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Painfully slow WiFi on new iPhone 5

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bryan85

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 18, 2010
243
3
I just got done setting up my iPhone 5(as new, not restore). I was trying to download my music from iTunes when it seemed to be taking forever. I cancelled the downloads and then kept testing the WiFi in various other ways. Just loading the app store, my iPhone 4 will load anything faster than my iPhone 5 right now. I've rebooted the router and tried multiple devices and have narrowed the problem down to the WiFi in the iPhone 5. I've also tried using different bands, 2.4 and 5 both produce the same outcome. I launched speedtest.net app about 2 minutes ago and hit begin test. Its still "finding the closest server". I have also tried the reset network settings. Still the same issue. Any suggestions? I would really suck if my new iPhone was already broken... :(

Update:

For those that don't want to read the entire thread. After quite a bit of playing with the phone/WiFi, I found that WPA2 was causing packet loss of over 80%! I activated the guest network on my Time Capsule and left it unsecured. I had no issues with WiFi on the unsecured network.

I then went to the Apple store and had the phone exchanged for another new one. I restored the phone on my unsecured guest network and then placed it on the WPA2 secured network. After more testing, I am able to confirm that the replacement has solved my issue. I now have no packet loss running on a WPA2 network.
 
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Mjlivesimmortal

macrumors newbie
Sep 21, 2012
3
0
I have the same problem. Sometimes, for certain applications it's fine. Safari is temperamental. Sometimes it'll be lightning fast, other times it's ridiculously slow. But it's apps like Mail, eBay and definitely the App Store that are just beyond belief really. It's weird to have to go to 3G for faster internet =/ Yay for iPhones, never good at doing what they're supposed to... I'll be visiting an Apple Store tomorrow...
 
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txflyfish

macrumors member
Sep 16, 2012
93
0
my wifi has been stable and very very fast. I'm at a coffee shop now and hasn't dropped yet
 
N

Nino313

macrumors regular
May 7, 2010
108
29
Detroit
Same issues here.wifi shows connectd with full bars but its hit or miss when using apps. Hoping it a bug that can be fixed quick
 
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Mjlivesimmortal

macrumors newbie
Sep 21, 2012
3
0
For me, I don't find it to be an ios6 issue. It's an iPhone 5 issue. My iPhone 4S is absolutely fine with wifi and I updated that to iOS6. My flatmate's iPad, running iOS6 is fine and so is his iPhone 5 coincidentally. It seems it's affecting certain ones perhaps?
 
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bryan85

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 18, 2010
243
3
I'm setting up my wife's iPhone 5 right now, and it doesn't appear to be having any issues. I've tried everything I can think of on my iPhone. I am doing a restore right now. We will see if that helps any.
 
killerrobot

killerrobot

macrumors 68020
Jun 7, 2007
2,239
3
127.0.0.1
bryan85 said:
Thanks for the link! 19 pages... anyone have the readers digest version?
Click to expand...

I think a lot of the problems stemmed from firmware issues with the router being used. Downgrading the modem/router firmware helped out many.

Others reinstalled iOS 6 as a clean install, wiping out all previous networks settings and creating a new password not used before. Or they forget their network settings on the phone, reset everything then manually re-entered all passwords.

Others say Apple already fixed it. :p

Maybe someone else has got some other ideas that work as well.
 
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bryan85

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 18, 2010
243
3
Restoring the phone didn't work. Now I can't even get past the screen to setup the phone with my apple ID. My wife's iPhone 5 is completely fine and it's on the same WiFi network...
 
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bryan85

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 18, 2010
243
3
I take that back, my wife's iPhone 5 seems to be doing the same thing. The connection is intermittent even though the WiFi signal is perfectly fine. None of my other devices are affected. I changed my DNS on the router just to verify that wasn't the issue. Please, does anyone have any suggestions?
 
