Q: wifi greyed out iphone 4s

I did the "hair dryer" technique for about 3 minutes (upper part of the phone....trying to stay away from the battery). It is working now but I don't really know for how long (2:34 AM on 03/28/2013)

My phone was so hot that the message popped up said "wait for your phone cool down before use".

Hey yous guys.

My problem with grey wifi switch started from upgrading to 6.1.2. I have tried virtually every idea given here - reseting, restoring, freezing, jailbreaking, upgrading to 6.1.3 - you name it. Freezing made it work for couple of minutes, jailbreaking got me dancing for three weeks 'till yesterday, when it went back grey (I'm thinking it must have been coincidence that it started to work after jb). The only thing I haven't try is to heat it up. I'm thinking it must have something to do with that wifi module soldering, since it reacts to temperature and it's somehow related to iOS 6 firmware upgrade (overheating while loading?). Next week I will take it to technician to have wifi module resoldered, we'll see if it will do any good. Got iphone from my dad from States, I use it in Poland now, of course out of warranty, so It's all on me now. If you find any solution, let us know!

Good luck!

PS: I own 4s 16GB, if that helps to relate to.

I heated the phone with hair dryer AGAIN for couple minutes, it did not work...then I restored the phone by iTunes (desktop).  After restore process I set up the phone as NEW PHONE with also a new Apple ID that I just created.

It (wifi) is working since 10:30 pm.  I am just hoping that I did not jinked myself.

1.  Heat up the iPhone with hair dryer for 2-3 minutes

2. Restored the phone

3. Set up the phone as NEW with a new created Apple ID

Michael Lending

Hi there.

I am having the same problem, but it is very weird and i would say this is definitely a software problem. 2 days ago i got a new branded iphone 4s as a warranty exchange for my broken one (i did not have the 6.1.3 update there and it worked fine). This one i received with latest update and the wifi trouble is here. At first i noticed the wifi is malfunctioning - disconecting from the network, not discovering any others... so i tryed to off/on my phone and here i ran into grey wifi trigger. I tryed various combinations of reset&restore, but without success. This was yesterday during the day. In the later evening a came home and put my iphone into the rubber case. Just of curiosity a performed a hard reset where after turning it back on i suprisingly saw wifi is working. But this lasted just for an hour or so and after it started to malfunction again, i restarted it and the locked wifi was back. So i left the phone to discharge during the night and now i connected it to charger, turned on and the wifi is back on. But no cheers, it worked for like 5 minutes and again it is unable to stay connected or to find any other networks, so it will go grey upon next restart i suppose. Oh may there been a new update ASAP! I hope this will solve the problems, because this is very sad

EDIT: and the BT is not working either. it can be turned on/off, but it is unable to find any device and when trying to pair with my MacAir i received the "device unsupported" on my iphone with the only possible action to "forget device".

EDIT2: now i dosconnected charger on about 45% of battery and the wifi started to work again after it was unable to find any network and stay connected to my remembered home network.

EDIT3: aaaaaaaaaaaaand its gone again, wifi on, but cant connect&discover networks.

hi guyz

I bought my 4S a year ago an it has been running fine till january 2013 where wi-fi was greyed out

returned it to the store where they fixed it , but it got broken again a month later so got back and again they fixed it but it got broken again .

they were telling me they are changing the wi-fi chip  (cannot verify if they are lying or not)

So now they are proposing I sell it for 350$ and pay 400$ so they can give me an iphone 5 , which for me is unacceptable since i payed a year ago 800$ for a brand new iphone 4s with warranty

after updating to 6.1.3 with no success,I tried today to turn off the airplane mode on, then turned off the iphone for 10 minutes then on again. turn airplane mode off : the wifi is working!!

my guess on this is definitely a software problem affecting specific iphone 4s releases ( not all) since not all 4s are the same, they differ in software revisions of the components built in ...

my question is that , is this method a permanent solution, for whoever worked for him?

tx

Hi guys,

I had the same issue with the grayed out wifi since 3 days now and it happend after I updated to the latest iOS version recently, but I was able to resolve the problem temporally by switching my router on and off, suddenly my IPhone 4s would picks up my wifi again and works normally.

I was traveling the other day and I noticed the problem again in the hotel, of course I can't switch the hotel router off and on so I had to deal with this problem during my stay, I connected my iPhone to charge it and it gt heated up a little bit, after leaving it in this situation for 10 min the  wifi worked again for the whole night and morning time as well.

I left the hotel and the wifi got grayed out again so I switched th phone off and on and suddenly the wifi bottun was active and didn't get into gray mode at all untill I went back to the hotel, the connection worked briefly then got lost and grayed out.

I am not sure if this is a software or hardware problem, but for sure this is appls problem!,,, I hope they get their act together and fix it.

Btw, I am out of warranty since 2 month

hi

by the way it stopped working again after 4 hours after trying the airplane mode off -> on

I hope at least Apple can inform us it is a software problem and that is working on the subject in the new IOS

I cannot see any official answer from them till now ...

1. Use the hair dryer to give it some heat (2-3 minutes)

2. Restored the phone through iTunes

3. Set up iPhone by wifi, selected option:  Set as new phone

4. Use new Apple ID, do not bring back your backed up data from computer back into the new retored phone

My is working over the last 3 days....longest since I tried different methods.

so if it is an IOS 6 problem , i tried to downgrade to 5.1.1 but with no success (error 3194), seems that apple also locked the door on a downgrade to 5 !!!

at least let apple open the door for those defected 4s to downgrade to ios 5 !

we are really stuck with iphones with no wi-fi , useless ! definitely an android next time !

anybody had success in downgrading to 5 ?

Hi fadi00' are you sure it's IOS problem? I didn't try to downgrade at all, I wanted to try this solution maybe today.

I also think it's an IOS 6 issue since it started with their latest upgrade but no official answer from apple makes me wonder if is it a manufacturing issue.

I am also thinking to switch to a more reliable brand....maybe android as well.

Btw, I am able to reconnect my phone to wifi by following the airplane mode solution but only for a few hours and sometimes minutes.

I can confirm the hair dryer trick works.  I just had my iphone 4S wifi grey out aswell as loss off bluetooth, heated up phone targeting headphone jack with girlfriends hair dryer until it was too hot to touch then turned back on, received temperature warning but when it started BOOM wifi and bluetooth both working!

Top effort to whom come up with this.

Top effort mate! worked a treat.

hi poiu_1_2013

well my friend I am just in the dark on this issue just like most of us who are stuck with this probem.

one thing i noticed is that it has affected only ios 6 since i was running iso 5 for nearly a year with no problems and like many on this forum

the airplane mode solution lasted for 4 hours, the hairdryer didnt try it yet but from the replies in this forum it is not very encouraging

my only hope is that apple releases something official on this issue , just like when it did on the iphone 4 and its antenna issue, so we can know what to do with those devices.

as u said no IOS next time , when I thought that if you pay a big amount of money for an apple device,as they are the most expensive,  you are safe from this kind of problems, obviously I was wrong