IOS 7.1 iphone 4S wifi not available .. help..

Hey Vossovic,

OK, thanks - I (and I believe all of us) would appreciate it =)

Regards.

It would sound weird but this happened to me when I updated my 4s to IOS 6. I was not confident and they didn't replace even when it was under warranty. I was so upset. It was a much bigger problem then, but apple was and is deaf . I went to youtube to find a fix. It offered me two fixes 1) Freeze the phone in freezer for 15 minutes and 2) to use hair blower towards the top (earphone jack) side for minutes until you see warning appearing on the screen. It will ask your the permission to switch off the phone after getting hot. The second worked for me (the first didn't). I know any sane person would be scared to use blower on an active phone, but I had no choice. It was working fine since then but now I have come across the same problem. I hope the same trick will work again. I came here only to tell you guys Apple won't help. They argue they offer free software update and in the license agreement they have written that they are not liable for any malfunctioning in the hardware due to this. Everytime they come up with 'The next big thing', it is full of bugs unlike android updates, which have lower bugs in comparison. I won't buy apple anymore.

OK everyone

Here I am following afbs84 suggestion made September 2. The issue could be related to an over-voltage or an incorrect charging procedure. To keep disagreeing with our much smarter friend TJBUSMC1973 this is not just a hardware problem. I (and a large number of us) had this issue only after updating the iOS. In my case the issue was resolved after heat treatment, but this was a temporarily fix. When the WiFi working if I update the iOS I would get the WiFi problem back. So it surely has a hardware component here, but the software is the one shutting down the WiFi chip when it did not need to. So yes blind faith in Apple software could impede TJBUSMC1973 to see this issue.

Now back to afbs84 suggestion that this could be an over-voltage issue. I posted the other day that my WiFi was fixed after following afbs84's suggestion of draining the battery and charging again. I was using an old car charger I had for my iPod Touch and I believe this was the source of my problems. I would recommend NOT TO TAKE APPLE'S OFFER TO EXCHANGE YOUR PHONE PAYING $200 (or euros or whatever). Instead think where have you being charging your phone. if you have done it anywhere other that the original charger try the suggestion from afbs84 (Except I would wait more that 30 minutes, be safe do it overnight). If you have been always charging your phone with the original charger try with a new one or ask you happy local Apple dealer to lend you an original charger for iPhone 4S to test this (Your charger might be defective... hey now we know that Apple is not perfect!).

I have done this and I am happy to report that the issue has been gone for about two weeks and counting. I have made a point of charging my phone ONLY with the original charger. So.... the hardware may have an issue, but it works fine! Sorry TJBUSMC1973 your hardware idea is just wrong! I am sure being wrong is not fun specially for a Level 5 member 😉

Please if you do this and if it works let us know. maybe Apple will issue at least a statement warning people not to use old chargers...

Hope this helps and my appreciation to afbs84 for his/her information (I just wonder were it came from??)

Cheers!
J

I repair phones.

The issue is hardware.

All that's happened is that iOS7 is fussier and tests the wifi chip more before using it when the older iOS just went ahead and used it regardless.

With the older iOS it will SEEM like wifi is on but you will get choppy wifi performance or just wifi looking like it's slow or throttled down.

The problem is not the wifi chip itself but the solder joints with the motherboard.

It will have SOME solder joints fractured.

Freezing and hairdrying are temporary solutions.

Freezing may work by contracting the solder joints enough to pull the fractured joints with enough contact to work temporarily.

Heating does the opposite and hoepfully expands the fractured joints to make enough contact temporarily.

The proper thing to do is to reflow the wifi chip and thus re-seat all the solder joints properly.

This can be done in any oven that can heat to 230deg C and using a small piece of solder as a temp guage.

There is no easy way or magical short cut, it NEEDS to be reflowed.

See my post in this thread on August 19 for more.

Hi Warboat. What you said is simply not true. When the temporary solution is done we don't get choppy wifi performance we get full performance... much better than noene at all with the added benefit that the unit does not over heat trying to find a network all the time and the added benefit that the battery holds up lots longer. So as I said the wifi chip might show some defect, but in general terms is working fine. NOW... the issue we experience here is due to the iOS. The SOFTWARE finds a fault in the chip and –even though– is working the SOFWARE renders it worthless and the SOTWARE greys out the access to WiFi. So yes, it is a SOFTWARE problem. By the way it is not just iOS 7+, but when this issue surfaced with iOS6 the iPhone 4S was still underwaranty and Apple had to deal with it (I don't think this was ever an issue with iOS5, but some people here thinks so...).

I can understand you want people to come to your shop so you can fix them for them (here is how you do it:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Fix+iPhone+4S+Wi-Fi+Grayed+Out/22167) right?

