iPhone XS slow LTE and wifi

Hi all, I’m finding my new XS is super slow. I’m getting a consistent 1.3MBit download over LTE no matter where I am, and roughly half of the maximum wifi speed. I have tested this holding my old iPhone X in one hand and the iPhone XS in the other and see over 50MBit LTE and twice the wifi speeds.


I have reset network settings and seen no difference. For all the talk about faster networking I am seeing exactly the opposite.

Posted on Sep 24, 2018 9:04 AM

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36 replies

Sep 24, 2018 10:29 AM in response to BonaHoTep1

I am having this same problem. iPhone Xs Max on AT&T in NYC.


After getting my phone on launch day, I have cripplingly slow LTE speeds regardless of my location. Averaging ~1-3mbs as measure via Ookla Speedtest. In many instances my phone does not connect to LTE but goes down to 4G connection. Wifi speeds are terrible as well where I average ~10mbs at home vs my typical ~100mbs on my previous iPhone 7+ and other devices.


I am seeing people post similar issues. I have tried a network reset and have seen no improvements. I am also running the latest AT&T carrier v33.2.

Nov 29, 2018 9:47 AM in response to BonaHoTep1

Not sure if this issue is limited to the new iPhones. I have an iPhone SE (iOS 12.1) with slow LTE speeds. WIFI speeds seem to be fine. If I reboot my phone I can get approximately 40 Mbps download (LTE) for about 5 minutes. After the 5 minute window my speed drops to approximately 1 Mbps (LTE) in the exact same location. This scenario plays out every time I reboot my phone. I've had my SE for a while and this issue has been going on for approximately a month. I have attached a screenshot of speed test for reference.User uploaded file

Oct 3, 2018 5:18 PM in response to BonaHoTep1

So I see this is just not me noticing the really slow speeds and poor LTE strength. I've had my XS for almost a week now and have had two reboots. The LTE speeds are hit and miss even though I have all bars. Now what really gripes me is that when I really need the speed, I'm stuck with a 3G signal but my neighbor on a Hauweii has full LTE. I'm on Telus up here in Canada. I was originally thinking it was my SIM but I'm thinking this a software glitch. My iPhone 5S with the same SIM "appears" to load sites faster

Oct 4, 2018 4:37 PM in response to BonaHoTep1

Xs on Sprint- I am an over the road truck driver and can verify that the really bad LTE problem is nationwide. I’ve been from Virginia to Florida to Alabama to Louisiana to Atlanta and Houston Texas. It’s bad all over the country. Big city or rural doesn’t matter. Also Siri is totally useless because I have no connection anywhere. And none of this has to do with me holding the iPhone since it is on the top of my dash in holder! P.S WiFi in company parking lot would not stay connected last night either! HORRIBLENESS!!!!

Oct 5, 2018 4:07 PM in response to BonaHoTep1

I have the same issues in San Francisco on iPhone XS. I've chatted with AT&T and Apple Tech Support with no assistance other than trying to install a logger on my phone for diagnostics...but with this many people having the same issue it seems like they could be more upfront about what's going on and whether a software fix or a hardware fix is the answer. Please Help!

Oct 5, 2018 11:34 PM in response to BonaHoTep1

Having exactly the same issue with my iPhone XS and my wife’s XS in Japan!

Tried everything but nothing helped.

Seems it’s not (at least yet) a major issue in Japan because we couldn’t find any comments or news in Japanese about this problem except that it happens in US and Apple has started investigating this.

Really hope it’ll be fixed. It’s unacceptable speed.

Is here anybody who has got a replacement and everything works fine since??

Oct 6, 2018 11:45 AM in response to QSad

iPhone XS att US. Have tried with 2 and both were really slow on LTE/Wifi. Ended up returning them, which is a shame because the phone is beautiful. I do have a friend who got one this week and he seems happy with it, although he might not care much about the speeds. I might just wait a couple months to get another one, but did return it to not be stacked with a 2g phone.

Oct 27, 2018 8:44 PM in response to BonaHoTep1

Just got an XS today. Everything seemed fine until I did a speed test on Verizon LTE. VERY SLOW download speeds compared to my 7.


A side by side comparison using the SpeedTest app to the same server from the exact same location:


iPhone XS download: 3 Mbps upload: 5 Mbps

iPhone 7 download: 17 Mbps upload: 3 Mbps


So the XS is slightly better on uploads but horrible on download speeds. The ping times were about the same. Neither test had any packet loss. The XS had 3 times the jitter. I did a network reset and got the same results.


I had decided to spend the extra bucks on the XS because of the promised faster LTE speeds vs the XR.


BTW the WiFi speeds seem just as fast as the 7: 179 Mbps.


I will be returning it tomorrow. I don't understand how the XS reviewers are getting high speeds unless some units are defective.

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iPhone XS slow LTE and wifi

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