iPhone XS Max Weak 5GHz WIFI Reception

If you’re having problems with WiFi/cellular reception and are still within the 14 day return window, your best bet is to buy a couple more phones, test them all out (side-by-side fast.com throughput tests and field test mode for cellular), and return the ones that aren’t performing well.

By doing this, you get a better performing device, and you tell the production folks at apple that it’s not okay to widen test limits to get these things to pass and boost yield.

I bought a total of 5 unlocked phones, tested them all, and returned 3. The best and worst WiFi throughout differed by 2x at the end of my house with spotty coverage, and the best and worst cellular differed by 12dB

Such a misstep by Apple and indicative of either really poor testing or desperation to get the device out and hope that they could find a firmware revision solution before it became too much of a publicity issue. Not acceptable for a premium device and brand.

Bingo.

I have been working with Apple since yesterday. I am now seeing (on the WiFi side), same issue with iPad Pro and iPad Air 2 running iOS 12. When connecting to SSID that auto selects frequency, download speeds are pretty awful (upload unaffected). Once we select dedicated 5GHz SSID, speeds reach ISP max.

Not seeing LTE issues anymore (I did a couple of days ago). Wondering if AT&T made a change.

Just performed a test and with WiFi off, I connect to AT&T via Speedtest with 133Mbps down / 11.3Mbps up, so no issues on that end.

I'll update the thread once I know more. They have all my logs.

Cheers,

Neurobit

Wow... you guys have fast WiFi routers! That's crazy fast. I'm seeing a marked improvement with my second iPhone Xs Max. The first one would drop signal and barely make it over 2 Mbps when away from the router. The new one still can't hold a signal like my iPhone 7 (my iPhone 7 can get twice the distance on 5 ghz), but it's much much better than the the first Xs Max (I'm now getting about 170 Mbps in the same area). This implies that there are some major quality control issues with the handsets.

I can say with confidence that it isn't an iOS 12 issue. My iPhone 7, my wife's iPhone 7+, my iPhone X and both iPad Pro models are all on iOS 12 with absolutely no issues whatsoever. All of those devices are extremely fast, connect and hold wifi/LTE signals and have amazing throughput. The ONLY issues I have are with my iPhone Xs Max's. As I said in my last reply, my second iPhone Xs Max (that I purchased to test) is much much faster and reliable with signals than the first one... but still nowhere near the speed and signal strength of all of my older Apple devices (all running iOS 12).

Again... this implies a major QC issue.

For me after lots of experimentation last two days I find that cell in strong to medium areas for me is much faster than earlier iphones including my X. At my house I have typically one bar but never measured the strength of signal before (did not know about that test you can do with the phone to open test mode). Occasionally I have two bars. I am AT&T with old grandfathered unlimited and still cheaper than new so called unlimited plans. But my kids Verizon also gets similar signal here on this side of town half mile from interstate so it is just the lack of good towers near us. Anyway with all other phones and this Xs now I still get good phone calls at this level and with texting no problems. I always used my Wifi to locally enhance my internet use with data intensive apps though, the Xs is same

The only place I have issues with my Wifi especially the 5ghz is outside of my house— especially with my office to the farther away from where I am (more outside wall, and internal rooms between me and wifi router). But that has always been the case. And when I come home and reconnect before going in door my iphones (all of them including X) would grab the 2.4 ghz band and stay on it until I went and choose the band (I have them separated so I can do that).

What has gotten worse however is that in the outside area with all my previous iphones before the Xs the weak Wifi and or cell (I am in weak cell area so I rely on wifi a lot) I could still do data intensive apps with out them failing do to internet connections or never making connections like I am finding with my Xs. Calls always worked on the weak one to two bar cell signal (never tested it before what strength was) and they still do fine with myXs. But now if I want to do a data intensive app it is hard to do in this spot in front yard — cell does not help and I usually was connecting thru the Wifi - even though it showed 1-2 bars no problem with previous phones.

