Painfully slow WiFi on new iPhone 5

I'm thinking it must be a bad wifi antenna. My 4s also on ios6, destroys my 5 in wifi range, speed and reliability. Has to be something wrong with the 5.

I get the idea to get a stronger router, but my 4s gets amazing signal and speed anywhere I go in or around my house. It's absolutely flawless performance. The 5, horrible. I doubt ditching my linksys dual band N router will change anything.

I too have super slow throughput on wi-fi. On my MacBook I get 24+ Mbps down, 16+ up. On my i5 I struggle to get 3Mbps down, but see 11-12 up.

I'm running WEP security and have reset both the modem/router unit and hard reset my iPhone too, but no joy. I don't really wanna make the trek to replace my phone but if that's what it takes...

fridayxiii said:

I too have super slow throughput on wi-fi. On my MacBook I get 24+ Mbps down, 16+ up. On my i5 I struggle to get 3Mbps down, but see 11-12 up.

I'm running WEP security and have reset both the modem/router unit and hard reset my iPhone too, but no joy. I don't really wanna make the trek to replace my phone but if that's what it takes...

Click to expand...

I hear you. I thought I had a good phone. Good screen, all the buttons were firm and precise, little to no scuffing, guess I got ahead of myself.

I could see exchanging it and getting a phone with the same issue, but with an additional issue for good measure.

Megalobyte said:

I hear you. I thought I had a good phone. Good screen, all the buttons were firm and precise, little to no scuffing, guess I got ahead of myself.

I could see exchanging it and getting a phone with the same issue, but with an additional issue for good measure.

Click to expand...

I'm in the exact same boat: no marring of the finish, all buttons are tight, no blurs or smudges in the display, I thought I had the perfect i5 dammit!

As good as LTE is I can't accept having defective wi-fi performance. On the phone now with the Apple Store in Tampa hoping to hear that they have replacement stock. : fingers crossed :

Save yourself the troubleshooting and get a replacement at the apple store. It is a hardware issue. I can confirm. My new phone is not experiencing this issue.

Went to the apple store and I got the wifi to work but now that I'm home and I restarted my router and it still doesn't work!!! Grrr. Please help!

Is it iOS6?

My 4S has had a lot of issues connecting to networks, as well. I have to manually select which WiFi network I want to use in the settings. It no longer auto-connects. I have tried forgetting and re-learning networks, turning WiFi off and on, etc.

When I connect using my Apple Extreme router it is very fast. When I visit my brother and connect to his dual band linksys router The speed is very slow using both bands.

I have terrible wifi. Its to the point where I cant even connect in my own house. On my 4s I still have a perfect signal everywhere.

The good thing is that I am pretty sure I know what the problem is...my case. Usually im fluctuating between 2 and 3 bars. When I remove my case I always have full bars. I have no cellular signal problems, only wifi.

Here's the case I have. Anyone else have it and have any problems?

https://www.incipio.com/cases/iphone-cases/iphone-5-cases/iphone-5-dualpro-shine-hard-shell-case-with-silicone-core.html

So sloooooow

I noticed this yesterday. I have 100 Mbps download, so I usually get between 80 and 90 Mbps according to speedtest.net and others.

My iPhone 5 only gets 40-45 Mbps, which is still great, but I will run speedtests back and forth between my computer and my phone... each time the iPhone 5 is about half what my computer shows. I have gotten 54 Mbps down on LTE though...

Interesting. Not having this problem. Consistently getting 29+ Mbps down.

wepiii's tip>> I have fixed the issue on our phones by going into Settings/Wifi/Blue arrow next to your Wifi name/ and typing test into Client ID and then renewing lease.

Before wepiii's tip:

Network: WPA security to Time Warner cable with an ATT Microcell. I'm paying for 10Mbps download, 1Mbps upload speeds.

iPhones: one 4, one 5, both on iOS 6. Beside iPhone hardware, everything else is equal.


Speedtest Ping, Download, Upload
iPhone 4: 275ms, 10.15Mbps, 0.74Mbps
iPhone 5: 420ms, 5.13Mbps, 0.80Mbps

After applying wepiii's tip to iPHone 5:

iPhone 5: 25ms, 5.33Mbps, 0.72Mbps
re-ran test

wepiii's tip helped my Ping speeds a lot but not download.

Summary: My iPhone 5 WPA-connected download speed is half that of my iPhone 4.
Also:
Summary: My iPhone 5 WPA-connected download speed is half that of my iPad 2.

Everything is on iOS 6.

Ant2369 said:

I was having the same issues. After all my research I kept seeing people posting that iPhone 5 has an issue with WPA2. I went into my time capsule (3rd gen) and disabled security then made it a hidden network. Manually joined and my issue was instantly fixed. I'm now getting just under 16Mbps (15.94) on a 18Mbps package. Prior with WPA2 enabled I was getting 1.5M or under and Pings in the 400-600s

Click to expand...

This means it is not a hardware issue, right?

Sorry, not happening on this iPhone 5.

It made the front page here at MacRumors....

https://www.macrumors.com/2012/09/23/reports-of-slow-and-inconsistent-wi-fi-connections-on-iphone-5/

Dave

My ping is 34ms, Download is 22.60 MBps but Upload is 1.06mnbps.

