My iPhone 4 signal issues are gone...

[rotobadger]

Just to confirm with people who are having success...

Start: holding phone and covering bottom left corner drops from 5 bars to 2 or less (or something like that)

End: Did SIM "fix" and are now, in the exact same location, able to maintain 5 bars with same hand position?

 

[ryannazaretian]

You were never supposed to trim the whole thing. Neither did I scotch tape it.

My SIM was tight in the frame. I had to pop it out. I only trimmed the side with the slanted notch and also fixed the notch so it fit correctly again.

But anyway... I'm still hoping. It's terribly annoying to not be able to send a text message while holding the phone normally.

 

[Fuchal]

I give up - I was unable to make this work. I think I tried for an hour

Why didn't they just make a plastic sim tray?

 

[Sinfire]

Could it be a problem with the sims ? Ideally, shouldn't the contacts be in the middle of the sim tray instead of off to the side ?

Someone should go to AT&T and see if they can swap sims and verify if the AT&T ones are still touching. ( I won't be able to go to AT&T until Friday )

 

[Sustainability]

Could it be a problem with the sims ? Ideally, shouldn't the contacts be in the middle of the sim tray instead of off to the side ?

Someone should go to AT&T and see if they can swap sims and verify if the AT&T ones are still touching. ( I won't be able to go to AT&T until Friday )

Looking at the simcard in my iphone 3G - the sim card is squarely in the middle.

 

[ziggie216]

Because their sim is cut either correctly or just enough to not touch the tray to gold.

or

They have a very strong signal that is compensating for this flaw in some way. I have been able to confirm that location effects this problem.

Also

What if when people "death grip" their phone, they are actually squeezing the internal frame enough to make contact with the sim tray.

All i know is that the sim card is suppose to be cut with equal plastic to suspend it in a certain position. Our sim cards are not cut right, or the sim tray is not right.


Either way something happened with your sim card and the problem went away. The only thing that happened to your sim card is it was moved.

I dont think it's the sim but how strong is the signal around you. I think there is a cell tower close to my work so it takes awhile before I would see the first bar drop. People would usually just say that nothing is wrong with their phone after the first few seconds of not seeing anything happening. At home, I probably have weak signal. start out with 5 bars on 3G and with my thumb over the spot, it would easily drop to no bars on Edge. I'm going to borrow ATT microcell tomorrow and place it in my room and see how it goes.

 

[RobertJ007]

Has anyone tried cutting a old sim card to fit centered in tray?
I would give it a shot if I had one at home, at work we have a bunch.

 

[Hollow Man]

Could it be a problem with the sims ? Ideally, shouldn't the contacts be in the middle of the sim tray instead of off to the side ?

Someone should go to AT&T and see if they can swap sims and verify if the AT&T ones are still touching. ( I won't be able to go to AT&T until Friday )

My sim card is an AT&T one and I have the problem. For my wife's phone we had to go to the AT&T store to fix a screwup with her phone number...they swapped out the original sim card for a new one of theirs. Same problem.

-HM

 

[eoren1]

Still no luck here. Tried electric tape on the long end (where most people are finding faults) and the short end where mine seems to be cut a bit tight. I still drop bars - though slower now. I may try to hit up the local ATT store tomorrow and see about a new microsim

 

[ryannazaretian]

Wow, if that's your microSIM you've got damned good protection all around the contacts on the microSIM itself, geez. If only most of ours had that level of spacing around it...

That's because I trimmed it.

But it hasn't improved the signal problem yet. I do remain hopeful though. That's all I can do.

 

[shawntkeating]

of note, we should point out there are likely 2 issues.

1. normal hand attention when you cover the antenna, which will happen with every phone

2. signal loss completely which seems exaggerated on the iPhone 4 when the antennas are shorted.

so I think some loss can easily considered "normal".

arn

Yes.

 

[catmistake]

Sorry, got lost in the excitement and forgot what this forum was about.

Please continue!

idk, no good at this...
1) minisim contact shorting
2) something weird with the tower or frequencies or connection that needed reset
3) combination of those two
4) either or both of those two AND antenna attenuation issue
5) any combination of the above, AND/OR software frequency switching issue
6) any combination of the above AND/OR location based issues (trees)
7) any of the above AND/OR any combination of the above (people have mixed issues)
8) 7, but only sometimes
9) none of the above


I suck... rather have a plausible explanation than any possible explanation, because between here and there is better than neither here nor there.

 

[br0adband]

For those people that are doing this, take a look at the SIM tray when it's ejected and see if you note any "damage" of any kind on the edges, especially the one that's the thinner side, like scraping that seems a bit excessive.

We know the tray when inserted requires some force to get in there, and of course because of that friction some wear should be noted, I'm just wondering if anyone has noted what they might consider excessive wear, more than usual, almost the point of scraping the numbers clear off the tray itself on that one side.