It thus for me just requires a different spot in yard with in house even at farthest distance (and lowest bars of Wifi — one bar maybe two) my Wifi speeds are as good as ever. I am unfortunately on next to lowest service with ISP and get about 75-80 mb down and 8-10 up so my limit has been that and it still works fine at that. However I did a test with a new app to me called Wi-Fi sweet spots. Rather than uploading to the AirPort Extreme and going out through my comcast cable modem it is testing speeds to the airport. In the test next to the router vs farthest in house I was getting from 1200 to 200-300 MB’s so there is a decline with distance probably though would have been similar but til this issue never tested with this app so was only looking at the speeds that my ISP plan allows in/out house for down/uploads. And testing outside in bad spot of front yard I am getting 10 or under mbs so its very weak now. Wondering if the aluminum siding on my house is causing issues with the sensitivity of my antenna on my Xs to my Wifi based on some discussions I had with someone about being able to bounce the Wifi outside if I put a foil covered board behind behind my airport? I may be all wet with this idea but that discussion with guy got me thinking about the one issue I have.

GIS_Kid wrote:

This strengthens my assertion that iOS 12 has nothing to do with the issue... it's hardware.

Yes I agree. For me issue is minor as I mostly use Xs inside house and my Wifi is good there as you can see. But I had to test the iPad outside when Neurobit found iPad and Xs were same on iOS12. I suspect the tests were inside without the issues I am thinking have to do with the new antennas on the Xs series and my house specifically and others probably have issues in different areas of their homes that are doing same thing as my outside wall/siding seems to be causing. My understanding is the new 4by antennas (for cell and Wifi) probably are sensitive to issues like I have outside and others have various homes with walls and such that have things blocking the Wifi like I find outside but I am only guessing. Hopefully software update will help the Wifi (and other antennas) work with these variables in peoples homes and work.

My wife and I upgraded from iPhone 6s. We now have an XS and an XS Max, and we both have the same problems. At home we can use WIFI calling much like the previous phones. But connections get flaky more quickly, now. The LTE signal is catastrophic. We get 1 or 2 bars (better connection), but no internet capability. So is it over-stating the # of bars on our phones again?

It does remind me a lot of the iPhone 4 problems I had sitting in this exact same spot, having LTE troubles. And it reminds me of the over-stated # of bars problem.

These are expensive phones. Is someone's PCB layer out of spec in manufacturing?

Maybe it's a software problem, choosing the wrong bands because a subroutine sets the 2.4GHz strength value in the 5GHz strength value spot, then picks the wrong one. It could be a lot of things. Apple, please get on this quickly.

Aungen wrote:

My fix was this: Turn LTE off. And now I can use 4G successfully. That's a terrible fix, but it's working for me right now.

Turning LTE off is an option provided by your carrier.

AT&T, for one, does not provide that ability any longer.

William Kucharski wrote:

My 10.5" iPad Pro has identically slow Wi-Fi speeds to my XS Max, and neither are showing obvious drops in cell or Wi-Fi signal strength as compared to the X I owned before.

Same for me William. And we have an X an XS Max and two 2017 iPads in our home.

What I can tell you all is that its for sure NOT a hardware problem because I had apple run diagnostics so its clearly a software problem. I had 2 suggestions, 1 is to reinstall the phone's software, which is done by pressing the up and down volume button with the power button being held until the iTunes logo shows where you restore and update, the second is to wait until the next software update comes (12.1 or something) where esim is available with a few bug fixes which should/could fix the reception problems.

Also the problem is that the phone is downgrading from 5 to 2GHZ which is not hardware but a bug which is fixable by software bug fixes. Hardware problems are a lot more severe than reception bugs l like the iPhone 8 logic board defect.

Software will vary (possibly in the form of register settings that affect RF performance in the chip and front-end), but the level of variance shows that whatever default set of values used in the software are insufficient to account for the variance in the hardware.

As a user, all you can do is purchase, test, and return phones until you find one that has good enough baseline performance. No matter what they tune in the form of a software fix, if the hardware isn't optimal, you will still observe a gap in performance after installing whatever iOS 12 version that has a "fix"

Best to use that 14 day return window to your advantage to start off on the best performing hardware. For $1500, i'm not willing to wait around and hope for a fix.

Actually, that's not my problem at all... my phone is always on the 5 ghz band... it doesn't drop to the 2 ghz band. It's the signal strength and speeds that vary wildly between my two Iphone Xs Max phones... they're both on iOS 12. All my other devices, as I said, are on iOS 12 with no issue.

I have google WiFi router. My new iPhone XS Max always connects to the 2.4 GHz channel. It doesn't connect to the 5 GHz channel.The internet speed via WiFi is much slower on the iPhone XS Max.

I hope Apple can fix this frustrating issue with an iOS update.