iPhone 4 facetime not working

I'm sitting at my desk with my iPhone 4 & my wife's iPhone 4 and my macbook pro.

With her iPhone I try to initiate a Facetime call with my iPhone. (I purposely select my iPhone number rather than the email address which will "call" the Macbook Pro. The Factime app on the Macbook isn't even open.)

After a few "rings" (on my wife's iPhone - my iPhone is totally deaf to all this now) I see my Facetime app on my Macbook coming to life and eventualy the iCloud switches over the Factime call from my wife's iPhone to my macbook pro via the associated email address for me in my contacts.

My iPhone - Dead as a doornail, Facetimewise.

Steve

OK, but when you go into your Settings>FaceTime on your phone, you still see it set to = ON, right?

If so, then you are going to have to make it reset everything, by signing out of your Apple ID under FaceTime again, and then signing back on. When I did that last night (experimenting with this issue), when I logged back on, my Phone Number wasn't checked under "You can be reached by FaceTime at:". I signed my Apple ID off and on again a few times, and it still wasn't checked.

So, I went into my Contact card and looked at my Mobile Phone number. It was listed as "Mobile Phone" so I edited it and changed it to iPhone. Looked at FaceTime settings again - still not checked. Then went to find my husband's phone so I could call myself to make sure it would still ring on my phone, and when I got back with it, my phone number was checked. It appeared that editing the number and saving it back in Contacts did cause the phone number to be checked.

So, go into your Settings>FaceTime and see if you number is checked also.

Post back - I'm all ears!

Cheers,

GB

😊

Indded, Facetime on my iPhone was off. I turned it back on.

The Facetime option now appears on my contacts and I can initiate Facetime calls and receive notification of incoming Facetime calls.

But alas, still each one ends with the notice "Connection lost".

Checking my Facetime settings, I see that I do not have any problem with my phone number being checked. 😟

Steve

I looked through the posts, and didn't see you indicating that you had reset your Network settings. Did you do that yet? If not:

Settings>General>Reset>Reset Network Settings

We know it is not likely your router, because FT is working on other devices, but if you feel so inclined, reset it or power it down and back up. Sometimes my husband's Mac will suddenly fail to connect to the internet. Wifi is up, but internet connection just doesn't work. Everything else on the wireless network is fine, but if I unplug the router and plug it back in (only way for me to reset it), it resolves the issue for my husband's Mac. So, who knows?

But your Network settings on your phone may need to be reset, so I'd try that first if you haven't done that already.

If you did do this already, then 😟

Let me know....

GB

REset Network setting = Check

REstart Router = Check

Status = same "Connection lost"

You are a real trouper for sticking with me throuh all this

Thanks again

Steve

Well, it's really bugging me....it's crazy!!! And I would love nothing more than to stumble on a solution with you!

So, here's what I would do next:

Sign off and back onto FaceTime several times (checking the settings after each sign-on, and attempting to make a FT call - your wife will not be happy....tell her it's for a good cause 😀).

I would also delete my iCloud account and sign it back on again as well. I know that iCloud is not directly related to FT, but I would pretty much sign out of anything using the same Apple/iTunes/iCloud ID just because. Which means I would sign out of iTunes and back on there as well.

Another option (one I have never had to resort to - thankfully) would be to restore the phone. Here is a link that tells you how to do it so that even though you have restored it, you are doing so from a backup that you make just prior to the restore so you don't lose anything:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1414

Again, if you decide to do this, be sure to follow the BACK UP and TRANSFER AND SYNC CONTENT instructions before selecting the Restore iPhone option!!!

I'll check in with you again tomorrow to see where we are. And if you choose not to restore, I get it. If I had done it myself before I would feel more confident about recommending that you do it. But I haven't so, I totally leave that decision in your hands! 😎

Talk to you mañana!

GB

I have done a restore from backup and it STILL didn't work.

This whole "Connection Lost" started happening to me last week. I've tried all the "suggested" cures and nothing has worked.

iPhone 4, iOS 6.1.3, AT&T

I have the exact same issue. Started from yesterday, my facetime stopped working. My wife's iPhone 4 has the same issue at the same time. Tried everything, no luck. Very frustrated. I think this is Apple's issue. Somewhere in the FaceTime server or something.

iPhone4, iOS6.1.3, AT&T

I visited an Apple store in the UK yesterday and told them about the iphone 4 facetime problem, they said that they've had an increase in iphone 4 users coming to see them with the same fault, the apple guy stated that they were putting it down to faulty phones but he admitted there must be more to it but had no answer for the problem, he then said book in at the genius bar for further investigation and warned me it usually results in a phone exchange which normally costs.

It seems to me that the problem lies with Apple but they are putting the cost of the fault back on the consumer, as the Iphone4 facetime fault does not affect all iphone4's Apple is not admitting responsability.

