Verizon iPhone 6 Signal Problem

You call Verizon and complain to them - Apple can't do anything about Verizon's signals.

I have been struggling with this same issue since Dec 2014. I have traded out phones 3x and the SIM card 2x. Nothing fixed it. Deleted all programs, reset phone and restored data over a dozen times. Bought a network extender and nothing worked. Full bars before the iPhone 6. So after reading this thread, I simply turned off the LTE. Immediately went from 1 bar to 5 bars, then finally settled on 3 bars. It NEVER did that. I plugged in my network extender before sending it back to Verizon and it bumped to 4 - 5 bars. So, my solution...

• Turn off LTE (Settings, Cellular, Enable LTE (off))
• Get network extender (if low coverage in your area for consistent signal)

Hope this helps someone. It has been the most frustrating thing!!!

My iPhone 6 16gb Gold was purchased Dec 2014, and it was useless out of the box. We switched from Verizon from ATT at that time bc ATT had just put up a brand new Cell tower 100 feet from our home, so we thought ATT would be great signal. What a mistake.

My hubby and his friend actually are "old school" and paid extra for heavy-duty flip-phones (YES they still make those LOL), and we got our 10 year old foster daughter her first phone - very basic "no frills" smart phone. And I got the Cadillac of the bunch - the iPhone. AND everyone else has GREAT SIGNAL, GREAT RECEPTION, and can use their phone anywhere. NOT ME. mine ONLY works at home. If I get more than 200 feet from my driveway (300 feet from the tower), I have NO SIGNAL. Even in my home, my best signal is three bars. i can't use my phone on ANY highway, store, downtown. NOWHERE EXCEPT HOME. I have to take my child's cheap phone bc it works!

ive tried rebuilds, reboots, resetting network connections, upgrading the IOS three times now, downgrading the iOS once, replacing the SIM card once with child's card, replacing with a new ATT SIM card, turning LTE off and on, letting ATT look at it. NOTHING WORKS. I've always iPhones, this will my last if its not resolved soon.

TOnight Apple online support chat ran diagnostics, it came back immediately with a message stating "needs replacing or repair". Not sure what the problem is but at least it's still under warranty and they're going to look at it later this week. If I make the round-trip two hour drive and a genius tells me it's NOT a problem, IM DONE.. this phone has proven to be the WORST purchase I believe I've ever made

MMine is doing this, too! I thought it was the carrier(Verizon). Am taking it to Apple Store, today.

I have:

Black 64GB iPhone 6

Verizon

Same issues as everyone here. I even went to apple and got a new phone. Nothing is helping. I used to have a 6plus and had great signal strength on my commute to work and from my desk. I now have to use a landline and ignore calls on my commute because I break up constantly on the phone call and drop the calls all the time.

Any solution yet? Turning LTE off did nothing for me. New phone did nothing for me.

I have 2 new iphone6s 64gb - prior to these phones i was using iphone 4/4s i NEVER had a dropped call with those phones at my home , had low signal and had to stand in certain spots but always received and could make calls . Same isp as before the only thing that has changed is my phones , still using same cell provider verizon wireless and most all calls drop,or you have to dial 2x before will conn. multiple times local or out of state. I have never experienced such an issue so it makes you wonder what is the issue? verizon or apple? Have had the phones since oct and still having issues. I also bought the network extender i get great bars now but still dropped calls .

Below is a complete list straight from Apple.com on the LTE band specifications for iPhone 5, 5s, 6 and 6s. As you will see, the LTE bands have been cumulatively increasing in numbers with each new generation of iPhone. And there is a good reason so many are experiencing signal strength and battery issues on their devices; regardless of carrier...

The reason for all of these poor LTE signals is because the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s are capable of newer LTE frequency bands which haven't been as densely deployed except in urban (city) areas. What happens is apparently the towers force the newer phones onto those newer LTE frequency bands regardless of the phones' reception signal strength, in order to 'un-crowd' the over-saturated legacy (older) frequencies/bands.