Upload seems slow :/

That case has a metallic look to it. It is quite possible a metallic paint could block a wifi signal.

Cscottrun said:

I have terrible wifi. Its to the point where I cant even connect in my own house. On my 4s I still have a perfect signal everywhere.

The good thing is that I am pretty sure I know what the problem is...my case. Usually im fluctuating between 2 and 3 bars. When I remove my case I always have full bars. I have no cellular signal problems, only wifi.

Here's the case I have. Anyone else have it and have any problems?

https://www.incipio.com/cases/iphon...shine-hard-shell-case-with-silicone-core.html

Click to expand...

Another anecdote in support of a problem with WPA2...

With WPA2 on my Airport Extreme, Im getting about 15mbps from my 50mb connection. With security off, I get 45mbps.

Interestingly, the same goes for my ipad 3.

Both devices running ios6.

Doesn't seem like a hardware issue to me.

Switching from WPA2 to WEP may help some, but it didn't help me. Been there, tried that. I also took my phone to two free wi-fi hotspots, used three different networks, and had the same throughput I did at home: crappy.

Looking forward to swapping out for a new i5 tomorrow. I still love the phone & have unlimited data on AT&T but want fully functional wi-fi for the times I'm not on LTE or exceed 5GB & get throttled.

Best o' luck to all!

I have an iPad 3 and when I upgraded to iOS 6 I noticed that it would connect to my time capsule but then disconnect when I did anything that required Internet. I have wpa2 set up on my time capsule. It was bad the first two days but seems to have calmed down since Wednesday. I'll bet it's 95% iOS 6 and 5% hardware.

mcdj said:

Another anecdote in support of a problem with WPA2...

With WPA2 on my Airport Extreme, Im getting about 15mbps from my 50mb connection. With security off, I get 45mbps.

Interestingly, the same goes for my ipad 3.

Boh devices running ios6.

Doesn't seem like a hardware issue to me.

Click to expand...

I agree my iPad 3 wouldn't hold a connection for about 2 days after the iOS 6 launch (I got it when it was released Wednesday). After I read that you saw speed decreases I decided to check my iPad. I have a 19Mb/s home connection. I got speedtest.net's app (9.7MB) and it took almost a minute to download with a near 3MB/s connection. So I ran speed test on my MacBook and my iPad (normally they would match for speed on iOS 5) and found my iPad came in at ~50% slower then my my MacBook.

here are my findings, since getting the iPhone5 my speeds had reduced from 15-17mbs to 2-5mbs, thinking maybe it was ios 6 i checked my wife's 4s it to was slow, keep in mind i've had no issues connecting to the internet and surfing, i re ran the test on my wife's phone and it was at 15mbs i saw her server was out of Chicago and mine aurora, so i switched my server to chicago and re ran the test i now was at 17mbs, then i switched to a comcast server (same as my internet provider) and i was at 22mbs upload and 11mbs download, conclusion: don't trust speed test.net to necessarily to have accurate readings across the board.

Just turned off WPA on my time capsule and I got 26Mb/s on my second try. 19 Mb/s seems to be the norm with WPA off and 7Mb/s with it on. Good to know that it is a software issue.... My iPad is actually getting better speeds then my MacBook.

Islink said:

here are my findings, since getting the iPhone5 my speeds had reduced from 15-17mbs to 2-5mbs, thinking maybe it was ios 6 i checked my wife's 4s it to was slow, keep in mind i've had no issues connecting to the internet and surfing, i re ran the test on my wife's phone and it was at 15mbs i saw her server was out of Chicago and mine aurora, so i switched my server to chicago and re ran the test i now was at 17mbs, then i switched to a comcast server (same as my internet provider) and i was at 22mbs upload and 11mbs download, conclusion: don't trust speed test.net to necessarily to have accurate readings across the board.

Click to expand...

If you connect to the same place on two devices and get consistent readings on a device and you know what you should be getting then speedtest.net is a good test. You didn't test the second phone on the other servers so how can you know if the 5 is getting the right speeds? You have to have the same OS version (iOS 6) and same server.

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I can download the same app twice once with and once without WPA2 if you want or I can just calculate the speed out. Photoshop touch took 5 minutes to download with WPA2 on and is about 55MB.

5(minutes)x60(seconds)=300(seconds) 55(MB)/300(seconds)=0.18(MB/s) or 1.5Mb/s

That's still below what it should have been (7Mb). MB is different from Mb. 1 Byte = 8 bits. Speed test measures in bits.

24Mb / 8 (convert to bytes) = 3MB 55MB/3MB=18 seconds

It should have taken 18 seconds based on what speed test reported when WPA2 was off.

myhaksown said:

If you connect to the same place on two devices and get consistent readings on a device and you know what you should be getting then speedtest.net is a good test. You didn't test the second phone on the other servers so how can you know if the 5 is getting the right speeds? You have to have the same OS version (iOS 6) and same server.

Click to expand...

im sorry i left that out, i did and the speeds on her phone were also 2-5mbs