I too am having the same issue with FaceTime not working.

iPhone 4 32 GB with iOS 6.1.1 and on AT&T 14.2

Not sure when FaceTime worked previouslly but it did use to work in the past. Definitely something related to iOS and not related to networks.

I tested on 4 different networks and had no success. I had friends with iPhones test on my network and the other networks I tested on and that had no issues.

When I erased all content and settings from my iPhone and started with a "clean" phone, I was able to FaceTime. Once I restored from my iCloud backup (which did restore everything successfully), FaceTime stopped working again.

!!!!!!!

Gozen, thanks so much for giving us the first real clue to this riddle.

Clean phone = Facetime OK

Restored phone, Facetime broke

the "Facetime Bug" seems to be in there somewhere among the apps or settings.

Let's keep searching. Maybe Apple will help us.

I have my Settings set to send them a constant stream of diagnostic information.

Settings/General/About/Diagnostics & usage. "Automatically send"

If all of us are sending in data every time we try Facetime and get the "Connection Lost" response, maybe Apple can assign a software engineer to look at all of those events and try to help us come up with a solution to our "Facetime Bug" problem.

Steve

You're welcome @nevets2!

I really don't want to have to erase my phone and start from scratch, but if I have to, I guess I'll give in and do so. I know I can manually backup certain things and then copy/sync them back over, but I would prefer to find a fix.

Other than FaceTime, I can't say I've seen or experienced any other issues with my iPhone currently. iMessage works, iCloud works, amongst other apps and the like. Even my iCloud backup restored successfully (with the exception of FaceTime not working).

Even though it's months away, I'm wondering when Apple releases iOS 7, or if they release any other iOS updates, if that will correct the issue.

Based on this article, here is what is backed up and restored when using iCloud backup: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2584

• Purchased music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books
• Photos and videos in your Camera Roll
• Device settings
• App data
• Home screen and app organization
• Messages (iMessage, SMS, and MMS)
• Ringtones
• Visual Voicemail

I am assuming one of the above items is what is causing FaceTime not to work correctly.

If I had to guess when this issue started, it was probably at the end of June 2013. The reason I say this is because I noticed my iPhone had a massive amount of "other data" (around 15 GB) when I was plugged in and checked iTunes. I was unable to find out what was occupying this space so I erased my phone and restored from my iCloud backup. This did indeed fix the massive amount of "other data" on my phone and things were seemingly fine until just recently when I tried to use FaceTime.

I do have files on my phone dating back to June 2009 (when I first got an iPhone) so perhaps it is time to erase and start from a clean slate, but it still seems funny to have to do so when it's only FaceTime that is exhibiting issues.

Earlier today I decided to see what I could see on my phone in the raw file system. I used the program iFunBox at http://www.i-funbox.com/

I am not Jailbroken but this program still allowed me to view some of the contents of my phone. I only saw one directory that looked out of place and deleted it but it did not correct my issue with FaceTime. I wish I had an erased/empty iPhone 4 that I can plug in to check what default contents are in the raw file system to compare with how my phone looks now. I am hoping that it is as simple as a corrupted file or directory that has to be deleted or, alternatively, if I have to copy and paste a file from a working iPhone from FaceTime back to my phone, that would be fine too.

Hi Gozen,

Good troubleshooting! And thanks for refreshing our memories about what is in the backup that is being restored. I would suggest that, if possible, you start removing the "differences" by deleteing all of your messages. That is sometimes a big culprit for many issues, including a large "Other".

Are you game? If we can identify the easiest backup items to delete and can start deleting those one by one, we may find the culprit without your having to resort to completely resetting your phone.

Again, if I was having the problem, I'd be more than happy to be the guinea pig....alas, I am not having the issue 😟 so I cannot help in that regard....but if you or Steve, or both of you are game, then we can just go at this with a process of elimination approach....

What say you?

Cheers,

GB

P.S. I do find it curious, that the posters who have listed their IOS and provider are all in the 6.x and AT&T group....

Hi All! I'm reposting my original entry from another thread, per Gail's recent invitation:

"I have routinely used Face Time over wi-fi successfully until about one week ago. Now, when I try to initiate a call, I see "Connecting" and then "Connection Lost" after the receiver answers. This was tested side-by-side with another user and it is not a wi-fi issue. I have tried all the fixes and nothing works. I have no idea what happened as I have not changed any settings - it just stopped working sometime last week. I also have an iPhone 4, using ios 6.1.3 on AT&T."

I will also add something, having reviewed the problem-solving that is occurring: i do not add many apps to my iPhone, but I did download one last week, Candy Crush Saga. I know, I know... I didn't really want to admit it, but aside from the AT&T provider "coincidence", it's the one thing I can think of. Oh! And as another person already mentioned, I have a first generation iPhone 4; I ordered early and waited for shipment, received it appx. July 21, 2010.