Not happy. My house always had a total of 4-5 LTE bars (circles?) with two iPhone 5 handsets. With the iPhone 6s units we just bought last week, I was lucky if we got 3 bars... most of the time only 2. I placed one of the iPhone 6s phones side by side next to my old iPhone 5 and place both into field test mode which replaced the bars/circles with the actual dB signal strength. It was sad to watch. The iPhone 6s got only -109dB while iPhone 5 right next to it was -88dB. As I understand the scale is logarithmic, not linear (meaning each change of 10 points to the negative is actually HALF the signal strength) and that a perfect LTE signal is -40dB while zero signal can be had at -120dB. So -109 on the iPhone 6s is way too low when I used to experience in the -70 to -90dB range in the same place. As I understand it, that puts the iPhone 6s at only 1/4 to 1/2 the receiving signal strength.

You can turn off LTE and watch the signal jump right back up in line with that of the iPhone 5 but you can't force the 6 or 6s to just avoid using the newer LTE bands that the iPhone 5 can't even see in the first place.

I am returning both iPhone 6s units to the Apple Store today during my return window period and cancelling my iPhone Upgrade program. I already re-activated my old iPhone 5 units which are on their last leg with battery life, but you know what is sad? Because a weaker tower signal is seen by the iPhone 6s units, the phone knows it must increase its transmission power to reach the tower and that drains battery quicker on the new phones. So believe it or not, even though I estimate I have only about 50% of the battery 'capacity' on my iPhone 5 than it had when it was new, it's battery was out-lasting the brand new iPhone 6s through all of my testing.

iPhone 5

ATT: LTE (Bands 4 and 17)

VZW: LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, 25)

iPhone 5s

ATT: LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 17, 19, 20, 25)

VZW: LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 17, 19, 20, 25)

iPhone 6:

ATT: LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29)

VZW: LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29)

iPhone 6s:

ATT: LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)

VZW: LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29)

iPhone 5 Specs Ref : https://support.apple.com/kb/SP655?locale=en_US

iPhone 5s Specs Ref : http://www.apple.com/lae/iphone-5s/specs/

iPhone 6 Specs Ref : http://www.apple.com/iphone-6/specs/

iPhone 6s Specs Ref : http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/

Hydrogen76 wrote:

The reason for all of these poor LTE signals is because the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s are capable of newer LTE frequency bands which haven't been as densely deployed except in urban (city) areas. What happens is apparently the towers force the newer phones onto those newer LTE frequency bands regardless of the phones' reception signal strength, in order to 'un-crowd' the over-saturated legacy (older) frequencies/bands.

You're apparently misunderstanding the addition of LTE bands to the phone. Verizon has added only one more LTE band to their network since the iPhone 5. The phones Verizon sells are simply capable of being used in more countries and on more carriers. Verizon, for example only uses bands 2, 4 and 13. Those are the only ones the phone is going to look for if it has a Verizon SIM.

Meg St._Clair,

I am aware that Verizon (or any other carrier for that matter) does not make use of ALL of the LTE bands and that each carrier has their own bands assigned to them. That said, my point still stands and here is why.

The LTE bands I listed per phone are the bands that each respective 'flavor' of phone is capable of. Per you assertion, Verizon only uses bands 2, 4 and 13. That said, you will note that the iPhone 5 was only capable of utilizing Verizon's LTE band 13, not 2 or 4 like the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6s are. It is not safe to assume that all three bands (2, 4 and 13) have been equally deployed throughout the Verizon network unless you are a VZW associate and can confirm same? I spoke with VZW technical support last night and let's simply say while they wouldn't admit that this was the case, the support representative was unwilling to deny my case and suggested that I stay with the iPhone 5 or look at the Galaxy S5 as even the S6 and later were 'experiencing similar issues.'

