iPhone Cellular Calls option is missing on iPhone 5, iOS 8

Glad the issue is resolved. As for my mother's system, I can confirm it fits in with our understanding. Every setting and piece of hardware in her system is identical to mine, except for the fact that she has an iPad Mini retina. iCloud drive is not a factor as I tested that out too. It seems definite now that the iPad Mini triggered her "iPhone Cellular Calls" setting to appear.

I also noted with my mother's system that, once triggered, the "iPhone Cellular Calls" setting remains even if I remove the iPad mini from the system by shutting it down rather than putting it to sleep. After shutting down the iPad Mini, I turned the iPhone on and off to try to duplicate the lack of the "iPhone Cellullar Calls" feature, but the setting was still there. So it seems that the setting needs to be triggered only once and then it becomes a permanent fixture in settings.

So, with that, I assume that when I upgrade to Yosemite on my Macbook Air with either the beta or the final version, the setting will be triggered on my phone. I didnt want to trigger it by signing into my mother's iPad because I didnt want to risk screwing up her setup with my stuff.

Well, happy it worked out and nothing is broken.....all the best to everybody.

I have this same problem, and I'm *REALLY* unhappy about it. Handoff worked fine with iOS 8.0.2 and suddenly today after I upgrade to iOS 8.1 the options vanishes from my iPhone and my Mac (in FaceTime).

I've double-checked my Apple ID logon to iCloud on both Mac and iPhone .. doesn't work. I also lost handoff for calls on my iPad, so I suspect the problem is the iPhone and not the Mac/iPad (which also makes sense since this was the device that got the software upgrade).

Overall, with broken Bluetooth, broken iCloud, broken Handoff and numerous tinkering needed before these things can work, this is a VERY pop user experience from my perspective. What happened to the "it just works" Apple of old? As several commentators have noted, Apple quality has really gone downhill with iOS 8 release.

So, I have a clean Mac with OS X Yosemite, an iPhone with iOS 8.1, a clean WiFi network with everything working ... and NO cellular handoff, or even visible options. And yes, other Handoff stuff like SMS messages on my Mac works just fine.

Does anyone have any other ideas of things to try or trouble-shoot?

UPDATE: I worked on this some more, and DID fix it, as follows:

1. Sign OUT from iCloud on iPhone.

2. Sign IN to iCloud on iPhone

3. Wait 5 minutes

4. Check in Settings on iPhone for Cellular Calls option .. enable if not enabled

5. In FaceTime on Mac, check that iPhone Cellular Calls option is now visible and checked.

6. Repeat on iPad etc

The "master switch" here seems to be the sign out/sign in on iCloud on the iPhone. Apparently during the iOS 8.1 upgrade iCloud "forgot" my phones capabilities, and only re-discovered them during a NEW sign-on from iCloud. Once that was done, the other devices all enabled automatically. HTH.

--Tim

Tim,

Glad you worked that out. But just to preempt any issues you might have with iPhone cellular calling when and if you try to use text message forwarding, I am writing this to pass on what I experienced earlier and it may help you. This problem happened to many others as well:

My iPhone Cellular calling feature was working well and then I updated to 8.1 today and text message forwarding did not work when I tried to turn it on. It asked for a code and would not give me one. I discovered this bug on another thread that in addition to marking the checkbox for my phone number to send and receive text messages, I needed to check the specific box in Message settings on both my mac and my iPhone that showed my Apple ID email address, which was listed under my phone number. When I did that, SMS text messaging gave me the code and began to work. Unfortunately, it knocked out my iPhone Cellular calling again...another bug, ugh! When I tried to turn on iPhone Cellular Calling, a box came up that said I needed to sign in to the same Apple ID on my phone and my Mac. Problem is they were both signed in on the same Apple ID already so I was confused. After much frustration, I found that I had to also check the box in FaceTime on both my Mac and my iPhone that matched my Apple ID email address. I can still have the phone number as my "start new calls from" or "start new messages from," but I did need to have those email ID checkboxes checked for both Messages and FaceTime. Everything worked again after that.

Hope you don't have this problem, but just in case, I figured I would post it.

I am sure these bugs will be fixed in future updates.

I had to log out and log back in to iCloud on my mac, and all was good.

I was originally not getting the "iPhone Cellular Calls" option on my iPhone 6 (iOS 8.1) or MBA (Mid 2012, OSX Yosemite). After trying everything from this thread, what finally worked for me was going through FaceTime Preferences on my MBA and disabling my AppleID account and then reenabling it. Thanks for suggestions here.

