iPhone 5 + Issues downloading Podcasts over WIFI networks

Happy to join in on this thread, ozcmacd. As we've discussed in another thread, I have similar issues with Apple's Podcasts app (most podcast are ludicrously slow, and every now and then you get one that's fast). I also have MAJOR issues with Dropbox and Evernote on wifi. Completely unusable for any large files. 3G is just fine. I have all Apple networking devices in my house, and the same problem happens at an Apple store. Affects iPhone 5 (all 4 of them in the house) and iPad Mini, no earlier devices. If I move to a place in the house with a weak wifi signal, transfers speed up though! Got me completely beat. Swapped phones are no better. Waiting for a miracle software update. If nothing works I plan to take all the phones back to an Apple store before the 12 month warranty runs out and demand my money back (so I can buy the next iPhone which hopefully will be better - yeh, sucker I know). If I understand the consumer laws in Australia, I think I'm entitled to do this, although I'm sure it will be a fight!

Apple Techs, firmware upgrade required or recall for hardware failure. Iphone 5 AU

Multiple blogs (Global consenses)

OS 6.0 & .01 with a reduced and unstable wifi 'connect-ability' (if such a word) via various wifi manufactured devices and probable hardware issues should be making apple developers/ manufacturers wake up to the real world it competes within. Smart phones and tablets here say for the first time in over 3 decades became more popular than PC or Mac purchases globally! (Wifi is it, in a nutshell) No-one wants to have to sit in front of a desk to access the world, unless your at work of course! It appears Nokia are on the brink of destruction, Blockbuster Chapter 13 all over again, plus others, Samsung/ android are apples closest competitor (Techs must be celebrating right now, and well deserved) and regardless of amazing apps from Itunes which simlifi (next gen of wifi, my phrase/ name idea, so dont take it apple!!! lol) our lives, no point having them if we cant connect wirelessly, on the move, busy, as the world diversifies its technology based platforms, living life. I see unfortunately a massive reduction in consumer confidence with Apple products, Iphone 5 specifically as this latest remarkable mmmmm?, iphone 5 (may be referred to in PC terms as the Vista Iphone 5, distributed to global markets, we all can only assume without! fully prior going to market, testing its functionability with wifi routers across numerous manufacterers. One thing is for sure......Jobsy must be turning in his grave as he witnesses the failure of originally the 'quaint essential essence of an Iphone device.....to connect us all globally....... "wirelessly". M

In closing: Why would you buy a car if only to discover there was limited fuel to drive it? Thought for the day.

Presently have: Iphone 3GS, 4S, Ipad 1st Gen and only my Iphone 5 is dissapointing, to say the least. All other devices connect to Wifi, stay connected and download at solid speeds flawlessly. Apple please explain. Thank you

I have the same issue, going to make a video tonight to post online of the problems I have been having.

Most likely a bug. I also have the slow downloading issue BUT local download from say my NAS server is very fast. So it is related to the internet part..

Looks like a software issue to me.

I noticed something with this. I download an mp3 talk show through the Documents app on both iPad and iPhone 5. It is on average a 90mb file. On the iPad it takes an average of 1 minutes on a 20mbps Internet connection. On my iPhone it takes 30 minutes.

The twist came the other night. I was Downloading a movie from iTunes on my iPhone then went to download my talk show at the same time. The talk show download was as fast as on my iPad, roughly 1 minute! I ran multiple tests and found any time I download from iTunes at the same time as the talk show, the talk show downloads at a normal speed. When I cancel the iTunes download the talk show slows to the original 30 minute rate.

Now I have no idea what to make of this. I have little understanding of how one would affect the other but I am interested to know if others experience the same thing.

As others have said, if I transfer this file from iPad to iPhone over my local network, it is extremely fast. The slow speed only occurs when connecting to the Internet.

Really hope a fix comes out soon. This is beyond frustrating.

Wow, that's some find. And one that I can completely corroborate! Start an iTunes movie download, and Dropbox downloads fly. Stop the movie download and Dropbox back to its usual unusable state. This has got to be some sort of protocol stack problem, and is sort of like my other observation that the worse my wifi connection (less bars), the better Dropbox downloads. Just don't know what to do about it!

