Q: wifi greyed out iphone 4s

Thanks for the help. Unfortunately that did not work for mine. I have tried everything suggested. The hairdryer and freezer solutions are temp. fix. Travelling outside the US so I have not been able to go to at&t store.

Suggest everybody to lodge a complaint at

https://expresslane.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.action

and let Apple know we are not a small group. This is a big problem and cant be left to find its own solution.

Anand Agarwal

I had same problem, warrantee expired 10 days back. Went to apple so called genius bar waited for 2 hrs...They know 2 things only. Reset or replaced. Asked to pay 200 bucks. Then followed furaanafulhi and wowwww... Amazing...it fixed immediately...furaanafulhi you are great....need to give tips to genius bar.great job...

I have just tried the heating technique and can confirm that it has for the moment resolved the issue.  Your (wike123) explanation of why this is happening is the most plausible.  I do recall my iPhone running hot previously.

So now how do we go about getting apple to acknowledge and admit to this issue? We all know they could afford to replace faulty units for free but I guess their fear is the PR disaster this would be. 

I also like wike123's theory. Makes a lot of sense. In any case I must say that the correlation between broken wifi and iOS 6 is huge. I had solved my wifi issue using the heating technique (by taking multiple pictures with the flash on) but it become broken again two weeks later and now that fix doesn't work anymore. I'm definitely mad. So do we just all fill complains using the link that andyagarwal suggested?

I took my "24-days-out-of-warranty-greyed-out-4s" to the Genius Bar (tsk tsk) and they wanted 139 quid, in exchange for a refurbished phone (which I already have due to the failure of the original within warranty). Seeing as you only get 90 days warranty on them, I thought this was a pretty bum deal.

So, I took matters into my own hands. Having tried all manner of restores, etc. to no avail. I decided it was a hardware issue. So,I opened the phone and identified the location of the wifi module and heated it up with a solder station heat gun, whilst protecting other areas of the phone with heat shields. This essentially reflowed the solder which connects the module to the main board. It fixed the problem for me. It is a similar problem that people experienced with the PS3 system, where the main CPU became unconnected due to poor solder joints.

So, a big thanks to Apple for.... for not helping me, when this was essentially a manufacturing fault.

Well, my daughter came to me the other day with her white iPhone 4S claiming that the WiFi was inactive.  Upon inspection, I saw that the button was indeed greyed out.  I researched it online and tried several reset options - none worked.

After furthering my investigations, I found all the posts about taking a hair dryer to the iPhone to reflow the solder joint of the WiFi module.  A plausible solution.

So I took two Mr. Clean Magic Eraser pads - which were originally developed as super-duper insulators - and blocked off the battery area to protect it from the heat.  I took a standard non-ionizing hair dryer and held it about 6-8 inches away from the phone's camera area and began to heat it up.  I did this for two minutes.  I let it cool a minute, then powered on the phone.  No dice.

Not giving up, I decided to up the ante.  I layed the phone face down on a wooden bar stool and held my Millwaukee heat gun about 10-12 inches away from the phone and blasted it!  I left off the sponges this time and really heated it up.  Did this for 3:00 mins.  When I was done, the phone was radiating heat and was super hot to the touch - I couldn't even pick it up.  I then relocated the phone to a granite counter-top to cool.  Of course, my daughter was impatient and turned the phone on and iOS reported that the phone was over temperature and then shut down.  I let the phone cool completely and then powered-up the phone.  Still no dice.

So, I waited a couple of minutes.  Then did the following steps as outlined by BBohio2013:

1.  turn Airplane mode ON

2. turn phone OFF, wait 10 minutes.

3.  power up phone, turn airplane mode OFF

And presto!  Wifi active again!  So I don't know if it was the heat gun activity or the above tasks that fixed it.  Of course, I'd try the steps above before cooking the phone as I did.  So far so good.

Thought I would share.

I have got the 4s and the problem accured with 6.1

The iphone has been exchanged with a refurbished one in the apple store.

It worked only two hours, than I got the same problem again(!)

I have the impression, the wifi was disabled as soon as I tried enable the google active sync over MS Exchange.

I have seen, that google droped in the meanwhile this functionality. Could it be that this is related to the Wifi Problems?

Update.  A mobile repair store has said that they could fix the wifi problem with a 90% success rate. and at a cost of only 30 pounds.  They mumbled something about finding a part with same number? And it would take them 5 days.  I then popped along to see those geniuses at the apple bar.  They are playing down the issue by saying that relative to the massive numbers of handsets sold the problem is not as widespread as I might think.  They asked for the 139 pounds for an out of warranty handset replacement.  When asked about the mobile repair stores claim to be able fix the problem, they responded that the wifi module is fixed to the motherboard so no chance without replacing the whole board.

Thanks HalS It worked like a dream. Turned the Airplaine Mode off turned the phone off left it for 10 mins fired the phone up again, yes wifi is working, thanks again, No thanks to Apple.

Pete

Brisbane Australia

Greyed out wi-fi solution...

Simply turn off cellular data, turn on airplane mode and reset network settings. It should be working perfectly again.

Tried that still not working.

It worked for an hour  is all

There are heaps of threads on this. One has over 200 pages, another over 40 and the list goes on. Some people say hardware some software. Clearly apple are at fault. I think depending on where you are you may be able to push apple for a repair depending on your consumer laws. Sammo69 Pete in Brisbane. Check my reply in one of the other threads about my experience at the apple store chermisde. Mine was 13 months old and I got a repair because I had ACCC advice in hand. Try that because otherwise I think you're not going to find a permanent fix at the moment.

It's really quite upsetting that when I posted that which i posted above, in another thread; my attempt at solving this (in my opinion) hardware issue when only 24 days out of warranty, that someone decided that I was wrong and said:

modular747

HT4623 Re: iphone 4s wifi is greyed out

Mar 14, 2013 7:17 AM (in response to airshod ventez)

So, you feel entitled to an extended warranty (lifetime??), without you having to pay for it like everyone else...

And then they said:

It's always the whining ranters such as yourself who try to tell others who don't buy into their self-serving demands to not respond and that they aren't "helpful"...

The FACT is that YOU CHOSE not to purchase AppleCare or other extended warranty, and now are demanding coverage for a hardware problem which occurred beyond 1 year. You surely don't lack a sense of entitlement...

Wonderful, eh?