iPhone 4S will not stay connected to wifi

Is it all WiFi, or just your home network? If it is your home network only reboot your router by turning it off for about 15 seconds.

When you say it does not stay connected, do you mean it connects and immediately disconnects, or that it doesn't stay connected when the phone goes to sleep?

If it disconnects immediately, go to Settings/WiFi and tap on the ">" to the right of the network name. What is the IP address shown, if any?

mine is doing the same thing and I'm starting to get angry. I've reset all settings, reset network settings, (done both several times). I put the phone in airplane mode, reset settings, turned off back on... etc.... I've done several things to try to get this stupid thing to stay connected and it refuses to stay connected. It doesn't even notice that there are any wifi networks in the area and there are about 5 houses that have wifi here. NONE show up. I have wifi on and ask to join and network on (obviously). I've turned them on and off several times, my phone doesn't seem to know how to find a network. Well, I have had it connected but it doesn't stay connected for long, and then when it goes back to 3g that is when it can't seem to find a network. I've reset my router as well, but obviously that isn't going to do anything if the phone can't even find a network to join!!!!!!!!!! What is wrong with this phone and how do I fix it? I have an iPhone because I don't like messing around with all the settings and bs like hemorrhoid phone people do, the iPhone is supposed to just work without all this bs. And why doesn't Apple have support people on here to help with these problems. This is so frustrating it's unreal.

Either your phone is broken, in which case you should take it to an Apple store for replacement, or your router is incompatible or has out of date software. As it happens with other routers the phone is probably broken, because you have already tried "Reset network settings" and "Reset all Settings" (or at least that's how I interpret what you said).

The last step is to restore the phone as New (If you exchange the phone you would have to do this anyway). If the problem goes away your firmware image was corrupt; if it is still present you have a failed WiFi chip.

There is no Apple store where I live. This is unfair. After seeing that so many people have had problems with this I can't figure why Apple would sell the phone with this problem. It's a great phone but this flaw is annoying and almost seems like it's a set up. With Verizon screwing me over on my unlimited data, which I no longer have because they took it away, seems everyone wants more money. I don't have anymore money. I also have no more patience.

Our history, I have a iPhone 4, my daughter had gotten an iPhone 4S, both with AT&T (she was getting huge data sends, I was not) I never upgraded my OS, she did. She could not stay connected to the WiFi, I could. Five or six visits to the Apple Store, where they replaced the phone six times, she finally was able to automatically connect. We switched to Verizon to stop the data sends, this gave her a new phone, 4S. Guess what started happening? She couldn't stay connected, she was furious especially looking at revisiting the Apple Store again, several times with her 5yo.

Okay, I am not suggesting anyone do this, but it was kind of humerous. We were all sitting in my home office. Her BF was trying to help with the problem, he's quite knowledgable with iPhones. She got frustrated and said, "What if I just dropped the #$#$( phone (I have a linoleum over cement floor). About ten minutes later, her daughter ran over, jumped in her lap and the phone hit the floor. She picked it up, it worked and we went upstairs for dinner. After dinner we were in my office again, her BF wanted to send her some pictures, she flipped it on and went, ah guys!??! Seems the phone was connected to the WiFi. Her BF and I looked at each other with that, 'no way' look! We watched a couple of TV shows and she looked again. Mom! Her BF and I started laughing and then it dawned on her. (Okay, she'd been a bit emotional, when her daughter jumped on her she was a bit distracted and never made the connection.) For two weeks now, her phone has been automatically connecting to the WiFi, just like mine. The only one better is my other daughter's Samsung which just plumb stays connected, especially when I piggybacked routers to cover the whole upstairs and yard.

At first, I blamed on the upgraded OS. Now, I am just confused. I seriously don't want to think that it was because of the drop, but we'd had the new phone since then end of January 2013 and the phone had accidentally fallen on the floor around the beginning of April 2013.

I have a Lynksys (sp?) router, incase that is important. We had three 'smart' phones, an iPhone 4S, a 4 and a Samsung something or another. The latter two never had a problem with AT&T and/or Verizon.

I had a similar problem recently, which persisted nearly a week. I have an iPhone 4S, which I purchased in June 2012. I have never before had a problem connecting to my home WiFi or the WiFi in several other homes.

In May I upgraded from a low-end Belkin WiFi router to a NetGear R6300 WiFi router, installed on the second floor, with a NetGear WiFi booster installed on the first floor. I had no problems for nearly a month, but then my Wifi signal to my iPhone 4S would regularly drop and I would be prompted to switch to cellular data. As a point of comparison, my 5-year-old Sony Vaio laptop and my 1st generation iPad never lost their WiFi connection during this problem. Additionally, I noticed the WiFi *seemed* to remain connected a little longer if I was in the actual room with the router, but if I moved to the first floor directly below the WiFi router, in the same room as the signal booster, or on the front porch nearly below the WiFi router, I would lose the signal and would be unable to reconnect.

I tried the various recommendations on this and other fora to little avail. I reset my phone's network settings, reset all settings, rebooted my Comcast and WiFi router and the signal booster. The solutions oeither did not work at all or provided only minutes of relief until the WiFi signal would once again be lost. Nothing seemed to permanently fix the problem until I saw a suggestion regarding the NetGear router.

I updated the firmware (not on my own initiative, logging in to the router prompted me to update), and then I changed the router name for both the 5 and 2.4 wireless settings. I don't have the technical expertise to know WHY this might have worked, or whether the firmware update was the factor, but I followed the forum suggestion to rename the router from the factory name to something else, and in 48 hours I haven't once lost my WiFi connection. My WiFi connection remains strong and the iPhone is performing as it had previously, before I began experiencing the WiFi outages.

Perhaps someone more technologically savvy could explain why this solution might have worked...? In any case, while it might not remediate the WiFi problems for every user, it appears to have resolved the issue for me.

Thank-you.

Matt224288 wrote:

I updated the firmware (not on my own initiative, logging in to the router prompted me to update), and then I changed the router name for both the 5 and 2.4 wireless settings. I don't have the technical expertise to know WHY this might have worked, or whether the firmware update was the factor, but I followed the forum suggestion to rename the router from the factory name to something else, and in 48 hours I haven't once lost my WiFi connection. My WiFi connection remains strong and the iPhone is performing as it had previously, before I began experiencing the WiFi outages.

Perhaps someone more technologically savvy could explain why this solution might have worked...? In any case, while it might not remediate the WiFi problems for every user, it appears to have resolved the issue for me.

Any device that uses a WiFi network needs to identify the network so it "knows" what encryption key to use. It does this by matching the network name. Your iPhone travels a lot, and sees a lot of different networks. When it encounters 2 or more networks with the same name it cannot differentiate between them, so it must prompt you to help it choose the right one. Each time it loses a connection it has to do this again, because it doesn't know if the name it sees is the same router or a different one from the last time. And an iPhone turns off WiFi about 30 seconds after it goes to sleep to save battery. So each time you turn it on it gets a new connection.

Lots of people never change their network name from the default, so your phone has probably "seen" dozens of networks named "netgear" as you move about. Your Sony doesn't travel as much, and isn't likely to be used while enroute, so it doesn't have more than one network with the same name in its database.

Lawrence,

Thank-you for the explantion. Makes complete sense to me...!

cheers, Matt

it not working for me for months, not to be rude or anything **** is getting on my nerve. and plus i agree with someone that said why sell a apple phone with problem in the first place and guess what i called the apple tech over the phone, they ask for 20 dollar and said my wifi hardware expire, and then later he said it broke, and i ask him why did it break? i never drop my phone or anything, and my wifi dont just break a hardware over night sitting there. And apple need to step up their games