Thank you for confirming Stephen! One of the most odd scenarios I have come across without having any idea why.

To backtrack and to hopefully save others from trying the same, I tried a few troubleshooting steps which had zero impact on this: I changed my wifi DNS to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 which improved my wifi speed test on testmy.net website and speedtest.net app. Then I wiped phone to factory and set up as new phone. Neither improved download speed. Only thing that sped up the download speed was a consecutive download in iTunes.

You mentioned protocol issue which is Greek to me. Any chance you could give a brief explanation? I would love to learn what led you to that conclusion as I am clueless!

Yeh, I've tried those steps too, and have the same problem on brand new, swapped phones.

The term protocol, in this case, refers to the "language" that's used to communicate across the Internet. the Internet uses a protocol called TCP/IP. A given protocol has the means to, for instance, pace traffic to and from, and to recover from errors in the transmission by requesting that data be resent etc. I'm just surmising that the protocol driver in the iPhone 5, which must work hand-in-hand with the particular (new) chip in that model, might have a bug in it that under some cicumstances results in too many re-transmission requests, or doesn't allow the receiving end to transmit as quickly as it should. I kind of think all iPhone 5s might suffer from this problem, but that not many people notice because it only affects certain apps, and you only notice when there is lots to download. Normal web browsing and emailing seems fine because a) those particular apps might actually be working 100% or b) the amount of data is so small the fact that it arrives more slowly isn't noticeable.

We can but live in hope I guess. Think I'll do another post with this new info at http://www.apple.com/feedback/, for whatever good that might do.

Oh wow I learned something today! I appreciate you taking the time to share your knowledge. Now it's apples turn to fix this.

I don't have any suggestions to add to this, but I just wanted to say that I'm having the same problem. I've jumped through all the hoops (replaced phone, reset to factory defaults, etc...). Like others have suggested, this sure looks like a software problem. I can't believe it has taken Apple this long to fix this. I've loved my 2 previous iPhones, but this one has been a real disappointment.

Has anyone filed anything officialy with Apple support? Surely they know this is an issue, but maybe we need to make some more noise.

Months ago I showed this to people at the Apple store and they said they would escalate through their channels. Heaven knows what this means. I've also reported it a couple of times at apple.com/feedback. I think that's about all we can do for now.

Just a thought - could everyone in this thread report where in the world they are located? Wondering whether this is an issue of the iPhone being unable to cope properly with a connection that has a high latency, which would be the case if connections are to somewhere a long distance away. I'm in Australia.

And following up on my own thought...

Been playing some more with the Speedtest app. Under Settings you can change the location of the server. I tried changing it to a couple in Singapore, 6,000Km away, and also one in Auckland, 2,000Km away. The Singapre servers get a latency (ping) of around 600ms, Auckland 100ms. My local Sydney server's way down at maybe 20ms.

On my local server I always get nice fast speeds, up around 18mbps. To those other servers, I struggle to get to 1mbps. But here's the interesting bit. My iPad3, sitting next to my iPhone 5, when tested to the same servers and connected to the same wireless access point in my house, gets WAY better performance. Tested to Auckland, Orcon servers:

iPhone 5 ping 165ms, download .41mbps, upload .76mbps

iPad 3 ping 124ms, download 16.29mbps, upload 1.20mbps

And this is totally reproducible every time. So it does seem to me as if the greater the latency to the server, the worse the performance of the wifi connection when compared to older devices. Would definitely seem to be a software problem.

And I just repeated the same tests using 3G (Telstra):

iPhone 5 ping 80ms, download 10.57mbps, upload .89mbps

iPad 3 ping 96ms, download 12.59mbps, upload .74mbps

No problem there. Can anyone else please verify these results using servers close to and far away from their "home", preferably compared to something like an iPad 3 or iPhone 4?

Interesting. I am in New York USA and I test to different servers in the USA and get consistent results from each. iPad 3 is consistenly faster than the iPhone 5 like you explained above.

On a side note, my iPhone home button stopped working so I had it exchanged. I have a new iPhone and speeds are the exact same as my old iPhone.