iPhone 4 facetime not working

On the 'app or app data' element of the investigation, what information is imported in a restore, that isn't imported for a manual sync?

Is the answer different for pc restore and iCloud restore?

Worth starting a list?

Great initiative Nevets2, by setting up the facebook page atleast more people would be able to connect and bring this to a wider audience

https://www.facebook.com/iPhone4Facetimelosers?skip_nax_wizard=true#

[ P.S. - Surprisingly, I could not find the original post from nevets2 with the above link ? ]

In reply to pdimee 27-Aug-2013 16:51:

One of the most useful posts so far as you've outlined the relevent steps most of us would experience in trying to get FT working and giving us your results.

I've suggested since page 3 (23July) of this thread that the probability of an errant app could be the cause of our woes. Since those heady days, there have been many red herrings.

However the most common denominator so far seems to be an iPhone 4 purchased on or close to the launch day with the network nor the country mattering and the FT issue starting late June. I wouldn't be surprised if we all shared the errant app that could be causing the problem. I have over 200 apps installed so it would take up a lot of thread here!

Would people with say up to 30 apps or so care to make a list and we could make a comparison? If we find the common problem app, I'll send the first contributor a bottle of champagne ;-)

So far we know its only affecting the 4

Apple are none the wiser to it.

Are not going to admit they have a fault.

Ios7 may solve it. BUT

Will we just have the same problem we have now with the workaround.

A factory reset (or iOS upgrade) sorts it out. Then we load our data and its fubar.

What's loaded up in our settings that's been corrupted.

6.1.3 is not the killer here. Others on 5. Something have the same issue.

Also. Lets not let this discussion decend into an argument. There are too many comments on here arguing. I can see the frustration. It's here to help. I someone's got the wrong end of the stick. Just let it go.

I will be doing the full factory reset again tonight on the wife's phone. I still have to work out how to get all my bits and pieces off the phone without loosing them or reloading back on!!

Have been following this thread the last couple of weeks. Have the same problem. And in case it helps anyone:

I have an early IPhone 4 (bought the week it was released).

Am in New Zealand.

Problem started occuring at the beginning of August after I did a "Reset Network Settings". (Which I did because my wi-fi connection had deteriorated somewhat). Facetime worked earlier in the day but after I updated network settings it stopped working and hasn't worked since. Immediately drops connection as people have described on this thread.

Things I've tried:

Logging into Facetime with another ID. No luck.

Getting two other iphones/itouches to FaceTime quite happily in my house (thus ruling out the router). This worked.

A "Reset All Settings". No luck.

At the moment I intend to use Skype and wait for iOS7 to hopefully fix the issue. Really don't want to have to install all my apps again from scratch.

In reply to markwes 28-Aug-2013 01:42

Firstly this may help with your backup/reloading worries:

Found a recommended app (usable on a laptop/desktop) here http://www.macroplant.com called iExplorer which seems to simplify backups and lets you 'see' individual files, photos, notes, messages and all your apps etc. that are on your iPhone in a familiar way that you would use 'Finder' on your Mac. There's no need to rely on the restrictive ways of iTunes or iCloud either. Works on windows too.

Secondly, you're spot on, instead of working together in a pleasant and helpful manner, some people here seem to be a little arrogant and argumentative...perhaps they mean well...

Hi

I'm new here. I was just looking on behalf of my wife who is having problems with facetime not working on her iphone 4. It just stopped a couple of weeks ago with dropping the connection.

I tried uninstalling all the camera related apps like instaframe and oovoo and rebooted and it still didn't work. So this didn't seem to help.

My wife had only ever been recieving incomming facetime connections as her tarrif only has one hour per month of free calls. I got her to make an outgoing facetime call which connected ok. Now it seems to be all back to normal and working fine.

Not sure if this will help but thought I would mention it.

Report: After patent loss, Apple tweaks FaceTime—and logs 500,000 complaints

Apple is doing a "design around" in a case where it already lost $368 million.

by Joe Mullin - Aug 30 2013, 4:15pm EDT

APPLE, INC. PATENTS

95

The 2012 patent trial that grabbed the most headlines was Apple's $1 billion win (since reduced) against Samsung. But Apple also suffered a major patent setback of its own last year when a patent-holding company called VirnetX won a $368 million verdict against the tech giant.

The consequences of Apple's loss are now starting to become clear. This month, testimony in a court hearing showed that not only is Apple facing royalty payments that could cost it many millions more, but it has already made changes to one of its premiere products, FaceTime—changes that reportedly have degraded the service's quality.

Apple was found to have infringed four VirnetX patents that cover various aspects of the FaceTime video chat system. VirnetX wasn't able to get an injunction blocking the use of FaceTime altogether, but the judge overseeing the case has been receptive to the argument that Apple should pay an ongoing royalty for infringement.

Now, reports have emerged from a key hearing earlier this month indicating that Apple is logging vast numbers of complaints about FaceTime after a re-design of the service's backend architecture. It's important to note that these reports have emerged mainly from discussion groups of VirnetX investors; no media organizations have published reports from the royalty hearing, which occurred on August 15. The documents related to the royalty litigation are almost entirely sealed.

Bearing those caveats in mind, Ars spoke with Jeff Lease, a VirnetX investor. Lease runs his own lawn sprinkler installation business and owns VirnetX stock, which trades as VHC on the New York Stock Exchange. Lease has a clear stake in this dispute; the better VirnetX does in court, the better its stock may do. But he has impressively detailed knowledge of the case, having shown up both to last year's jury trial and post-trial hearings. Lease's statements to me were based off his extensive note-taking in court. I have no reason not to believe that his statements are accurate, but at this time his statements are the only source for this report.

