Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Kohkane

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 10, 2008
577
14
I just noticed that whenever my iPhone 5 switches from LTE to 3G, I seem to completely lose data connection. Only turning on Airplane mode, and then turning it off seems to fix the issue, temporarily. So if my phone switches from LTE to 3G again, I have to repeat it. Also if I go into Safari I get a popup saying "Could not activate cellular data network" I'm just wondering if anyone else is having this issue? (I'm on Sprint btw) or if this is a network issue? I've reset network settings, and that didn't do anything. I'm about to do a clean install of beta 3, but I just want to make sure that its not a bug, or a network issue before I do that. I also never had this issue with beta 1/2.
 
I think I have seen at least one other person have this trouble. I don't remember the thread, though.

I am on Sprint as well. I haven't had this particular problem.

From all the old threads I'm finding, they all don't seem to have a fix. So I'm going to restore and see if that helps at all.
 
Restoring did not work, and it seems like Sprint has no idea why this is happening. Google brings up tons of others with the same issue, but no solution.


Edit: Found a thread about the iPad and decided to give it a whirl and it worked!

Here it is if anyone runs into this issue, its not a beta problem. I'm assuming it's just a network issue?
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4119639?start=0&tstart=0


Edit 2: That was short lived, issue came back up.

Edit 3: After calling Sprint and Apple and them not having a single clue why this is happening. (I even had them reactivate my phone, and the issue went away and then came back again) I went into general, and erased all content, then set my phone up as new, let it activate of the network and ran the ##update# over wifi. After an hour of making my signal jump back and forth and going off and on with wifi, the issue has gone away. Usually after 10 minutes of doing that the issue would come back, but it seems to be gone for good.
 
Last edited:
I just noticed that whenever my iPhone 5 switches from LTE to 3G, I seem to completely lose data connection. Only turning on Airplane mode, and then turning it off seems to fix the issue, temporarily. So if my phone switches from LTE to 3G again, I have to repeat it. Also if I go into Safari I get a popup saying "Could not activate cellular data network" I'm just wondering if anyone else is having this issue? (I'm on Sprint btw) or if this is a network issue? I've reset network settings, and that didn't do anything. I'm about to do a clean install of beta 3, but I just want to make sure that its not a bug, or a network issue before I do that. I also never had this issue with beta 1/2.

I had this problem when I first got my 5. It turned out to be the app Onavo. If you're using it delete it and remove the profile and it could help.
 
Do you have the same issue on iOS 6? I had the same issue when I first got my iPhone 5 release day, though it wasn't an intermittent problem, it just kept giving me the error and I didn't have a data connection. Turned out it was the SIM card that was the issue. AT&T sent me a new SIM card and the issue was resolved.
 
What ended up working for me was mention in my edit 3. What I've noticed is, it isn't a hardware problem, but something goes wrong when activating, and it only half activates? :confused: meaning LTE will work, but 3G won't or vice versa. completely restoring, letting the phone activate over cellular, then doing ##update# over wifi worked for me. THEN I restored my backup. When I tested it last night repeatedly, it seemed to work, I'm under the assumption that it's still working right now, but we'll see.
 
I just noticed that whenever my iPhone 5 switches from LTE to 3G, I seem to completely lose data connection. Only turning on Airplane mode, and then turning it off seems to fix the issue, temporarily. So if my phone switches from LTE to 3G again, I have to repeat it. Also if I go into Safari I get a popup saying "Could not activate cellular data network" I'm just wondering if anyone else is having this issue? (I'm on Sprint btw) or if this is a network issue? I've reset network settings, and that didn't do anything. I'm about to do a clean install of beta 3, but I just want to make sure that its not a bug, or a network issue before I do that. I also never had this issue with beta 1/2.

I have had this problem since iOS 6.0 on my iPhone 5. Sprint's network is just crap, that's all.
 
Just an update, I've been out and about today with my phone switching from LTE and 3G and the problem hasn't appeared again. So I'm going to hope it stays this way. :D
 
Had this issue when I replaced my Sprint iPhone 5 with a replacement phone.

If my theory is correct, this has to do with the way sprint provisions the iPhone. When you get a replacement, sprint (or their customer service who reads from a script rather) is too stupid to realize that the phone imei, etc. has changed. One solution was to remove the iPhone on the sprint site, activate an old sprint phone, then attempt to activate the iPhone again. This issue doesn't seem to occur anymore with replacement phones (since apple and sprint finally worked together to solve the problem).

I would caution against calling sprint since they really don't know anything. They always blame the issue on "upgrading towers" and will make you do the ##update over and over. When they can't solve it, they will tell you there is a network outage that will be solved by an arbitrary "Friday".

Perhaps the beta 3 changes something in the iPhone somehow? The best thing might be to stay off ios 7 beta until sprint figures out what they're doing. I know I didn't help specifically, but I hope the knowledge is useful.
 
Had this issue when I replaced my Sprint iPhone 5 with a replacement phone.

If my theory is correct, this has to do with the way sprint provisions the iPhone. When you get a replacement, sprint (or their customer service who reads from a script rather) is too stupid to realize that the phone imei, etc. has changed. One solution was to remove the iPhone on the sprint site, activate an old sprint phone, then attempt to activate the iPhone again. This issue doesn't seem to occur anymore with replacement phones (since apple and sprint finally worked together to solve the problem).

I would caution against calling sprint since they really don't know anything. They always blame the issue on "upgrading towers" and will make you do the ##update over and over. When they can't solve it, they will tell you there is a network outage that will be solved by an arbitrary "Friday".

Perhaps the beta 3 changes something in the iPhone somehow? The best thing might be to stay off ios 7 beta until sprint figures out what they're doing. I know I didn't help specifically, but I hope the knowledge is useful.

You see that's what I thought too, and I had a service rep double check my imei and everything to see if they matched up, (which they did) and since I don't have a replacement Sprint phone laying around with me, I had the rep remove my phone and then reactive it, which fixed the issue temporarily, but it ended up doing the same thing after a few minutes. At first I thought this was a beta issue, but it seems to be an issue with iOS6 and iOS5 also, with all carriers, and no one seems to know if its a problem with Apple or the carriers.

I do know a tower was upgraded near my home (mainly because I have full bars of LTE now, vs the one-two bars I used to have) (Also a rep informed me of that, but I decided to double check just to make sure she wasn't trying to get me off the phone) and i'm just going to assume during that upgrade something threw my phone out of whack. That's the best explanation I can come up with. :/
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.