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iPhone 4s slow when finding signal?

J

Jessay

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 29, 2011
97
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

My iPhone is really slow when trying to find a signal when I turn it on. It sometimes takes up to five minutes before it says no signal then all bars show up. Is this normal? I never had this problem with my iPhone 4...
 
I'm on my second iPhone 4S now. Because I thought my other one had an issue
But now I'm starting to think its this slow to aquire signal that's the issue.
I find my phone in No Service in low signal areas frequently where as I never did with the 4. So it's either 5.0 has reception issues or it's the 4S. Because I'm about to sell my 4S and go back to a 4.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4S (64GB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I notice the same thing. It takes much longer to acquire a signal than my 4 did, even when the 4 was running iOS5. Also, while it no longer loses service when I hold it with my left hand (like my 4 did in certain areas - including my house! - all the time), when it DOES lose service it takes MUCH longer to reconnect. One unfortunate side effect is that Siri is virtually worthless as I never seem to have a network connection when the phone is in my pocket and I'm using headphones (precisely the time you'd WANT to use Siri, right?) because the phone says "No Service." Fun.
 
Glad to hear I'm not the only one. And the slow to acquire signal issue may be part of it. For instance one location I know I'd low signal but notice it more as it probably was happening with my 4. But when the 4S take so long to require the signal is why I'm noticing it. I think it's due to the fact the 4S just either can't or had an issue holding lower signals. At one restaurant I frequent my 4S now stays in No Service till I leave. Nice
 
The buildings I work in daily are signal assassins, anything except for certain rooms on the top floor kill any signal to my phone. Though when I head outside or move to a different building my phone does not take nearly as long to regain service like you described. That would actually piss me off now that you mention it...
 
I've been having the exact same issue. I live in a basement apartment/suite, and I originally thought it was a cellular signal dead zone because the majority of the time I have "No Service" or barely one bar on Edge network (super frustrating). But then my wife got a new cheapo $60 LG flip phone and she gets nearly full bars anywhere in our apartment!! Now I KNOW it has something to do with the 4S.

Just this morning I had No Service when I left the house. I was driving for 5 minutes where I know there is service, yet my 4S still said "no service." I had to switch my phone into airplane mode then back to normal just so my phone would acquire a normal signal. Super annoying and frustrating. Not sure if it's a hardware issue or if it'll be fixed in the next iOS update... Here's hoping.
 
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I've also noticed this when I leave the elevator of my apartment. It takes a couple minutes to get a signal. Never happened with my iPhone 4 but not sure if it did when I had iOS 5 on my iPhone 4. And like Bklass said, I usually turn airplane mode on then off to get it to search for a signal and that works but it's just really annoying having to do that. This is happening on my current 4S and the first 4S I had but replaced
 
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