Q: wifi greyed out iphone 4s

Hi Fadi00

I also wanted to try the hair dryer thing but I am not sure if this will lead to a permenant fix. I am still waiting for confirmation from other people on this matter, I hope someone in this forum tell us if is it a permenant fix or not.

I am also very upset about that, this device was very expensive for something like that to happen, something I am sure about that I won't buy any product from Apple anymore, I've already sold my Apply TV due to over heating issues...

one thing I wanted to mention, I was able to reconnect the wifi by doing a multiple off and on for the cellular data, air plane mode, blue tooth and wifi.......I did this several times and for some reason it lead to fix the wifi for only 10 min, but everytime I want my wifi to work I do this operation repeating these steps more than 3 to 4 times and everytime I do it the wifi works briefly.....I am not sure but maybe this scratches out the manifacturing problem and leave it with software issues.

I started looking for a new device already, even if Apple fixed this issue I don't want to keep the phone.

The same thing happen to my 4s. I went down to Apple a hour almost 2 hours away and waited in line for 30mins. Then I told the guy what was wrong and he just said pay us $200 and we will give you a new phone. No, yeah its been happening to some people or let me look at it and see whats wrong...just pay me and move along. My warranty had ended less then 10 days before and they would not work with me at all on the problem. Mine started after the 6.1 update and just stopped working one day. I tried resetting the wifi in the house, erasing my phone, resetting my network connection and everything else mentioned but putting my phone in the freezer. Then I tied updating it to the 6.1.3 and it completely grayed out my wifi and it wouldn't even turn on. I ended up going to my cell phone carrier and they tried to fix it but they couldn't and ended up giving me a new one for free because I had insurance. Everyone has heard about it there and they don't know how to fix it, but know its the software. Apple needs to do something to fix it if they are having such a problem with the new updates!!

same thing happened to me,which was 3 months ago,the bluetooth and wifi an tethering (even with cable )started working unstably,after the ios 6.0.1 update,and just before the ios 6.0.2 update.i thought it was just a software prob so i tried airplane mode and restarting phone and also resetting the phone,everything i tried didnt make it last more than an hour.having an unusable wifi and bluetooth until ios6.1,jailbroken has made  the wifi usable for few days,and it went down again.finally gave a last try on hairdryer,it works for me,it is still working until now,more than a month,i think it worth giving it a last try before sending for fix or exchanging with charge.it could be a permanent fix.  

dias

The reason the hairdryer trick works is the problem lies with the wifi/Bluetooth radio chip losing its solder connection to the mainboard. When heated to a high temperature targeting the headphone Jack the chip solders itself back to the board.

Aww, interesting. So how do you explain the fact, that my wifi was out of service for 1 day (on my new out of warranty exchange one day "old" iP 4s), no resetting/restoring helped and the next day it started to struggle working/not working every other while and at this moment it is working 4 days straight. I did no such stupid act like warming/freezing my device...

And i hope they are not so stupid in apple to use solder which reacts on heat from outside on so low temperatures when you realize the operational temperature of the common solder. It aint less than 100 C. So there is no point or fact in your explanation, otherwise the usage of such solder would lead to way more reports about unfunctional wifi/bt.

Cant argue with the facts my friend. Have done it on two seperate devices with exact same problem and both still working after months. Every other method tried prior to resorting to heat.

Not saying I am happy with Apple and this fault but if not under warranty I am willing to try anything.

I hope that there would be a permanent solution on this problem,

1.  turn Airplane mode ON

2. turn phone OFF, wait 10 minutes.

3.  power up phone, turn airplane mode OFF

This worked for me. Thanks.

The airplane mode method lasted about 5 hours before

Wifi is dead again

The hairdryer method has lasted since yesterday

I hope it lasts

Has anyone tried the hairdryer solution and got his wifi dead

Again?

Hi Fadi00,

same happened to me, the airplane mode lasted max for a day, I tried it again today and it lasted less than a min!!

I didn't try the hai dryer though, what is your recomendation so far? and can you list the Hairdryer operation clrearly?

btw, I found this video on YT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg4ZFNnO8vc

Thanx

In what part of the iphone should I heat up?

Btw, my unit is Iphone 4s.

Turn off iphone

Point the hairdryer at the earphone jack

For 3 minutes at at least 5cm

There you go

Hope it lasts. Meanwhile we are waiting for apple to be kind enough

And release an ios that fixes this obviously bad handling

Of the wifi chip from the ios before we throw these phones in the

Garbage

I have the same problem. Everything was fine in my 4s until 6.1.3 update. Then the wifi and bluetooth stopped working. I am an iphone holder for many years (since 3g) and this is the last time i buy an apple product. It's unacceptable to update your device with the latest ios in order to fix(!!!) some problems and instead of that, more problems occur.

Hi all,

Unfortunately I have to face same problem and also tried using the technique with turning the phone off and on, by switching the airplane mode off and on. Nothing would work for me in a stable way. And if the wireless would get activated, it would constantly scan for connections without any success.

I read the official advice of apple as follows: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1559. I followed every step as described and was so happy when my iphone got automatically connected to my home wireless connection! But that lasted for half an hour or so... Then it would constantly work and fail until I turned the phone off and on and the wifi went grey again...

Honestly, I don't think this being a hardware issue, since in that case it would never start working again just because you update the IOS device or restore it. So, it seems like being a software issue instead. And in that case I believe Apple should advise us a certain solution. Our phones have only a year warranty, that's true. But what about the customer protection law? A phone, especially purchased at "apple" prices, should not break after a year plus one month or so usage time. It is unacceptable to have have so many customers with the same problem! Especially when seeing the number of people who has followed this apple support community thread, i.e. 36539! When buying an apple product one has certain reasonable expectations and that's normal.

Thus, I really hope that Apple would come with another official solution (different from the one they have on their website) that would permanently fix our wifi problem. Apple should also participate in the APPLE support community discussions! The iphone usage is based on the Internet! And the non-functionality of wifi simply makes the iphone useless...

Thanks!

P.S.: Can anyone advise if I can retrieve my iphone content (photos, videos) if I have neither synchronized or activated the iclouds? Are these two only means to bring the memory back?

Hi SDBA,

To retrieve your pictures and videos, you can use the "Image Capture.app" application that's in your Applications folder (assuming that you work on a Mac). Just connect your phone to the computer with the USB, and fire up the application. Very easy.

I also think that the problem is hardware and due to slightly defective design and poor manufacturing. Basically the wifi connector gets loose because of bad soldering. This, however, was mostly enabled but a software/firmware "bug" introduced in iOS6 (which appears to have created excessive heating of the chip), hence why problems appeared when people upgraded.

Cheers