, I'm outside my 14 days full refund window and unlike most of you here, I now can't go to a Genius Bar (as they don't have an Apple store in Afghanistan yet )

I am definitely not pleased about this and am sad to see Apple is refusing to acknowledge the issue publically.

In his defense chip defects does not appear to be the problem.  It appears to be related to software so I think his point is valid.  Unless by some chance you happen to get one with a defect which coincidently gives you the same symptoms.....exchanging your IPAD is pointless unless you want to send a message to Apple.

Every single person in this thread is speculating at this point until Apple says something.

I respectfully disagree as to it being software. My reason being that if it were an issue with IOS 5.1 then logically every single new iPad would be affected instead of the seemingly random batches here and there. You are correct in that it is strictly speculation at this point and I do respect your opinion.

Respectfully, I disagree with your disagreement. (I had to say that as it sounds a bit funny :) ).

To assume some are good and some are bad is a false pretext because those who they are fine may unknowingly know Rey have a problem because their circumstances do cause it to be obvious. Here are two examples of what I mean:

#1 - myself. I didn't really see signal strength issue, even reported it so earlier in the week. With more accurate instructions on how to diagnose I was able to replicate issue quite easily.  Some have taken the extra step of going to Apple store and reconfied all ipad3 display models exhibit same behavior.

#2 - gentleman going to Afghanistan; no problems at all until he encountered them at airport.

Now with that said, there are numerous people who have upgraded to ios 5 (iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 2, even some original iPads ) who immediately started having varying connection issues after upgrade.  I'm usin iPhone now to post this so it's not easy to insert some URLs, but scroll up to one I my perilous posts to get one of these links.

Apple will acknowledge and address with due time and I expect a software update to correct it. Speculative rumors indicate something having to do with power management -- that however is purely speculative sonwe have to wait and see.

It was a bit funny and I still don't think it's software problem for reasone previously stated but a software patch could possibly band-aid or mask the issue in some cases. I still think in the end that it will turn out to be a QA or assembly issue with the bad, weak Or flaky units. As I have posted before with testes etc. I have seen good units as well as defective in the wifi area of the iP3's. As you say , it's All speculation to be certain until or when Apple decides to make an announcement as to the cause. I do respect your opinion as I do all others.

I agree Mike.  The one thing I learned a long time ago when I used to do desktop and dialer support is that when something is power related it can exibit erratic and inconsistent behavior.  For example we had a group of dialers that had faulty firmware regulating power utilization.  They were not "juicing up" fully when under load and some were failing and some were not.  The only thing we could figure is that each piece of hardware had slight variances in efficiency and the voltage being supplied was probably on the border of what was needed.  Some failed and some did not even though the vendor confirmed that the firmware was faulty and causing incorrect power regulation on all of them.

Specifically with the IPAD I also find it interesting that all of the sudden I am seeing people who have upgraded their IPAD to the new OS and now all of the sudden are having wifi problems now??  That is interesting to say the least.

I am convinced that it is a software issue.

My affected devices are iPad 2, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and three Apple TVs.  All of which were operating completely normal for year(s).  That is until a few weeks ago after updating each of these devices to iOS 5.1.

Returning these devices isn't even an option at this point.

I also think that the issue is software related and the same thought is starting to surface on the internet as well as there are a lot of articles talking about a power management issue which is software related. Also, on my iPad 1 the same issue appeared ( but on a lower degree) as soon as i updated it to iOS 5.1. I think that when circuitry is flawn and defective it either works or doesnt work. That fact that it doesnt work under certain circumstances makes me think it has to do with the OS

I'm now 100% convinced it's software.  I say this because I normally jog and always had wifi accessible from my iPhone4 while in stretching in the driveway and would actually switch over to 3G shortly after the start of the jog (the router is close to the window on the front room so it's about 15 ft away).

Today, I noticed the 3G symbol and I initially thought I had my wifi off.  I went to settings to turn it on and realized it was already on.  I then went to wifi networks and I did NOT SEE my router.

I turned off wifi and turned it back on and still no wifi was listed -- not even my neighbors wifi routers.  Nothing was listed.

Scientifically, I can only base my conclusions on my findings and my experience coroberates the issues many have been having with the latest 5.1 software.  The iPad3 was simply a victim of a software glitch as it was released with 5.1.

Something so pervasive should not last too long, I would guestimate an update within 30 days from release date.

With all due respect, this thread is full of comparisons of new iPad vs older iPads and iPhones all sporting current firmware and clearly showing different results. Please note, that devices in question also sport different WiFi chips requiring different firmware code to operate.

I suggest we stick to the new iPad WiFi woes here to find if there's any clear and simple way to diagnose them. Trying to cover all possible WiFi issues in a single thread won't help anyone.

ViktorCode wrote:

 

With all due respect, this thread is full of comparisons of new iPad vs older iPads and iPhones all sporting current firmware and clearly showing different results. Please note, that devices in question also sport different WiFi chips requiring different firmware code to operate.

 

I suggest we stick to the new iPad WiFi woes here to find if there's any clear and simple way to diagnose them. Trying to cover all possible WiFi issues in a single thread won't help anyone.

Very true VictorCode,

I just finished reading all the recent replies. The thread veered off into other products primairly as supporting evidence the problem is with the software update more than anything else. The fact these symptoms appeard on many other products after the 5.1 update is very strong evidence there is a fault in the iOS5.1 update which affects the software layer independent of the underlying hardware.

While it is true different hardware may require different drivers to enable and operate, the drivers are isolated into a hardware abstraction layer which is then interfaced via a common API independent of the hardware.

As a simple crude example, the "on/off switch" available on the iOS UI calls WifiOff() general function for all iOS devices.  The driver layer may throw switch X on hardware1 and switch Y on hardware2.  If someone messed up the software at the iOS level, both hardwares will have problems turning on/off.  Everyone will initially calim the iPad3 wifi has faulty hardware because it doesn't turn off.  A few days later, when people realize they are also having problems turning off the wifi on their iPhones & previous generatrion iPads, it becomes clear there is a general issue with the software update and little to do with hardware.

This is what seems to be happneing with iPad3 and wifi.

Note, even if the symptoms where only with iPad3.  In this scenario, it will be more difficult to discern if it's hardware or software because the new driver software may have bugs (e.g. software solution with update) or hardware because it's new as you noted.

In short, because the symptoms persist on various devices after ios5.1 update, reset assured it's a software issue and it will be addressed very soon.

--Mike (Software Architect)

I took my new ipad back to the Apple Store yesterday and showed them this thread, etc...they gave me a new on without so much as questioning me.  The new one was actually manufactured the week BEFORE my old one (new one was week 6 at Foxconn, non-working one was week 7), so I didn't have high hopes.  However, I couldn't replicate my issues.  In fact, in the master bedroom, all ove my devices can only "see" the 2.4GHz G band, but the new iPad is the only device that now see the 5.0GHz N-band AND it never dropped the signal...even after 2 hours of messing around.  I am not ready to declare it fixed, but I am happy with the service Apple has provided me.