iPhone Xs Max poor cell phone reception fix?

I am a new iPhone user. I have been an android user and before that a blackberry user. This is my first go round with apple and I am really disappointed. I drop calls on my new iPhone 10s Max at least twice a day. These drops are in places that I’ve never dropped a cal before. Also, I have two bars less signal at my cottage then I had on my One Plus 6. I am ****** considering I spent $1200 for my phone. I hope the apple team can fix this mess

franknccc wrote:

I’ve had a iPhone 6 Plus for 4 years and never had so many failed calls in that time as in the 10 days I’ve had my iPhone Xs Max. Is this model a lemon?

No. My iPhone Xs Max keeps calls in several locations that always dropped them before, including on the X I had just before upgrading.

For me, at least, the reception of the Xs Max is better, at least when it comes to placing and/or not dropping voice calls.

I was so excited by my upgrade from a 6s to an xs. In most ways it’s amazing!! However, the LTE reception is absurd. Standing outside in Downtown Brooklyn I get one bar. I almost never have more than 2 bars anywhere in the city. My friend with an 8 on the same network has 4 bars in the same places.

It seems to me that the phone is failing to connect to the strongest band available. It seems to take whatever it finds first and stick with it.

Sometimes going in and out of airplane mode and forcing a reconnect to the cellular network will improve my reception.

I’m dropping calls left and right.

This has to be addressed!

Received 2 Xs on launch day from Verizon. Have had nothing but LTE issues from day 1. Troubleshooting with Verizon and Apple. No resolution as of yet. I hit my 14 day grace period with Verizon last Friday and thankfully they are letting me go one more week of testing but at this point I may have to with go back to old devices or jump ship to Android. I really don’t want to since I am so engrained in the eco system with AW, ATV, IPad Pro, Pencil yada yada yada

So far i have sent in a diagnostic to apple, restored my xs max, reset all network setting, and got a new sim card from At&t still have horrible LTE service. Lets not talk about 4g network because i can only make calls and text (the green text!). My calls still drop 55% of the time on LTE and 4g. I'm at the point to give back my phone and go Samsung. So much for my new watch! Apple isn't acknowledging that this is an issue. When i call its like a surprise to the tech. I escalate and get told well we may have to send you a box so you can send us the phone. What the happy f*ck am i suppose to do with out a phone? Ridiculous. 😕😠

I am having the same problem. I used to use an iPhone X at work and used to get about 2-3 bars of cellular reception. Since using the iPhone Xs, I get 0 bars and am unable to receive or send SMS texts or phone calls in the same location. Wifi works fine. I was hoping the iOS 12.0.1 update would fix the problem, but it didn't. Luckily, most of my messages come on iMessage but I have missed some important SMS text messages while at work. I do notice poor reception in other areas as well.

Has Apple or any carriers officially confirmed there is an issue? I havent seen anything.

I switched over to Verizon, and had LTE on a cheap prepaid Android while I waited for the Xs to come out. Now with the Xs I get 2 bars LTE and random speedtests ranging from 3gb down to .10gb down. Verizons answer was to use Wifi calling in the house, however my wife was using wifi calling last night and it disconnected 3 times. I know my wifi is good to go.

Having the same issue with Verizon, spotty in areas. I even got a new XS to try to resolve. It's 100% the phone antennas and it should be addressed in an update, I'm assuming. Had great service with my 7plis. Almost wish I didn't switch, don't want to rely on WiFi. Apple told me to get a new SIM card ....

The only thing that has been reported is that Apple is investigating the issue and has collected some log files from those affected. It is very important for anyone with the problem to contact Apple support. Posting here doesn’t inform Apple but calling and opening a case with them does. The more information they have, the sooner they can get a resolution in place.

I just got off the phone with apple and AT&T again. I’m going this weekend to the apple store to exchange my xs max for a different one. I was told it hardware not software. The apple rep then said if the second iPhone does the same thing to call back with my case number and they will open a case with the engineers as a hardware failure. I will update soon.

At this point, no one outside of Apple really knows if this is a hardware problem with the phone's design (e.g., the antenna) or software (e.g., baseband chip firmware) or a combination of both. The WiWavelength blog's analysis of the FCC filing by Apple notes that the antenna used in the XS phones has lower gain than other iPhones. Antenna gain affects both the transmitted signal and the received signal. If antenna gain is low, you can increase power to overcome it but this probably won't be acceptable in a cell phone since the FCC places limits on power output. It would also destroy battery life. I haven't seen any analysis of the FCC data other than the one by WiWavelength and I don't know how much weight to give that person's opinion. Poor antenna design probably can't be overcome with software tweaking. But it's hard to imagine that Apple's engineers designed a poorly performing antenna unless they had to compromise to meet some industrial design limitations imposed by Apple's industrial design department.

Regarding software, some have suggested that the XS phones are prioritizing bands that in theory should afford faster LTE data transmission, but those bands can have more limited range. A comparison would be like 5 GHz WiFi offering faster data throughput, but more limited range than 2.4 GHz WiFi. The phone should automatically switch to a stronger, slower band signal when the faster band is weaker, but that might not be happening. This may be why temporarily putting the phone in airplane mode can make the phone grab the stronger, slower signal for a short time before switching over to the weaker band. If this is the problem, it should be fixable in a software update.

I have an XS Max that has very poor LTE data speeds on the Verizon network when I'm in areas showing one or two bars on the phone. Verizon gave me a new SIM card and I reset the network settings to see if it would solve the problem, but that hasn't made a difference. My return window is up in one week, and I need to decide whether to gamble that Apple can address this in software. I like everything else about the phone, but it needs to be a phone first.

Does anyone know if the ATT and Verizon phones are the same? I switched to Verizon and am 99% sure it’s a phone issue but if it ends up being Verizon at my home how would the Verizon device work on ATT?

Great news. I returned my phone to Apple prior to 14 days and they replaced it with new one out of box, logs stated I had more than normal call dropouts. New phone is fine, previous handset must have had a hardware fault. Now that’s what I call premium support. 👍

Are you still having the same issue because i am having the same issue on my iphone xs max after upgrading to 12.0.1 celluar reception is very weak 4g is very slow where on my old iphone x it was fantastic

I contacted apple support here in united arab emirates and they are making stupid excuses like sir your carrier provider has a tower issue may be and i was like ok then how i am getting full signal bars on my other phone and he didnt had any answers to that i think its seriously a hardware issue thats why apple hasnt commented on this yet but i still hope so thats not a hardware issue just a software issue so many people are having the same stupid issue