iPhone 5 lte signal/reception problem

On your iMessage issue, see this thread:http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1458503 for others that are being impacted by the same problem.

So just so I'm sure I have the same issue....

When my vzw 5 has LTE it works fine. But, when LTE goes out and it switches to 3G, even though I have a 3G signal the data will not work. Same goes for when it switches back to LTE. I basically have to restart my phone once I get an LTE signal for it to work.

Same issue?

I really like the iPhone 5, the apps load smoothly, the screen looks great, the weight is nice, but an iPhone 5 that only works reliably on home-WiFi is not very useful to me since I bought it specifically for VZW LTE.

I am really hoping this is a SW issue as well since it appears to be impacting -almost- every iPhone 5 out there from what I can tell and 3 VZW units have had the same failure, and seemingly from the article I posted yesterday, the 10 AT&T units that online tech site tested all experienced exactly what I see on the Verizon units.

If someone has an iPhone 5 that you believe is working right when you're not next-to a cell tower and isn't going through the endless switching out of LTE which ends up causing LTE to not work reliably, I'd really love to see what's different with your phone.

The bigger question for me is what I should do as I begin to approach Verizon's return date as I cannot be stuck with (2) iPhone 5s for 3 years if this isn't going to get fixed (SW or HW).

I haven't had to restart my device to get any data through, but yes, same issue and add horribly slow performance (esp. upload speeds) when you're not next to a tower. This appear to get even worse (than it already is under these two conditions): 1. You are HOLDING the device and it's not sitting on a desk 2. You have a CASE on the device. Either way, it's not working right, but it's even worse under conditions 1 & 2. When you're in this state, you may want to try flipping Airplane mode or toggling LTE instead of restarting your iPhone. Have you contacted 800-MY-APPLE and Verizon per my instructions earlier in the thread to report what you are seeing?

Not yet. I am going to an Apple store tomorrow though. I will reference this thread when I go.

I've tried an Apple store, don't waste your time. Call 800-MY-APPLE, you will get a Ticket open on your issue.

(The Apple store will hook your device up to a computer, claim everything is fine, and blame the carrier and will do nothing to escalate this serious issue properly)

Ok I'll do that.

Make sure that you reference this specific forum thread and mention other people have open active tickets with Apple on the topic so that they don't claim or believe you are the first person to ever call on this topic and open a ticket. I am not sure how many other people here have active 800-MY-APPLE tickets, but I do, so if/when they claim to you nobody else is reporting it, you will know that is simply not true.

another potential small symptom....not sure if anyone else notices this, but when i am on Wifi, and unlock my phone, for an instant i see the LTE indicator before it switches to the wifi indicator. I thought the recent carrier update for vzw on Sunday (vzw data being used on wifi) was going to take care of this, but it is still happening. Anyone else notice this? from my experience this has not happened on previous phones or iOS versions. Not sure if this is realted to the overall problem, but could be...

I see the same thing, but in my case since the phone can't hold an LTE signal unless I'm next-to the tower, my phone shows a "o" or "3G" or both (o followed by 3G) as happened this morning. I don't believe that this is a problem though, because WiFi radio needs to sleep / wake up to save power, so the fact that you see LTE briefly before the WiFi radio wakes up seems normal. What's not normal is that I can't hold a LTE signal.

good call. i kept the wifi radio working with some streaming audio, locked, unlocked, and saw only the wifi indicator. still, i dont remember seeing this behavior in the past. anyway...

going to open a ticket with apple. i dont think i'll waste my time with a hardware replacement, but want to make sure they know. I was experiencing a weak LTE signal at lunch yesterday, with the switching between LTE, 3G, and o - and was challenged to a speed test by an iPhone 4 on ATT. needless to say, he crushed me, and during one page load i actually received error "cannot activate cellular data". sad

I do have to say that i LOVE everything about the iPhone 5 - i hope they can update iOS 6 soon with a fix.

You're welcome to try a HW replacement, but it did nothing for me. To recap, I've tried 3 different iPhone 5's (VZW in my case) and 3 Nano SIMs and none has resolved the properly of weak signal strength and locking on to non-LTE networks and often not coming back at all and if/when it does, 1-2 bars and horrible performance. Re Cannot load cellular data, I was in a location on Sunday with 4-5 bars LTE, went to access a web site, signal completely dropped, same issue, and then came back 5-10 seconds later and site loaded fine. All part of the same root problem in my book.

I still have no idea if this is a SW-bug, a massive HW-defect, or a combination of both. Hoping for our sake and Apple's that it is a SW-bug and they have a fix around the corner, but given that the problem goes from horrible to really-horrible with either holding the phone or a case, I'm wondering how that could be 100% SW-related.

Based on Pete's investigation I'm willing to bet he phone just has a weak LTE antenna and doesn't poll for LTE very often. The could fix the polling with a software update but I'm willing to bet it would hurt battery life for people in areas with weak LTE signals.

I'm in Connecticut today (live in Hyde Park, NY), and they must have really strong LTE. My phone has had a consistent 3 bars of LTE and is flying. Once again, I think that if LTE drops to 2 or below, the phone goes into a jumble between connections and fails for us. Apple, fix this!!!

Megap,

Yes, I saw the same thing. When I was at the second VZW store where they claimed they had a VZW tower on-site, it was one of the only places where I had a good LTE experience. In that case I received about 15-20Mb/s in both directions and phone was registering solid 4 or 5 LTE bars. Agree on phone w/ 1-2 LTE and I also believe the weak radio issue is causing it to be 1-2 LTE when it shouldn't be.