Well the jury is still out about if this is a permanent fix or not. Any way, Apple knows very well they introduced a faulty WiFi chip and they are doing nothing about it. They have the right to do so because the units having this problem after iOS7 are mostly out of warranty... But is Apple getting so big that they lost their Ethos? It is up to them, but as you might have seen here some are no buying iPhones anymore... there are other models out there that are pretty good you know?

I am suggesting people to try the charger issue because it worked for me and it makes sense... it is not a magical shortcut, but it could save people some money... Apple has plenty

Cheers!

J

Javier, you should not be so cynical.

I am a repairer in Australia, I've done hundreds of reflows to iphones using both hot air gun and oven.

If you read my post on August 19, I describe the most practical way for someone with basic tools and an oven to perform a reflow of the wifi chip using an oven, a small piece of solder and some aluminium foil.

I actually try not to use the hot air gun as per iFixit link, as it uses too much localised heat and can cause warpage and further damage.

I use the oven reflow to fix this issue using a cheap toaster oven.

The absolute BEST solution is to remove the screen, battery, cameras, speakers, etc and reflow the wifi chip with just the motherboard screwed in to the chassis as this has the motherboard properly stressed in position with the screw near the wifi chip putting tension on that corner of the motherboard. The issue is not a faulty wifi chip but poor design and location of the chip and mobo mounting which stresses the board to fracture the weak solder. It is also partly due to poor manufacture as this is not the only issues with iphones that needs reflow (4 and 5 also have common issues that needs reflow).

Think of it as custom remanufacturing of the solder joints to suit the stressed-in-situ motherboard in each phone.

This is the best method but obviously most time consuming, and rarely done.

I am not saying it to get people to come to my shop, especially when I'm offering the cheapest DIY permanent solution.

From my experience with dozens of 4S with this issue, a reflow permamently fixes the problem.

There is a lot of empirical solutions tossed around by a lot of people, including yourself regarding charging voltages, but they are either temporary or purely coincidental based on a sample size of one phone.

I'm putting the information out there so people understand the problem technically and don't experiment with half baked solutions on their phones.

Hey man,

any news of iOS8 behavior on iPhone 4S regarding WiFi drop issue?

Or if anyone else reads this, maybe you have some new info about it?

I still don't want to upgrade to iOS8, I'm not sure if it will destroy my phone

even more 😐 But if that WiFi fix is true - it will definitely push me towards it 😀

Thanks!

Hi Warboat. I did revisited your post of August 19. I remember reading it a long time ago. I found it very scary and though you where kidding! I decided not to say anything because I didn't feel like going into a never-ending argument, but if you insist... You are suggesting to place the entire mother board with "tinfoil" as a protector... I am not sure where you got your credentials for iPhone repair, but you should know that aluminum foil is a great conductor of heat. So you are just inducing the heat from the oven to the entire MB and essentially baking it! I do use Aluminum foil to bake fish and believe me, it comes out delicious, just ad some herbs a a bit of Olive oil wrap the fish in foil and bake for 20 minutes.

Using the blow dryer is the same... you are just backing the phone! As I mentioned in my previous post I am not sure reflowing the WiFi is a permanent solution and if you really want to do it safe use the method in the ifixed website I suggested couple of days back. Please Warboat if you are fixing other people's iPhones AND charging for it, at least tell them what are you going to to do with it!

I am not being cynical Warboat. I am being fed up with the passivity Apple has demonstrated in this issue and the bad fixes people has to offer. In your post of August 19 you say this is not a software issue and then go to explain why the software is causing the problem: "because the new iOS version checks the wifi chips functionality before allowing the OS to use it. If it doesn't pass ALL tests, it will not allow wifi to switch on in iOS. The older version of iOS will simply not check the wifi chip for faults and just go ahead and use it."

Well... if the old iOS version does not check it and go ahead and use the WiFi it means the WiFi is functional and the new iOS is not letting it work.

Any how Apple is getting too big for their own good and they are not seeing that the quality they used to have is not going to carry them much longer

Cheers!

J

I have an iphone 4s, never had any trouble with phone, has always been in Otterbox, not a scratch on this phone. AppleCare has expired of course and I still have 7 months to go in contract. Loaded ios 8.0 Saturday morning and no wifi since. Have tried everything I could find on internet to no avail! Apple of course says they will fix for $199.00. Why do I have to pay for their issue??? Entire family owns Iphones ( that's 6 in total) we are done with apple if they expect us to pay for this. Think the timing is a little fishy with release of new 6, funny how older models cant handle updates. Is this a way to make us upgrade?

Javier,

You are not understanding the purpose of the foil.

Direct heat is 100%. indirect heat by way of a foil insulator, even though it is a very good heat conductor, is much less than 100%.

Typical Solder melts at 217deg C and it is very precise, so all we want the foil to do is insulate the areas we don't want to reflow to below this temperature. We actually want to transfer heat to ALL areas of the motherboard to reduce stress from localised heat, but not enough to reflow EXCEPT the areas we want reflowed.

