iPhone XS Max Weak 5GHz WIFI Reception

Same issue with slow LTE and WiFi. All my other iOS devices get great WiFi speed at home. XS Max drops to 2G with access point 5 feet away. Running UniFi nanoHD APs in house. Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

They contacted me on Twitter last night and arranged for a senior representative to call this morning. He seemed to think that the new carrier update, 33.2 on att, might take care of the cell network connection problem. Because I’m not experiencing any functional issues on WiFi in my apartment other than diminished signal strength but no drop in connection or download speeds he did not think there was a problem there. However , again, I live in a one story small apartment. In a larger home I could very well have a significant problem. He plans to call again on Saturday to see what my cell connection experience is over the next couple of days.

They do do seem to be reaching out to people so hopefully a solution will be forthcoming.

This is so frustrating I have been on the phone with Apple 3x today I have the XS Max. I have been trying to make calls because they had me do a reset of my Network Settings. Whoever I speak with say they hear every other word then it says System Failure. I’m nervous because I don’t want the 15 day window to go by without being able to return it and I just received the box to send my 8 Plus back and I don’t want to send it back and get stuck with this. My husband has the same phone and his is just as bad as mine, only thing is his phone doesnt need to go back he was finished with his 2 year plan. I don’t know what to do, how long does it usually take for an update to come out.

On networks that share the same ssid (wifi name) for both 2.4GHz & 5GHz, the iPhone XS & XS Max seem to prefer the 2.4GHz channels (in my case, channel 11). Normally the client devices will prefer 5GHz over 2.4 if the connection is good enough but for some reason, it only wants 2.4. I'm sure this will be patched in a future update. But for now, if you can, login to your router and see if it can have a different SSID for 5GHz and set that.

DrinkJuiceShelb on Twitter: "@MacRumors @reneritchie @9to5mac an hour on the phone with Apple, we fixed the issue with W…

"an hour on the phone with Apple, we fixed the issue with WiFi/Cellular on iPhone Xs Max. You have to restore with a computer without a backup. I know its crazy to think we still have to do this, but it worked and fixed both WiFi and Cellular!"

"Complete restore with iTunes and as New device unfortunately. It’s literally night and day now. Blazing speeds." Then no restoring from backup.

From: Other - Is the mobile reception on the xs Max even worse than iPhone X ? | Page 26 | MacRumors Forums

Not entirely sure. Again. That may have been tested using pre release software. But apple will make this right within a week or so I guess. They can’t pull an iPhone 4 antenna gate issue by saying we’re holding the phone wrong or wrong case. This is a $1000-$1500 phone. They have to make this right.

I'm having the same issue here but mostly with LTE and it affects me more at the office and not at home. I'm also having SMS and data issues. Apple is sending me a replacement unit, we'll see if that works.

thedobe wrote:

Take a look at this. It isn’t the modem. It’s the antenna. https://www.wiwavelength.com/2018/09/iphone-xs-and-xs-max-mostly-fail-to.html?m= 1

I tend to think this is a hardware issue as well which I'm not sure if any firmware upgrade is going to be able to solve easily. I'm considering returning the phone and waiting for the whole thing to clear up.

Same issue. My Xs Max only gets two bars of reception while my iPad has a full four bars and my husband's iphone 8 plus has a full four bars. I also have very slow wifi speeds. I have to turn off the wifi at work because it won't even connect. Which wouldn't be so bad if my cellular data wasn't so poor. I really hope a software update can fix this.

I read an article this afternoon in iDrop News on Twitter about this issue. It's not universal. My iPhone XS Max is operating great with Wifi and LTE. But for those where it isn't, I'm sure it's real.

The article said people who restored their phone via iTunes and NOT from backup solved the issue completely. This may not be a fun solution for everyone as you can't restore from your backup, so you'll need to bring things from the cloud over manually, but it's a solution that seems to have worked for those who did this.

I've tried this and a number of other people across the various forums tried it and said it didn't work unfortunately. I've gone through all the suggested tips and tricks and eliminated any of the other possibilities by joining only to a 5ghz network, etc. No luck.

I got a iPhone XS Max today for my wife. I noticed that the 5ghz signal was fast the first time I tried a speedtest. It dropped the next time and subsequently. I reset the network settings and got the speed I should have (over 200mbps). This degraded on the next try. Reset network settings again. Same thing; great speed first try, poor on subsequent attempts. This tells me it's a bug because the handset is capable of receiving the same as all the other devices, which all get 200+. Anyway, I hope they roll out a fix. Couldn't get the sim to activate. Apple wasn't much help, so I put the old one in and it worked immediately. Not what I was expecting from a brand spanking new phone.

The same issue, just got my t-mobile iPhone XS Max and the cell reception is far worth, living in NYC my previous 8plus would catch almost full signal on all subway station, today going home I could not get a signal on any station.

I have tried setting my phone up as new after resetting all settings. It should be as though it was a new phone set up as new straight out of the box. Still getting poor reception/signal. And, even if You restore from the cloud as opposed to restoring from iTunes, that’s still a software issue that Apple should fix. I even made sure that my carrier settings were up to date. Still getting a poor 5GHz connection that fails over to the 2.4GHz SSID on my xfinity router after a bit. Earlier today I went on a long drive about 70 miles away from home, and had very poor LTE signal the entire time. Most of that time I was and of 4G connection when there should be strong LTE connection everywhere. I just tweeted at the Apple Support Twitter account, too. For how large this issue is, something needs to be done. And it’s clear through all of the comments in this forum that plenty of people have tried plenty of different things to correct this issue, but still nothing. If it turns out to be a hardware issue, there should still be a way to tweak the baseband settings to possibly fix this.

Just like someone else posted earlier, it would make sense that if it works once and then signal degrades again after resetting network settings, that a software update should be able to fix this. If resetting network settings didn’t fix the issue or nothing changed, then I would think it is definitely a hardware issue. The fact that there has been limited success and then back to poor signal again, leads me to believe that this can be fixed through a software update.