The problem - on some phones - could be that the actual microSIM socket isn't centered probably, that it's off-kilter to some degree, and the gold tension-loaded contacts inside the socket are actually touching the tray itself.

And again, if that's what's happening at least on some phones, is another problem that still falls under this whole umbrella...

 

[arn]

no luck for me.

while it does look like my sim edge contacts the tray, scotch tape and packing tape didn't help. no electrical tape handy. not willing to trim the SIM quite yet.

arn

 

[shawntkeating]

Also, for the people trimming their cards, I don't think this will do much good. You are basically giving the card the ability to move around inside the tray and this will make it very difficult to test the problem cause you don't know what the sim card is doing inside.

What we need is sim cards that are cut with equal plastic on all sides.

All the the mods we do on the card might not help because we don't know how the female part of the sim slot is designed. For all we know something we do might make this problem worse.

 

[ryuuzaki]

Alright, so I finally got back to as close as I got the first time I did this. (I pulled out my sim card at the request of someone here to reproduce the fix--and the antenna problem came back!).


I left it out for 20 minutes (any good scientists repeats his experiment again).

When I inserted the sim tray back in, I made sure that the tray is as center as possible.

Also, when i pushed the tray in, the sim card raised a little as I was pushing it in, so I tipped up the sim tray so that the card rested on the tray again and pushed it in. The tray was stuck and at its final point and I tapped it with my thumb and it clicked in.

Turned on the phone, I've been death gripping for a minute during a phone call, no drop. I even initiated the call without the death grip, AND I applied it during the call. My bars dropped to only 4 bars during the entire minute long call and there was no reception issues.

I don't know. I guess it is how you push the tray in. The time doesn't mean jack.

 

[br0adband]

That's because I trimmed it.

But it hasn't improved the signal problem yet. I do remain hopeful though. That's all I can do.

So yours originally was a standard SIM and you trimmed it to be a microSIM for the iPhone 4? That would account for the amount of spacing I can see in that pic... people obviously getting new iPhone 4's and using the default factory microSIMs could be the ones having this issue, as a group...

Another piece of the puzzle?

People should report on that: is your current microSIM a factory one already in the iPhone 4 when purchased or was it originally a full sized "normal" SIM from another phone that you or someone trimmed to microSIM size for you, using scissors, a razor, a microSIM cutting tool, converter, etc... that would be some interesting data to look at.

 

[Nicklaus]

Mine so far is still working great after this I hope it not just because it's night and the signals are stronger.

 

[Mike Reed]

Does anyone have a sim from a 3G iPad to compare how it is positioned when laying in the iPhone's sim tray? I am curious if it touches also.

Images of the iPhone 4 and iPad SIMs together.

 

[Krayd2k]

That's it..I'm going into the tape business

 

[ryannazaretian]

So yours originally was a standard SIM and you trimmed it to be a microSIM for the iPhone 4? That would account for the amount of spacing I can see in that pic... people obviously getting new iPhone 4's and using the default factory microSIMs could be the ones having this issue, as a group...

Another piece of the puzzle?

People should report on that: is your current microSIM a factory one already in the iPhone 4 when purchased or was it originally a full sized "normal" SIM from another phone that you or someone trimmed to microSIM size for you, using scissors, a razor, a microSIM cutting tool, converter, etc... that would be some interesting data to look at.

No, I just signed up for AT&T. That is the card that came with the phone. It was pretty tight from the factory. I trimmed the one side so I could move it over a bit. It's an original microSIM.

 

[chris975d]

For those of you that this has worked for, have you also tried shorting the two antennas together with something metallic (like a coin, mentioned on the forums here early on last Wednesday when the reception issue was discovered)? It seems to marginally help when I'm holding my iPhone in my hand using the "death grip", but as soon as I lay a coin across the gap on the lower left, my reception falls to zero within 20 seconds.

 

[dagomike]

FWIW, the iPad doesn't have an external antenna, so its sim situation may be that significant.

 

[shawntkeating]

Images of the iPhone 4 and iPad SIMs together.

The iPad is not steel. The iPhone 4 is.

Its hard to compare apples to oranges.

Either way for all we know the female inner workings of the sim slots on the iPhone 4 has the problem.

All i know is the sim is the area id be looking at heavily if i was Apple right now.

 

[PepsiTwo]

alt soln to cutting sim

hey guys,

after reading all the threads, something hit me ..

instead of cutting/trimming/taping the sim card, have you guys tried something called clear acrylic spray on the simtray? this will form a thin, non-conductive coating on the surface sim tray, will avoid any possiblility of sim card shorting out from touching the sim tray ..

it will come off with nail polish remover too if needs be ...

i honestly only have the signal problem less than 10% of the usage time, so I wouldn't beable to test this theory(atleast not rightnow) .. any testers?