Hydrogen76 wrote:

It is not safe to assume that all three bands (2, 4 and 13) have been equally deployed throughout the Verizon network unless you are a VZW associate and can confirm same?

But that's not the relevant issue. If that band is deployed where you are, it doesn't matter if it isn't deployed anywhere else in the country. If it's the closest, strongest signal, that's the one the phone will connect to. If it's not available where you are, the phone will connect to what is.

What happens is apparently the towers force the newer phones onto those newer LTE frequency bands regardless of the phones' reception signal strength, in order to 'un-crowd' the over-saturated legacy (older) frequencies/bands.

This is an assumption on your part. What documentation can you provide for this?

Meg St._Clair wrote:

Hydrogen76 wrote:

It is not safe to assume that all three bands (2, 4 and 13) have been equally deployed throughout the Verizon network unless you are a VZW associate and can confirm same?

But that's not the relevant issue. If that band is deployed where you are, it doesn't matter if it isn't deployed anywhere else in the country. If it's the closest, strongest signal, that's the one the phone will connect to. If it's not available where you are, the phone will connect to what is.

Reached out to a contact in my network at VZW. Not all towers in a vast metropolitan area are necessarily servicing all bands deployed by a carrier in a given market during roll-out. And I quote a relevant point made by them: "You may be seeing differences between the macro cellular network and AWS ... specifically in your area."

They go on to clarify that the iPhone 5 did not support the AWS band - which for Verizon is LTE band 4 and as I previously stated, the iPhone 5 did not support band 4. The support only came with iPhone 5s on VZW. Therefore, that is why I am seeing differences between the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 6 and 6s handsets I am evaluating.

What happens is apparently the towers force the newer phones onto those newer LTE frequency bands regardless of the phones' reception signal strength, in order to 'un-crowd' the over-saturated legacy (older) frequencies/bands.

This is an assumption on your part. What documentation can you provide for this?

I *never* assume. As the saying goes, "Assuming makes an <expletive> out of you and me." I would appreciate if you would refrain from interjecting with accusatory, negative statements. I shared some information which was factual from research and now corroborated by a high-ranking individual at the carrier.

I Have the same issue to a "T". Verizon exchanged my phone for exact same model, i put my sim in the new phone and no change. They claim it's because I live in a wooded area that it's a problem and then they stated they are aware of random problems with cell sites in VA. I've been tempted to switch over to AT&T.

I can't talk on my 6 for over 5 minutes before the call gets dropped ("failed call">"redial"?). I am getting 2 bubbles, 2 rooms from my router. I can walk around the house and it fluctuates from 1-4 bubbles. I haven't had these signal problems for a decade-- until buying the 6. What's really weird is it goes to 5 bubbles next to router. If I need to insure a call won't get dropped, I have to sit next to the router.

Of course I was told repeatedly that the router has nothing to do cellular reception (unless switching to wi-fi- wasn't). After re-bootings, network refresh, erasing data, data only set, etc etc) and talking repeatedly with Verizons techs (calls frequently dropped) and their trying everything on their end (redirecting to different towers, etc,etc) they finally decided, albeit against logic, to see if it could actually have something to do with the cable. They trenched a new cable line that was put in last winter. A 5' deep trench was dug- 50 yards to street & new fiber optic cable installed. Not surprisingly, it didn't increase the signal strength on anything.

I was about to schedule time at Apple, but decided to check what others might be experiencing first. I'm amazed that Verizon/Apple haven't addressed such a prevalent 6 problem!

An FYI I came across is how to switch from signal bubbles to a numeric reading: Dial 3001# 12345# *l (then call/green) and you'll see it upper left. If you want to make it permanently read numerically (supposedly more reliable), hold sleep n home buttons till off, then on. Above -80=good. Below -105=bad. Mine is 110.

Repeatedly this ends up related to signal strength. So what about the 6 makes it often

receive less signal than other phones (in the same environment)?