Q: wifi greyed out iphone 4s

Update on my hair dryer success.

wifi and Bluetooth worked for a few weeks however has gone back to its greyed out state again.

The great news is that even at 3 months out of warranty the apple store replaced the phone at no cost to myself and acknowledged the problem was a known issue with the 4S wifi chips involving the drivers that occurs after updating.

My advice is to book an appointment at your nearest apple store and tell them the problem occurred after most recent update and that you have tried restore and dfu restore already.

Those that have already tried this with no success I would new returning and using my case as an example for replacement.

Hi Guys,

I start having this issue right after I upgraded the iphone 4S to 6.1.3. This version works fine on my Iphone 4 and the IPOD touch 4. I don't think the problem is hardware related. the IPhone 4S was working fine before the upgrade. I don't think Apple will make a public annoucement because of the cost, remember they are perfect . I'm sure they are probably working on a fix, but they will never say so, bad bublicity since Samsung is not too far behind.

Take care and good luck to all of you

After reading way too many replies on several threads regarding this grey/out issue, I booked an appointment with apple, explained this started after update, given new phone was in and out in 10mins, though this whole thing makes me not ever want to update again.

Well, after reading the multiple posts here, I called the tech support and paid $19.00 for assistance.  Well, to no avail, they could not help me and informed me that it was a hardware problem.  I build computers as a hobby, and I know the difference between hardware and software problems.  I went in to the Apple store this morning, explain what have taken place, and was given a new phone.  Don't blow dry your phone, and by the way, my phone been out of warranty for a year.

Thanks for this hairdryer tip furaanafulhi.  My 4S did the same thing, wifi greyed out.  It was still under warranty. I live in Africa and had to send my phone back to Europe where it was purchased.  Took 2 months to get it back to me via friends and family getting it to and fro.  I received my brand new iPhone 4S and low and behold..... the wifi was greyed out!  My last resort was your hairdryer tip and it worked.  My warranty expired today, so thank you!

Question for you xxmaxx82: where are you? If you don't mind me asking... I have a 4S three month past warranty. Did the hair dryer stunt and it worked for a couple of hours. I read your post so I went to the Apple store here in Montreal, Canada. The young girl who "helped" me, told me that the they had that problem with 6.1.2 but that 6.1.3 was supposed to fix it (my problem started with 6.1.3: WIFI greyed out and battery drainning). They reset my phone to factory to check if it's hardware (but still on 6.1.3) so I don't see the point but did it any way. WIFI still greyed out. I said that it'S obviously their update but she say no that's my antenna which is felling and that she will be happy to change my phone for 199$... So I said that it's cheaper to buy an hair dryer! She answered that this is not the same device (no ****), but I said that will fix the problem... She obivously never heard of that and ask me if this was my idea of a bad joke! I just turned hells and left... With a reset phone in my pocket! That's why I asked you where you are, because the policy doesn't seem to be the same here...

I have to give a warning about the last advice on the list (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1559). If you like me fail to get your iPhone working with steps 1 - 4 and try the 5th, it might take more than one try to get it working. After setting language, zone, etc. iPhone starts to search for the Wi-Fi and as usual won't find it. If this happens, try restoring again. I got it working the second time.

My problem was that iPhone 4S could not find network (forced shutdown would help at first). Sometimes the network was visible but I could not join (other Apple devices still had connection). When I once again forced a shutdown, the Wi-Fi button was greyed out. Only restoring helped.

I have to say, I'm not very pleased with Apple right now (mildly said)... This has taken a lot of time and effort and cellular data charges...

I spoke too soon... Wi-Fi stopped working again this morning... At home it will connect and drop out and connect every few seconds, at work it won't join network at all... So I guess this (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1559) advice sort of helps (not greyed out anymore), it just won't fix my original problem which was the connection...

Update on my situation. After having done the hair dryer solution which worked only for few hours, I went to Apple store to be turned back (see my previous post). I eventually redone the hair dryer stunt but a lot more intensivelly that time. Got the "unit too warm" message and WIFI is back and strong for a couple of days now.

Meanwhile, I studied the provincial law (Quebec, Canada) about legal warranty and I found out that the one year warranty is obviously mandatory but it's not the end of it: the law ask the supplier to gives a legal warranty "The goods must be usable
· for the purposes for which they are ordinarily used (section 37 of the Act) and
· in normal use for a reasonable length of time, which may vary according to the price paid, the terms of the contract and the conditions of use (section 38 of the Act)."