Thanks to the various contributors on this thread, I was able to get that "iPhone Cellular Calls" option back on FaceTime Preferences as well as getting the ability to receive SMS texts forwarded from iPhone to my Mac Pro. Basically, what I think worked was logging out of my AppleID in my iCloud Settings on the iPhone and logging back in. It was a little scary cause it wanted to know what to do with the Contacts, Reminders, etc. that are on the iPhone synced with the iCloud. I chose to keep them. Then when I logged back in, it asked whether to Merge them and I accepted. Hopefully I don't have data duplications... yet to be determined...!!! It did take a long time to disconnect from iCloud and reconnect -- don't know what it does when Verifying... for so long!

From reading this thread, I think the break happened after upgrading to 8.1 on the iPhone since I had Handoff working with a Beta 6 of Yosemite and 8.0.2 of iOS. And I guess that it would work to either log out of either and log back in. Maybe it forces the servers to seek out and understand all devices using that AppleID. We do get heads up messages all the time when each device adds a phone number or email address etc.

In fairness, I think Apple stuff still "just works" if you buy new of everything every time they have a product release...!!! ;-) Otherwise, there's no product manual 'cause we have these wonderful support forums...!!! Sometimes I do agree that they're borrowing some tech from the future, 'cause even they don't have all the pathways sorted out; much less which will break with some other change!!! :-)

NasserKhan, I could not agree more. I've had massive issues with my AppleID and iPhone Cellular Calls, the ability to choose just the one contact address was lost and iOS Tech Support in Cork tried to fob me off with 'its expected behaviour', yet it all worked with 8.0.2.

Apple is losing its ability re. 'it just works'... and going down the route of other handset manufacturers, I think. They are falling victim to their own success. It now takes about five telephone calls and three people to solve basic issues.

And they'd prefer you just buy new stuff rather than try to use kit which is ancient, say over 18 months old!

How times have changed.

I had the same thing happen to me. My iMac, MacBook Air, iPad Air, and iPhone 5S all seemingly had the Phone Cellular Calls option disappear. No trace in the FaceTime preferences in the Macs or the iOS devices.

I fixed this by doing a complete restart on the iPhone (e.g., hold down the Power and Home keys until the white Apple logo appears). Once the phone came back on-line, the iPhone Cellular Calls option appeared in the FaceTime Preferences. I did a reset on the iPad too and the option came back there as well. Once the phone was reset, the cellular calls option also magically appeared in the Face Time preferences on the Macs (all devices signed into the same iCloud account and on the same Wifi network).

So do a restart on your phone. Hope this helps others as well.

This worked for me. Sign out of iCloud on iPhone. Sign back in - options for cellular calls appear in FaceTime settings on both phone and mac. Thanks all.

You are brilliant!!! I followed your instructions and it WORKED like a CHARM 🙂

-A million thanks, Tim

Very interesting. The option was appearing on my iPhone, but not my iPad. After calling my iPhone while it was in proximity of my iPad, the option suddenly appeared on my iPad. I guess you have to make that first "connection" to trigger the option.

Hey all, If anyone still reads this thread I'm having a similar issue but mine seems to be worse.

I have a late 2013 13" retina macbook pro with yosemite 10.10.1 installed, an iPhone 5 with iOS 8.1.2 installed I have had call and text forwarding setup for months since pretty much the release time of yosemite. this past weekend all contnutiy just quit working. both devices are setup as expected, in fact the mac still has the cellular calls option active and checked in face time, while the iPhone has none of the options for FaceTime or imessags. No matter what I do, even after following these threads nothing comes back to the iPhone, the mac seems fine, i looked at iCloud online and under devices it aknologes that the mac is running yosemite and the iPhone iOS 8. This is very frustrating and disappointed as I've never had this much trouble with an apple product before..

The only thing I had been doing prior to everything ceasing to work and options on the iPhone disappearing was to be testing a few virtual machines on the mac with fusion 7 pro. was trying a couple older versions of os x i've set up a copy of windows 7 and was evaluating a copy of windows 8.1. The only iCloud related stuff I did was install iCloud for windows in the virtual machine and iTunes etc which should not have had anything to do with it as it didn't modify anything on the host. but to be sure i logged out of iCloud on windows uninstalled iCloud for windows, restored the iPhone 5 twice once with erase the settings and once with actually reinstalling iOS by iTunes in os x. nothing seems to work. The iPhone seems dead when it comes to ever working again with these features. if someone can hep please.

Thanks

Bit late to the party on this one, but I've been going around in circles trying to get this working between my iPhone5c, iPad Air & new iMac. Masses of stuff online that was complicated and ultimately didn't work. As always simplest solution was the answer. I signed out of icloud in the iphone. Rebooted it (it wouldn't sign back in without a reboot for some unknown reason) and signed back in. Hey Presto shared sms and cellular calls options suddenly available across all devices..

Thanks for the tip

My solution was to RESET NETWORK SETTINGS on my iPhone 5s.