Q: iPhone 5 wifi issues

Hi Peta,

Just to say thank you for your good wishes.. I am so glad your phones are both working.. ;-)

I did an icloud backup too - but just means i dint have any of my music, as that will need synching from my laptop.. 

Still confused as to whether to replace phone, or wait, as its very fast on home wifi... Its only when i go out, and use public wifi, that there's a problem.. Given my last iphone 5 never connected to any wifi network, I dont want one thats just like that one, or even worse than my current one..

Anyway, despite the issues, its still a briliant phone;-)

Take care,

RTA 33

I was having the same issue. wifi stopped working on my iPhone 5. I checked the router settings and everything was configured good. My other devices (ipod touch, iphone 4s) were able to connect no problem. I was able to get my iPhone 5 working by changing the channel width in the router from 20MHz/40MHz to 20MHz only. So far so good, i been on wifi for about 2 hours now. I hope this fixes the problem completely, but i find this to be annoying. Why do we have to configure our routers to what apple wants, hopefully this could be solved with a software update but i got felling its hardware. Well hope this helps someone.

Where do you change the channel width in the Airport Utility? I have had this issue with excruciatingly slow wi-fi in my brand new iPhone 5 since day one. I have taken it to the store and done 4 DFU restores, none which helped. "The Experts" have no clue what is going on. Painful.

FBIELE may have a point. Although I haven't pinpointed the issue yet, turning off security in my Wi-Fi network makes Wi-Fi on my iPhone 5 blazing fast. Turning it back on makes it painfully slow again.

Had my iPhone 5 32Gb for a couple of days now - and have the worst of all problems...intermittent wifi connection issues.  I can connect to my home network fine, but when I go to my neighbour with identical router and carrier, I get a wifi connection, but no data.  I've been out over the last few days with both iPhone 5 and 4 and tried a number of hotspots - the 4 works fine all the time, the 5 always connects, but 50% of the time gets almost zero data flow.

Hope this is a software issue fixed in 6.0.1...

That's a good point regarding the 20-40 setting on the router.

I didn't know if I mentioned it before but there was a change to 20HZ only  on 2.4.

That was according to small netbuilder. Something about the 40hz spreading over too many channels and causing interference.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/31743-bye-bye-40-mhz-m ode-in-24-ghz-part-1

UPDATE: WiFi WORKS WITH OLDER 802.11G ROUTER 2.4 GHZ band

An update to my earlier post where I noticed my iPhone 5 WiFi was very slow or not working at all on my newer Cisco Linksys 2.4 GHZ band, but worked great on the 5 GHZ band.

I was visiting some family and used my WiFi on an older 802.11G 2.4 GHZ Linksys Router and it worked fine. I also tried it on a newer Airport Extreme and it worked fine also, but since it can automatically connect to 2.4 GHZ or 5 GHZ on the Apple routers it is unclear if it is using 2.4 or 5.

Also, I agree with the post earlier that this issue could be a production problem affecting certain batches of phones. Who knows what is going on at Foxconn. Certainly not Terry Guo, he gets a headache managing 1 million animals (employees)

Hopefully Apple will not need to issue the world's first smart phone recall.

Spent a fortune on my iphone 5 white 64gb and the wifi never really worked with my tp-link router, at peoples houses it is also tempramental. flashed dd-wrt onto my router and that fixed the issue for a while but its back again tried with and without security various dns settings all sorts of suggestions! but nothing works, its clear the ip5 has a wifi issue that hopefully is software and not hardware, even so i cant beliwve even though this is a huge thread, apple are getting away with it theres no pressure on them to issue a statement, we need assurances!

I am also experiencing an issue where my iPhone 5 won't connect or maintain a connection to wifi, despite all other products, including the iPad working. Rebooting the router seemed to work temporarily.

Is this a hardware issue, or can it be fixed in an update? Getting to an Apple Store isn't easy for me.

Just speeking from experience, I tried everything imaginable to find a solution..with no luck. I finally went back to Apple and they replaced...I have had no issues since. My belief is this is a hardware issue. I recommend getting it replaced if you can. Call Apple support, they are pretty quick, they'll set up meeting at genius bar. When i went I explained the problem and he replaced right away...problem solved.

Good luck.

sdreesen

I would be surprised if the new phone fixes it.  Most of us have replaced

Phones multiple times.  There is a serious issue apple needs to address. 

One thing which has worked well for me and has been stable now for

Several weeks is I disable cellular data when I am connected to WiFi it still

Does not remember my network but doesn't drop it.  With That being said I am

waiting for my replacement phone again from Verizon, Eventually apple will get it but for now

I think the only strong message the user community can send Is getting a large amount of phones

returned DOA.  I think there is a OS issue.

Solution that worked for me: Took my Verizon iPhone 5 16GB to the Apple Store, complaining to the genius about my intermittent/dropping wifi connection (same as everyone here) since day 1, which was Oct. 19. I was skeptical, but the genius thought there was a good chance the problem could be resolved by him 1.) doing an immediate iCloud backup of my phone  2.) wiping & and reinstalling the OS  3.) downloading my backup.

That actually did the trick. He said that I would need to try that and/or talking to the people at Apple Support about my fully documented case before they would exchange the device. It's been almost a week since this fix and I've had zero problems with it whatsoever. This was definitely not the same as a factory restore because he reinstalled the OS from an Apple computer that must have been a little different (better, without the wifi bug) than the OS my phone shipped with. So maybe some of you want to give that a try if you can get to an Apple store.

Also, I'm wondering if the Verizon Carrier Update that I downloaded yesterday was in part supposed to help with this issue?

When you got your phone replaced, did you have to bring everything with you ie..box, manual etc. im having serious wifi/carrier issues. I keep losing 3G status and LTE and most of the time it goes to E or O. But the only issue is i dont my receipt :( do i need it for an exchange?

No, i brought everything but they just swapped the phone. The phone they brought out was in a hard reusable plastic case. They say every mac store has a inventory of replacement phones.

FWIW my phone had the same wifi problem. I did a quick search, found this and other threads (which prevented me from wasting time trying to find a solution other than getting a new phone), went to the Verizon store from which I'd purchased the phone, explained the problem and mentioned that there are discussions like this one demonstrating that many phones are effected, they duplicated the problem and instantly arranged to send me a replacement as they didn't have any extras in the store. The replacement phone arrived the next day and works perfectly. Both phones had the same iOS (obviously) and both had the same same carrier settings (13.1).