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bryan85

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 18, 2010
243
3
Thinking outside the box here. Apple was having issues with WiFi because they validated the SSID against some database that went down. So I renamed my guest network the most generic name I could think of: "Guest", and removed WPA2. My phone restored in less than a minute and now both phones are humming along downloading the rest of their content.

So whether this is an issue with Apple's master list that went down the other day, or an issue with WPA2. Either way, I can't believe that I am the only person out there having this issue. Anyone?
 
D

dbslayer

macrumors newbie
Sep 21, 2012
5
0
Me too

iPhone 5 and wifi issues when using WPA2 (connects but is slow like .5Mbit down on a 100Mbit home network). Changed it to WEP and is much better (12Mbit down). Interestingly the upload is fine on WPA2 and WEP - getting 5Mbit up.

But wifi is a LOT slower than LTE (yah lucky me - getting 42-50Mbit down).

Sure hope Apple can fix this with software update! Thankfully I still have the unlimited so looks like LTE at home from now on :)

----------

My speed tests are using iPhone app from speedtest.net. Now getting 35Mbit down sometime but also getting up to 24Mbit UP ! This can't be right .. can it?

----------

Another thread with same issue: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1449875/
 
nfl46

nfl46

macrumors G3
Oct 5, 2008
8,349
8,704
Changed router to WEP. Most probably don't want to do that, but it worked for me. Been working fast the last hour since I've done so.
 
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leenak

macrumors 68020
Mar 10, 2011
2,416
52
I'm not having issues. My wireless router is fairly new and is up to date and all that.
 
K

KenAFSPC

macrumors 6502a
Sep 12, 2012
626
26
I am seeing the same issue on my wifi network, but I did not see the same issue on a friend's wifi network this afternoon (where the iPhone 5 was faster than the 4s). It could be a router-specific or router settings issue. I intend to perform more testing tomorrow.
 
S

supervelous

macrumors 6502
May 28, 2010
323
39
I was worried, ran a speed test just now on wifi got 56.08 Mbps down, 12.42 Mbps up. Haven't noticed any issues, maybe a defective unit?

I restored from my last iphone 4 backup, didn't setup as new.
 
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bnccri

macrumors newbie
Sep 21, 2012
3
0
VERY slow Wifi connection with Iphone 5

My Iphone is really slow when connected to Wifi. It used to work very fine with Iphone 4. It used to take about 30 sec to load a 20mb file with Iphone 4, now it took me around 5 minutes to download 20mb with Iphone 5. WTF!??! I really hope that is a only a software problem and not a hardware.
I don't really care for the new Maps also, so I've installed Google Earth and YouTube because it doesn't come with it now.
Other than that I love the speed of LTE and the processing power of the Iphone 5.
I'm curious to see how the battery last, so far so good.

Is anyone having problems with slow Wifi or it is something wrong with my phone.
Please share.

Thanks!
 
Hammie

Hammie

macrumors 68000
Mar 17, 2009
1,549
72
Wash, DC Metro
No problems connecting through a new Apple AirPort Extreme with current software loaded...

I have seen all the issues, though.

If it makes you feel better, I cannot get my kids PSPs to connect to the Internet through my wifi network... I even turned up a seperate SSID on a different subnet and it still would not connect to my AP (actually, I tried four differnent ones - a netgear, d-link, Cisco/Linksys, and apple).
 
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Turbodc4

macrumors newbie
Sep 21, 2012
2
0
I fixed this issue by holding power and home buttons until the phone restarted ...my wifi is excellent
 
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bryan85

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 18, 2010
243
3
So I thought my WiFi was fine, but now it's slow again. At this point LTE is faster than my 50Mb cable line. Somethings gotta give, this is BS! :mad:
 
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mleary

macrumors regular
Sep 13, 2006
145
0
Same issue... Very, very slow and frequent drops, almost unusable. Had no issues with the iPhone 4. I am using wpa2 and have no interest in switching to wep. Did apple even test this thing?
 
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