iPhone 4 facetime not working

Mine with broken-FT is 380A. Think it's well established:

380A was manufactured few weeks before 380B, and

neither 380A/B are "new enough" to avoid ever being tainted.

Question remains:

Do some restores of a tainted-backup, to either 380A or 380B, yield fixed FT while preserving data?

Need anyone else's success story using:

any combination/direction of 380A or 380B phones (A to A, B to B, A to B, B to A), where a tainted-backup restored to other phone yields working FT. Describe OS version of both phones; plus whether target phone's FT was working just prior.

Same issue. I used my iPhone to talk to my girlfriend over FT every week day for over a year and all of a sudden FT stopped working last week. My girlfriends iPod Touch connects with her mother's iPhone 4S without problem. An iPhone 5 on my network successfully connects to my girlfriend's iPod Touch. My iPhone 4 won't connect to my girlfriend's iPod Touch nor her mother's iPhone. I'm sure my iPhone is the faulty one.

I started reading this thread but at 31 pages, it's a bit overwhelming. From my understanding, only a factory reset seems to fix the problem. Is that it? If anyone and point me in the right direction, it'd be very appreciated.

To Apple, please get into this. A service we paid for isn't working anymore for no apparent reason. You need to address this issue.

Additional info about my situation:

My iPhone has never been plugged into a Mac, so it's not a Mountain Lion issue.

Holdfast4 wrote:

- factory reset fixes problem (with loss of data of course)

Exactly what data would be unrecoverable? Personally, I don't really care about old text messages and call logs. Emails are on servers and will be re-downloaded, apps and music will resync with iTunes... my only real concern are my contacts. Is there any way to reset, get FT back and not lose my contacts? Is there other vital data I'm not thinking about?

Interesting that it took so long for yours to stop working. Do you tend to wait to update your software then do it in one big download or something? If this was caused by a single piece of software being updated in the individual phone, I would expect everyone's Facetime to break down around the same time except for people who delay updates. I typically update my software within a week or two of it coming out but I have seen people who had theirs stop before mine. I start to wonder if there is an incompaibility that got built into the system somewhere pushed out to servers over time which is not communicating properly with an older version of Facetime on the phones. It might have taken a combination of the software update on the phone itself plus a change to a regional server that handles the local Facetime calls.

I did a bad job of inventory when I got my phone reset to factory settings at the Apple store. I believe all my contacts were back when I did it but I didn't check to see if my texts were. Be sure to back up your phone to itunes before you go.

My old text messages were of no concern for me. I have my emails, Contacts, Notes and Calendar all synced to my Gmail account, so none of that data was at risk and was easily re-synced to my iPhone 4 once the restore as new was completed.

I completely understand the value that some people put on their old text strings. A lot of important data could possibly be lost.

I also do not see another fix for this problem to be forthcoming from Apple. They have told us what it takes to fix this problem. That fix, although not perfect or desirable to all of us, does fix the problem. If someone choses to not apply the fix as described, and I can certainly respect that decision, then that person should most likely resign themselves to the fact that their iPhone will NEVER have a functioning FaceTime ever again. I do not see any amount of complaining or threatening of lawsuits and such to have any effect whatsoever on this situation.

Since a fix is available, one that absolutely makes the FT function work, it is going to be up to the individual to decide if they are willing to apply the fix as described or just do without FT until it comes time to upgrade to a newer phone. No amount of wishing and/or complaining is going to change that.

Cudos to the people that keep testing different options in hopes of coming across a fix that does not involve a restore as new. Most of the things tried have already been tried and discussed elsewhere in this long thread. But maybe someone will stumble across that magic bullet. I would not count on that new information coming from Apple, however. They have given their solution to this problem and have moved on.

On the matter of the text messages being recoverable, even though I made no effort to save and recover mine, I did download the iExplorer program and while poking around in it I see that I can access all of my text strings from either directly from my iPhone or from a backup in iTunes. Using that program in it's paid, registered version, you can export all of your text strings to either TXT, CSV or PDF files. That might be one option worth exploring to at least give someone a hard copy of their text strings if they decide to do the restore as new.

I do not know if iExplorer has the capability to restore those text strings to a restored as new iPhone. That would be something that the user would need to determine before they proceeded. Maybe just having a hard copy of old texts would be enough to allow someone to go ahead and restore as new and move forward with a functioning iPhone with FT.

I hope everyone can find a solution that they can live with. I found mine and could not be happier. Best of luck.

I thought I would try something last night to see if turning FaceTime off before backing up iPhone to iTunes and factory resetting. Get FaceTime working with factory restore then restore from back up.

I downloaded the latest iTunes version and back up my phone. Factory restore did get FaceTime back. So I proceeded to restore from back up. At the end of the restore process, I get a warning that iTunes could not restore my iPhone because my backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iPhone that is being restored. This is the same iPhone that the backup came from. What am I missing here?

My phone is one of the earlier versions. I got it in August when the iPhone 4 was first released. I updated to iOS 7.0.2. So the backup was done with this operating system.

bcookin wrote:

Interesting that it took so long for yours to stop working. Do you tend to wait to update your software then do it in one big download or something?

I have lots of apps on my iPhone, I don't update them on a regular basis and I tend to only update those that I really use. I updated to iOS7 about a week before the official release date, using an official package released publicly and reported on Gizmodo.

I had 80+ apps that had updates available before switching to iOS7, and updated a few of them after iOS7 was installed.

FT worked properly for 3 weeks after the update before failing, with around 2 weeks without updating anything on the iPhone.

Ugh. Someone tried to Facetime me this morning and it would fail to connect and say the Facetime call failed. I checked the logs and I last successfully made a Facetime call in July of 2013. I obviously don't use Facetime a lot, but since my wife needs a new phone (she still had a Motorola RAZR) and my iPhone 4 is now off contract, I was going to give her the iPhone 4 and get a 5S. One of the features we would definitely use is Facetime. However, if it no longer works on the iPhone 4...I am much less motivated to get a new iPhone.

FYI I have an Iphone 4

AI332 EMC 380B

Did I mention about 6 months ago my lock button stopped working too? Well, I guess that's a problem for a whole another 31 pages of complaints...

If you don't mind reseting the iPhone 4 to factory defaults when you'll give it to your wife, you shouldn't have any problem. From what I understand, it solves the FT issue. The lack of a satisfying solution only occurs to people who don't want to lose their iPhone's data.

I still didn't get an answer about the ability to restore contacts after a factory reset though. Anyone?

I am pretty certain that contacts can be backup to the iCloud and then restored from there. As I recall, contacts are not hard to recover. Obviously, media like pictures, apps and music/videos can be re-synced from iTunes as well.

Thanks Richard. That's pretty much what I thought. So, text messages, call history and app-specific data (notes, reminders, login credentials, savegames) would be the only unrecoverable data?

iOS 7.0.3 is just out. I read it fixes a problem with iMessage that some users cannot send messages or activate. Nothing about any fixes to FaceTime...

I have an AI332 EMC 380A and it does not work.

I am convinced that FT is being corrupted by a rogue app that was installed or updated in late July / early August.

DJNMenoFalls

DJNMenoFalls wrote:

I have an AI332 EMC 380A and it does not work.

I am convinced that FT is being corrupted by a rogue app that was installed or updated in late July / early August.

DJNMenoFalls

Then create a backup, restore as new, and test. That will tell you whether it's the hardware or the software.