iPhone 4 facetime not working

Well, if you want to know where Apple stands on this, then why don't you contact them directly?

Nobody on a public user to user forum can tell you anything like that.

Ethmoid, probably for the reason most of us have.......trying to get to speak with Apple is often an exercise in futility. It is rarely free, and they have danced around the issue for most of us who HAVE managed to lodge a trouble report. Perhaps, the poster was preaching to the choir, to relieve stress. It's an insane issue, and Apple DO know what the problem is. Whether they choose to fix it is another issue. I have not done the restore or back up and before another poster chooses to lecture or point fingers at me, it is my choice and Apple actually told me the Voice Mail messages stored on my phone will NOT be saved with this process. All that being said, I have FaceTime again. Not seamless, and I often have to hang up and reconnect, but it is working. It is working exactly as the earlier poster said, as if it is on a Relay system instead of the original system. Using Skype is not a justified answer, as one of the reasons many of us chose iPhones, was for the touted FaceTime and iMessage services. Why should I buy a premium priced piece of equipment and then have to use another process to do what the equipment was advertised as doing? I fail to understand that logic

but.....it shows that you do not have to do a Restore. Mine is working. poorly, but working while others who have done the restore may or may not have FaceTime up and running. The logic is the problem is the Relay system. I am not sure why most are not reading the poster who was at the Court case when it was said they would be going to the Relay system, instead of some posters wanting to belittle others who are here to express their frustration. (that is not directed at you!) Befuddles me.

ethmoid how do you know I havn't tried contacting Apple? Also surely any organisation would monitor discussion groups such as this, certainly others in this industry do. I must bow to your obvious seniority in level status and just keep quiet I suppose..........

Or then again maybe this problem which was not of my making may be fixed by those who created it?

Written as just another customer of Apple.

Catriaa, good point ....the point from poster who gave the first person view of the court case ( with Veritex) seems to have not been picked up by many . Relay servers might be the issue, but some people are unable to connect any time ....seems to be much more than that issues

- not an os issue

- not a country issue

- not a jailbreak/non-jailbreak issue

- not a network issue

- not a buy-during-launch/or later issue

-maybe some app update issue

-maybe relay server issue

whatever it is , it is not a customer originate issue. Its an apple issue and they have chosen to IGNORE it altogether . Nothing happened on the ticket I raised, obviously they dont want to follow up on such issues.

I wonder if Gizmodo, Engadget or other tech forums take note of such issues and maybe they can bring this to forefront somehow...

In any case, I am not doing restore.

I've researched this! Apple is switching FaceTime connectivity to an Akamai relay server solution instead of direct connections. Apple's attorney said it was because Apple doesn't want to pay the royalty. This is going to cause many quality of service issues.

The following are direct cut/paste from the Judge's ruling against Apple, and specific to relay servers -

From Judge Leonard Davis - "V i r n e t X concedes that the feature [Facetime] does not infringe if calls are routed through relay servers, because there is no direct connection through a relay server."

"Apple agrees that [non-infringing] alternatives need to be feasible."

"Here, V i r n e t X presented evidence that Apple's proposed alternatives were not."

"VirnetX established that routing all calls through [relay] servers would NOT be a viable alternative, in light of the projected cost and DOWNGRADE IN SERVICE."

BUT THERE IS MORE! There was a hearing on this matter just a few weeks ago with Apple and VirnetX in front of the same Judge to discuss royalties. Apple again said they are trying to avoid paying any kind of royalty. Following are direct quotes from that hearing! -

From Apple's attorney - "So on March 1st of this year [Apple] signed an agreement with Akamai to provide relay services for 100 percent of FaceTime calls."

From V i r n e t X's attorney about new FaceTime problems - "While a user may not understand it is the relay causing this, he/she will understand that it is disconnecting on them; that it takes longer to connect; that it is just not working as well. So that is with regards to FaceTime, Your Honor."

From V i r n e t Xattorney - "That's why I brought you some evidence...Just last night, one of my colleagues was on a call on FaceTime and it did this. (Attorney points to graphic). This is reconnecting. You will notice Your Honor on the top right there is still some color, so one connection is still there; but the relay has lost one side of the video feed. I will tell you, Your Honor, I am fairly confident that this happens a lot since the relay server [change] has happened."

The bottom line, your problems with FaceTime are due to Apple trying to dodge a royalty payment.

Apple is switching FaceTime connectivity to an Akamai relay server solution, which contributes to many quality of service issues. The relay server solution is a work-around to some patents owned by another company. Relay servers are not viable for a quality video chat experience. I know the other company would love to license the technology to Apple to resolve this problem, but Apple thus far decided on the lower quality work-around via Akamai relays instead of direct communication connections.