If you wanted to insulate, you would use kapton tape, but that is not practical for most people as they dont have access to a supply of it.

Your example of baking fish is actually using the foil as a seal to keep the juices in and not evaporate the food. Foil is not a 100% efficient super conductor so the fish is cooking with less heat but it is cooking better with the juices. Primary function of the foil in this application is a seal rather than a heat conductor.

Using the blowdryer is not the same, it will never reach reflow temperature, it can expand solder fractures to the point where it forms contact to allow temporary conduction but it won't repair the fracture. The other issue that is a problem with hairdrying is overheating the LCD display and permanently damaging it. Also, lithium polymer batteries are affected by a lot of heat.

As for blaming the software, well, the software is merely consequential to the real problem which is hardware.

It's kind of like saying a carb fed engine with mechanical ignition can operate without feedback in the form of crank angle sensors. So if the crank angle sensor is faulty on an EFI engine, you blame the computer because it would work if the system was mechanical?

Let's be smart and solve the real hardware problem instead of masking it with software bypass solutions.

As for my credentials, I have over 15 years in laptop repairs, and have sample size of hundreds of iphone repairs.

It is cynicism like yours and others in forums that detract repair pros from posting practical solutions to problems because of the lack of experience and understanding. This is the first time I've posted in Apple forums on a problem I fix daily and you treat it with derision.

You would rather believe in empirical coincidences than real science. Maybe that's why other pros don't like to post here anymore.

Heck, my first post was even deleted because the admin thought it was a bit too far fetched.

It seems like everyone wants a magic easy fix rather than face the harsh truth.

The truth is, the hardware is faulty, it is fixable, the wifi chip is not faulty, the software issue is consequential.

I been having this problem for like a month, my android tablet's wifi keeps having that grey wifi icon and I can't connect to the internet or anything!

Tryed all of the including thing to solve taht how to fix grayed out Wifi on iPhone.

1.) Turning off wifi and then turn it on again

2.) Turning on airplane mode and the off

3.) Reset tablet

4.) Clear data and force stopping google frame service

5.) Turning off the wifi router and then turn it on

If none of them worked, try iPhone Transfer.

WiFi not available/greyed out, iPhone 4S. There is a solution!

I recently spent hours on the phone with Verizon, then with Apple. They had me completely reset the phone, no Wi-Fi. I upgraded to iOS 8, still no Wi-Fi. I was told to make an appointment to meet with the "geniuses" at the Apple store. I didn't have to wait long, but was very disappointed. A guy looked at my phone for about 15 seconds and told me there was no fix, it would have to be replaced. I'm not quite ready for my upgrade yet, and his response was "well, at least you have 3G!" To me, that sounds like "well, at least you have a rotary phone!" Kind of insulting.

I finally found the YouTube trick and took my chances. It worked!!! I waited a few weeks before posting because I wanted to make sure it would last. I've had a strong Wi-Fi signal ever since.

Using a hair dryer, I heated up the top portion of the phone (near the front-facing camera and top speaker). When I got the 'Temperature' warning after about 5 minutes, I turned off the phone, put it in a Ziploc bag, and stuck it in the freezer. After 10 minutes I took it out, turned it on, and Wi-Fi was back.

I don't blame Apple for not promoting this method because a) its free, b) its hokey and c) it could be dangerous. But I'm so grateful for the courageous users who shared their experience. The 4S lives!!!!

After IOS7 my 4s started running slow, the battery drained and the wifi button greyed out. Over the past year I have reset network settings on a number of occasions, although there was never an immediate improvement there were a couple of occasions when after a few days my phone miraculously began working perfectly again. Problem was as soon as I connected to iTunes or the App Store the fault would flair up again. How is this possible? My wifi etc hasn't worked for months then four weeks ago I stopped taking photo's on my phone and subsequently stopped connecting my phone to my laptop to download the pics, three weeks ago my phone started working perfectly without me even doing a reset. During that time I didn't connect to my laptop, iTunes or the App Store but today I stupidly plugged my phone into my laptop to charge it and guess what? Now my wifi is greyed out again, my battery is draining and it's horrendously slow again. How can this be a fault with my phone? Is it possible that it's connecting to iTunes and the App Store (Apple in other words) that are making my phone appear to be faulty? I really can't think of any other explanation but the thought of it makes me feel sick. This is sinister stuff and I will be taking my phone to see one of apples "geniuses" tomorrow for an explanation.

I have the same issue with my 4S...oddly enough my wives 4S no issue....tried to reboot it, reset the internet settings, turn on air plane mode...no go...until I found a video online to heat with a blow dryer the phone jack end until it over temps to reset the chip inside....then everything starts working again...I have to do this process every 4 months or so....Apple should cover such faulty workmanship on their superior products....such as cold solder joints on the wifi chips.

--Richard

so,if we change the new chip.wifi is work or occur wifi greyed out again in this bad ios7?:(