Neither Apple nor the attorney who represented Apple at the August hearing responded to requests for comment. A VirnetX lawyer also did not respond to a request for comment.

Apple: We’re not infringing, but we re-designed anyhow

Before the VirnetX case, nearly all FaceTime calls were done through a system of direct communication. Essentially, Apple would verify that both parties had valid FaceTime accounts and then allow their two devices to speak directly to each other over the Internet, without any intermediary or "relay" servers. However, a small number of calls—5 to 10 percent, according to an Apple engineer who testified at trial—were routed through "relay servers."

Both sides in the litigation admit that if Apple routes its FaceTime calls through relay servers, it will avoid infringing the VirnetX patents. Once Apple was found to be infringing—and realized it could end up paying an ongoing royalty for using FaceTime—the company redesigned the system so that all FaceTime calls would rely on relay servers. Lease believes the switch happened in April.

"The judge kept telling them, you need to consider yourself 'adjudicated infringers,'" said Lease. "Apple said, we don't think we're infringing, but we switched to 100 percent relay servers [anyhow]."

Higher costs and more complaints

At trial, Apple engineer Patrick Gates testified about how FaceTime works. He downplayed the impact that changing the system would have on FaceTime quality—presumably to show how unimportant the VirnetX patents were. He estimated the cost of running all FaceTime calls through relay servers at $3.6 million total. As for call quality, he said that it wouldn't be affected negatively at all—if anything, it might actually improve.

But according to Lease, it has now been revealed that Apple is actually paying $2.4 million per month to run FaceTime calls through relay servers. The payments are mainly to Internet content distribution companies like Akamai, which are transmitting vastly more FaceTime calls.

Meanwhile, Apple has handed over its customer service logs from April through mid-August to VirnetX's attorneys. At the August 15 hearing, a VirnetX lawyer stated that Apple had logged "over half a million calls" complaining about the quality of FaceTime, according to Lease.

If that's accurate, the data will bolster VirnetX's arguments that its patents are technologically significant, hard to work around, and deserve a high royalty rate. The judge and lawyers present at the hearing didn't discuss numbers regarding what a reasonable ongoing royalty might be, but VirnetX is asking for royalty payments of more than $700 million for the ongoing use of FaceTime, according to Lease.

In addition to doing a patent design-around with FaceTime, Apple also announced back in April that it would be doing a similar design-around of its VPN on Demand service for iOS—also to avoid VirnetX patents. However, Apple backtracked on those statements a few weeks later.

As to what the judge in the royalty case might do, Lease said there was no clear indication in the hearing he observed.

"He's hard to read," said Lease. "I'd hate to play poker against him."

I also had problem with FT and imessage and figure it out

Well my problem with iphone4 was it can not input the phone number that was saved in my phone address

So i FT my girlfriend with her apple account id which is her email address registered for apple

And it worked that is how "I" figured out the issue.

Good luck everyone hope this info helps!

Hi all,

I have read ALL the posts and this is fascinating how so many people from all over the world using different carriers all have the same problem. In am based in the UK and use Vodafone as my carrier. Up until 5th aug 2013 my FaceTime was working fine. I went on hols for a week in the uk and when I came back on 12th Aug my FaceTime stopped working and hasn't worked since.

I have tried on different wifi networks, I have tried on different apple id's from my phone. I have reset everything, I have done a factory reset and reinstalled the backup (which I now believe from the posts does not work). We also have iPads at home and these work fine on FaceTime so it is obviously my phones problem.

Again as you all are I am on an iPhone 4. I really don't want to do a complete restore as I am sure I will lose a lot of stuff as I am not very technical and have no idea what should be backed up to what. I don't use iCloud I just do backups to iTunes every so often.

Surely Apple must know this is an issue now and give a fix.

I have only installed one app between FaceTime working and not working and that was the BTsport app. I have since uninstalled and tried FT and still not worked and reinstall BT sport and still doesn't work.

Hope a fix is found soon!!!

In reply to lfc2001 01-Sep-2013 12:54

Interesting to hear that you had only 1 app installed between your FT working and not working, this could indicate that the problem may not be app related. Do you remember if you've updated any existing apps between FT working and not working?

In reply to nevets2 30-Aug-2013 20:13

Thanks for that post, pertinent and illuminating, especially as you were one of the first posters ;-)

I just thought that I would add my location etc. I'm not sure when my FaceTime broke but it didn't work when I wanted to use it 4 weeks ago. Previously to that it had always worked fine. Connection is lost as soon as it's answered. I'm from Scotland, I use o2, and I got my iPhone 4 in July 2010. I only use FaceTime to contact others in the UK.

I'm another with same issue - iPhone 4 from Aug 2010, on O2/Tesco in UK, running iOS6.1. I noticed FT stopped working a few weeks ago after returning from holiday abroad. I've experimented to test it's not related to my AppleID, Internet connection or the distant device(s)/IDs.

I'm in the 200+ apps category so don't have the time to reset & diagnose by restoring app by app. Guess I'll have to resort to Skype until there's a fix....

Folks, this is the bottom line: Apple does not want to pay Virnetx royalties to use VPN connectivity which makes FaceTime work seamlessly. Instead, they are now using relay servers which cause disconnections and choppy streaming. They would rather spend the money buying fingerprint technology companies which help users access their own phones to make crappy FaceTime calls!

This is starting to lose its luster.