If the problem is due to Apple going to relayed servers then why do iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 not having the problem?

I have an iPhone 5 and iPad (3rd gen), both of which the connectivity/quality has started to suck.

Still, DJNMenoFall's question is a good one.

If the problem is due to Apple going to relayed servers then why do iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 not having the problem?

Any answers?

And another question

Even though I have accepted that fact that my iPhone no longer can do Facetime, that does not prevent my kids from trying to Facetime me, which only proves to me that I NEVER can complete any Facetime connection, no matter how spotty it might be.

Is everyone else who had the iPone 4 Facetime issue now able to get a Facetime connection, if a less reliable one?

I think there may be 2 issues here

1- no service at all, which appears to be fixed by a factory restore...and seems to only affect early iPhone4 on latest iOS

2- poor quality and intermittent issues possibly relating to relays

In answer to nevets2,

I restored my wife's phone which has worked flawlessly every time with my iPad3 since Saturday

I have done nothing to my phone which still shows 'connection lost' without fail

This is irrespective of which wi-fi network (tested with different and same).

Why? Because you have to determine if your particular situation involves a hardware or software problem.

If it's hardware, then your device needs to be replaced.

If it's software, then you need to redownload & reinstall the components & applications that might be affected.

Even if you bought a brand new phone out of pocket, if it is a software issue causing your problem, then a new phone won't solve anything. And when I say 'software', i don't just mean the iOS, I also mean other apps, other data, etcetera... much of which Apple has no control over directly. In other words, in some situations, even a software update pushed from Apple won't do anything.

That's why you have to determine the root cause of your particular issue.

The issue here with this Facetime dilema is that a) restoring the phone causes the loss of much data and b) the recovery methods available for the missing data don't really exist.

I was encouraged to first backup everything but apps, photos, music and videos to iCloud with the intent to then restore the latter files after the phone was reset. The problem is that this does not restore messages, recordings, notes and most likely a few other things that I can't lose.

Yes, the reset worked and then doing a full restore of the last save causes Facetime to fail again. I did this several times and finally just gave up. I did't even bother to try restoring one app at a time because either way, I lost key aspects that are just on my phone.

I also researched other software that tought that they backup/restore the data that I can't recover via iCloud but saddly, the OS on my Mac is either too old or these applications simply don't work to begin with. I tred about a half-dozen different free programs. I even tried one that was supposedly working on XP using Fusion but the XP running on my Mac couldn't connect to my phone (iTunes didn't recognize the phone) and I tried several options playing with the USB connection.

The fact that this use to work and that I didn't really add Apps or for that matter, recall updating Apps as a cause for this change leads me to believe that this is an issue with Apple and not some errant App. The OS is definitely the root cause and APPLE REALLY NEEDS TO COME UP WITH AN UPDATE TO THE OS THAT FIXES THIS.

nevers2 I am on a 4S and having the problem. Several posters have confirmed their 4S and 5 are having connection problems. Lately, I have been able to Facetime but it is not a seamless connection as it used to be, and quite often we have to disconnect and reconnect. I haven't tried connecting to my people in London but the one is Greece is not having a problem with their reception, only on my end.

and TJBUSMC1973, I truly respect your diagnostic advice. It's quite logical and if this were an isolated phone or two, I would totally agree. It isn't, and the restore seems to be not a guarantee. The type of reception I am now receiving on my FaceTime calls, lends much more credibility to the Relay probability.

I must admit I am surprised they are denying a problem. I am sure the powers that be in Apple have and use FaceTime and unless somehow their phones are on a dedicated system, they too much be experiencing the problem. I was going to just switch to the 5 as it's close to time to renew anyway, but I thought I had read they too are having problems (if it is indeed a Relay problem, I can't imagine why they wouldn't to be honest)

anyway - there you go. It IS an Apple product at the end of the day, and the back up / restore has been proven to not fix the problem on all phones. If it is a Relay issue, then shame on Apple for selling a benefit and then, not backing it up to the hilt. Not a show of integrity and them saying "back up and restore" is a ploy to send you away and out of their hair and hope it works for a time. In the meantime, you've lost valuable time and date

another, Facetime question. I phone and text a friend on her iPhone.....all is fine. If I Facetime her on her phone, it rings on her husband's phone. any ideas?

P6R

perfect synopsis

though, I'm on a 4S and there have been days where I had NO FaceTime service at all.