Meaning that my phone should work for at least three years as I have a three years contract, considering I take a great care of it.

They're is even a link on Apple website for that law (few additionnal countries too):

http://www.apple.com/legal/additional_legal_rights.html

In my book either Apple should state what is the "reasonnable lengh of time" or agree that the phone should work at least the lengh of the contract. You paying arround 750$ CA for a phone through a 3 years contract, so you expect to be able to use that phone for all that time. And to be honest, I thing Apple product are very well build so it shoudn't cost them so much as their products are so robust.

Anyway, I'll keep you informed. Because, if my WIFI go down again, I'll will go see them back with my new knowledge and we will see how it turns out.

Ok, let's step back and have a look at the big picture here. My son's 4s has the WiFi greyed out issue and thus began my search for information. I know someone else who also began experiencing this problem last week.

After reading many of  the symptoms/remedies of the problem here and elsewhere, it is obvious that this is a hardware issue. There are many early reports of this problem and they were determined to be a hardware related issue long before the release of iOS 6.0. There also appears to be a correlation with the hardware issue and the release of iOS 6. The symptoms of this defect are consistent with a poorly soldered/connected WiFi component. Heating/Cooling reestablishes the physical connection for a short time. This physical connection could be reestablished just by shaking the phone. Toggling settings on/off when the physical connection is reestablished corrects the problem as the software recognizes the "new component". It has also been suggested by others that the iOS 6 release may have exposed, exacerbated or caused this problem. Due to reports of owners repairing their phones by heating them to high temperatures, it is likely they are melting the solder and fixing the physical connection. The melting point of common lead free solder is about 180C/360F. It should be possible to achieve this temp with a blow dryer. There also have been reports of short battery life with iOS 5. Short battery life = high power usage. I know that turning off WiFi will significantly reduce battery usage.

How did the connection break? Poor solder, poor design/engineering, electrical/thermal fatigue, physical damage or a combination of factors.

It is possible the solder joint had somehow become weak and a high demand was placed on this connection causing it to fail.  This high demand could come from a SOFTWARE DEFECT. Depending on environmental factors of each device the life spans would be expected to vary. The time of failure after loading new iOS could vary and may not be immediate.

It would be interesting to see the time line of device failures. Are the oldest the most afflicted? Will a new 4S that has never run iOS5 fail?

Many users never use WiFi because they have unlimited plans. How many people have gone over their data plans due to this failure?       

Certainly engineers tested the new OS. Did they test it on older phones?

The facts:

- The 4s is the phone with the WiFi/BT problems.

- The 4s was released 10/12/11.

- 4 million 4s sold in 1st 3 days and many million more since.

- 4 IPhone 5 released 9/21/12.

- iOS 6.0 released 9/19/12.

Many 4s's will be out of warranty soon after the release of iOS6. The replaced devices had only a 90 day warranty.

Hey this worked for me, thanks BBohio2013!

1 more lucky member.... got 2 iphones 4s till now changed for this wifi grey issue....now waiting for the 4th ip 4s...hope this will works cause im tired to changed 3 phones till now.....1 with power issues....and 2 with wifi grey issue.....

Finally went to Apple Store!

waited a whole week for this appointment, got there exactly on time and after I qeued for 10 min they told I am 10 min late!!!!!!!!!!!!! and my appointment got taken so of course I got angry/****** off but I couldn't get anywhere.

at the end they asked me to wait for 1 hour and maybe they'll find a free person to assest me, at this stage I was going crazy.....I couldn't wait for even a min extra...so they provided me with the earliest appoitment (Monday).

I got home so frustrated and decided to try the hair dryer idea.

1-covered the camera section with a towel.

2-pointed the dryer on the top right area from the back of the phone only for 3 min just to test this crazy solution

when I switdhed the phone back on the wifi was working perfectly but no overheating message came, so the wifi connection lasted for almost 15 min.

I will try it again for longer time and see what happens.

will give an update later.

I hope apple is going to get a fix for this soon. My wife and I are both down as of the same day. Has to be a problem with the new software. I'm not taking my phone s in because that is crazy when it is obviously a software issue.

I tried the hairdryer for 5 min, no message appeared.

the wifi got back for 30 min. so far every time I want to connect to wifi I am heating my phone a bit......

it's a good idea if apple start producing hair dryers and sell it with every 4s.....problem solved!

@jonnyjA I would like to believe it's software issue but the hair dryer thing confuses me and apple is not annoucing anything so far makes it even more strange, I am sure they are going to send an update but would it fix the issue??? let's see