iPhone 5 / iPad Retina will not find hidden SSIDs after IOS7 Upgrade

There's no question that there's a fully reproduceable problem in a full ensemble of Apple's most current hardware and software. There may be a narrow circumstance that is probably specific to the setting of a given router, but I haven't had a chance to try other models than the latest Airport Extreme. From the person that's reporting that his 7.0.3 and 0.4 devices automatically reconnect on hidden SSIDs, I gather he's not using an 802.11ac network, so the problem may be based on that configuration. I'll find some time to test it on hidden SSIDs on older routers.

So me making a mention of the fact that I have the main AirPort Extreme set to broad cast on channel 1 for the 2.4 and 157 for the 5.0, wasn't useful information? That could be the key right there, setting the router to broadcast on a fixed channel all the time. With out allowing it to hop all over the place.

Then the facts of what routers have worked for me. Other users could be using other routers and that could be the problem right there.

For instance, off topic in a way. My Dish receiver 722K would randomly reboot when it was plugged into the Netgear repeater router via a cat-5 cable. In order for me to fix that problem I had to purchase one of their USB wireless cards and plugged it into the Dish receiver. Which happens to be made by Netgear. Ironic on how the the Netgear USB wireless card worked, but the repeater router with cat5 did not. Now with the AirPort Extreme in the place of the Netgear repeater. I plugged the Dish receiver into it just see what happens. Two months later, the Dish receiver hasn't rebooted. So right there proves that it could be a router problem. Even for the hidden SSIDs, different issue caused be the same product.

As for the latest AirPort Extreme, it's still broadcast in 5.0GHz N, G, B and what not. Unless you manually select it to broadcast in ac only. In which case none of the iOS devices will connect, even the iPhone 5s/c. As they don't have the ability to connect to a router broadcasting in "ac".

That reminds me, I have the AirPort Extremes broadcasting in 802.11 N 5GHz only and 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz. I can't remember how I had that part set up in the previous configurations.

I also rarely turn my wifi off. And when I arrive back home from where ever for whatever amount of time, few hours to a couple of weeks. As soon as I arrive home and wake my iPhone, it sees my hidden network and connects.

KOT

Mine was a false alarm. We replaced an older router, (previous model Airport Extreme), with the AC version, (I just refer to the newest one as AC to distinguish which generation it is, not to say a device is using that frequency). It turns out that, since we just replicated all the old network settings, some devices must have had a some kind of stale entry in its history table that confused it with the previous router. Forgetting the hidden network, power cycling it, and reassigning it seems to have cured it.

Maybe some of the others who had a problem with hidden SSIDs also replaced routers, but kept the same credentials, so hopefully that explains someone else's problem too.

Reset network settings worked for me

replying to this post for any one still looking for a solution:

here is what worked for me.

my setup non-apple wireless router, few iOS devices and OS X devices

problem: after turning off SSID broadcast on router, keeping password same, iOS devices (iPhone 4S and 6 and iPads full and mini) failed to connect.

solution: goto settings in iOS device>wifi>choose a network>other

NAME: mySSID or whatever the original SSID is

Security: WEP or WPA or whatever method you are using in your router (important, this needs to be exactly what is on router)

Password: your password saved for mySSID on your wireless router

bingo, your iOS device will be connected and will work even if you restart it. OS X devices had no issues and did not need reconnecting. cannot comment on other devices.

Yes. I did this. I entered the wifi details manually:

Settings > Wifi > Other > SSID + Security (WPA2 in my case - set this to match your router) + password.

It worked for iPhone 6 iOS 8.4 and iPhone 4 iOS 7.1.2.

As the SSID is not being broadcast, I struggle to see how it can affect the device remembering the SSID and password, but for completeness mine is a DSL-3780 on firmware 1.05t.