iPhone 5S GPRS/E slow / unusable

Question

Level 1

9 points

iPhone 5S GPRS/E slow / unusable

Hi,

A month ago I upgraded from an iPhone 4 to the iPhone 5S. Ever since I had the 5S I have noticed the GPRS / E data is extremely slow and most of the time it is unusable as pages time out or you end up giving up.

I am on Tesco mobile in the UK (O2).

I decided a few days ago to compare my 5S with the iPhone 4 which my wife now has and is also on the same type of contact with Tesco mobile.

If I turn wifi off and turn off 3G/4G (Settings / Enable 3G/4G toggle) on both phones then I can see they both switch to GPRS mode. I load the same webpage on both phones together and although slow as you would expect on GPRS the iPhone 4 loads the page first while the iPhone 5S just sits there blank with the blue bar at the top initially moving then paused.

So I contacted Apple support to ask why. After many calls reseting the phone and updating to iOS7.1, checking setting with Tesco mobile etc I still dont have a fix.

Today I went into the Southampton Apple store, a genius lady acknowledged the issue once I showed her and straight away gave me a replacement saying it looked like hardware fault. However on testing the replacement it still had the issue. A more senior genius guy then looked at it and also saw the issue. He was suggesting that it must be my sim card so I said to them to show me an iPhone 5S with another sim card working like the iPhone4. They searched for another sim and then tried a new pay as you go O2 sim which they could not get working as it didn't seem to be activated. In the end I gave up as had already been in the store over an hour and thought as I got a replacement phone it was worth checking at home again.

Back home though as expected I get exactly the same issue with GPRS/E not being usable.

Does anyone else have this issue or know a fix? I also contacted a relative who also owns an iPhone 5S on vodafone and he also thought the GPRS / E is not usable compared to the iPhone 4.

I guess my next step will be to purchase a working pay as you go sim on O2 to see if it has the same issue.

Is this a general iPhone 5S hardware or software issue, I know must people probably are using 3G or 4G so maybe do not notice.

Be great to hear other 5S users experience using GPRS/E.

Thanks

Nigel

Posted on Mar 13, 2014 1:33 PM

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Answer 1

KiltedTim

Level 10

195,537 points

Mar 13, 2014 1:45 PM in response to nige6

Um... yeah... EDGE (2G) data is virtually useless. 7 years ago, when the original iPhone came out, it was usable... Of course, web pages were much less complex then...

Most carriers are in the process of completely shutting down their EDGE networks to re-use the bandwidth for LTE.

Why are you even bothering? Use 3G or LTE.

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Answer 2

nige6 Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 13, 2014 2:05 PM in response to KiltedTim

Hi KiltedTim,

Unfortunately I live in the UK where I guess things are a little slower, 3G / 4G is still patchy (at least on the south coast where I live) therefore all I have is GPRS/E at times.

What is strange is that my old iPhone4 performs faster than the 5S in GPRS/E mode, that's what is puzzling me.

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Answer 3

Hayxh

Level 1

0 points

May 17, 2014 8:10 AM in response to nige6

I have exactly the same problem and I don't know why! Did you manage to fix it?

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Answer 4

nige6 Author

Level 1

9 points

May 17, 2014 9:17 AM in response to Hayxh

No did not fix it, returned the phone in the end for second time and got a refund. Made the switch to android and got a moto g and saved over £500. No problems with that and it actually switches to hspa+ in same area the 5S did not work and its fast. Highly recememd moto g and android now only thing I miss is photostream. Good luck resolving.

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Answer 5

Jul 11, 2014 1:58 AM in response to nige6

Hi Nigel. I was having the same issue after recently getting a new 5s operating 7.1.2 however I'm not sure it's linked to GPRS/Edge. I'm on tesco mobile so probably a similar network to you in England. The phone for the past few weeks has been performing a lot slower than my previous 5 which was performing a lot quicker and snappier. I have been searching for a solution in the forums and nothing. I think I have found a solution though and I don't know how this works but it does. I simply changed the time format to 24 hours and vola it seemed to have fixed the problem. The 5s operates as it was designed to do now. It is so much snappier and responsive now with no lagging when loading apps or switching between apps and no more slow loading blue bar while loading webpages. Im very happy with the speed of the phone now so just flagging it up as a potential solution. Hope it works for you too. Let us know if it makes a difference. I'm hoping apple bring out a fix in this because I much prefer 12 hour time format.

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Answer 6

pristi

Level 1

0 points

Jul 27, 2014 12:49 PM in response to nige6

Same issue here.
At home I only have Edge and on my iPhone 4 internet works normally.
But the new iPhone 5S loads the same site a lot slower and sometimes it does not load it at all.
Hope someone finds a fix...

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