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Weak wifi on 3GS 3.0 or hardware related?

thadoggfather

thadoggfather

macrumors P6
Original poster
Oct 1, 2007
16,340
17,456
Everything on mine works great but wifi can be kind of flaky in repcetion.

Doing a restore now, but what do you think? I'm considering getting a replacement although I've read mixed results like they all get bad reception and 3.0 makes wifi buggy.
 
thadoggfather said:
Everything on mine works great but wifi can be kind of flaky in repcetion.

Doing a restore now, but what do you think? I'm considering getting a replacement although I've read mixed results like they all get bad reception and 3.0 makes wifi buggy.
Click to expand...

What phone do you have?
 
I'll try standing right next to it, yes I have a switcheasy case on, it depends really but signal seems flaky even from not that far away iirc.

in apple store, i had the wifi jump from full to 1 to 2 when looking at it for 15 minutes. I'm pretty sure apple store has crazy repeaters everywhere.

Nah, I'm just doing a standard restore.
 
My wifi jumps all over the place on the 3gs. Goes from 1 bar to full even in the same room as the router. The wifes 3G and the 2G doesn't do this. I switched back to my 2G cause the battery on the 3GS is horrible.
 
thadoggfather said:
I'll try standing right next to it, yes I have a switcheasy case on, it depends really but signal seems flaky even from not that far away iirc.

in apple store, i had the wifi jump from full to 1 to 2 when looking at it for 15 minutes. I'm pretty sure apple store has crazy repeaters everywhere.

Nah, I'm just doing a standard restore.
Click to expand...

Do a standard restore and set up as new iPhone, and report back please :0
 
thadoggfather said:
djinn - you're having similar issues?
Click to expand...

Yeah.. my wireless jumps around a lot. Even drops in the middle of a scrabble game with the wife. I've tried using different channels etc on the router, same thing. I am even using an Apple Extreme router.
 
even very close to the airport extreme? because it shouldnt thats a really solid router, has to be iphone related.
 
thadoggfather said:
I'll try standing right next to it, yes I have a switcheasy case on, it depends really but signal seems flaky even from not that far away iirc.

in apple store, i had the wifi jump from full to 1 to 2 when looking at it for 15 minutes. I'm pretty sure apple store has crazy repeaters everywhere.

Nah, I'm just doing a standard restore.
Click to expand...

Well I would recommend doing a DFU restore, but you can do what you want. The DFU is a cleaner restore, but you may get it to work with the standard restore. If not, take it back to the store.
 
Or it could be interference of some sort. Try changing the channel on the router-see you already did that.
Does it do it everywhere? Try it at a friend's house with another wi-fi.
 
skye12 said:
Or it could be interference of some sort. Try changing the channel on the router-see you already did that.
Does it do it everywhere? Try it at a friend's house with another wi-fi.
Click to expand...

I had my iPhone 3GS exchanged last week due to wifi problems and the replacement i recv has the same problem.. So im assuming its a software issue and not hardware one.. lets wait for 3.0.1 or 3.1 to fix these issues
 
I have a 3GS 16gb that I've restored over and over and over again and the Wifi problem keeps popping up.

If you've read various message forums/boards, various people have encountered this on 3.0 iPod Touch, 3G and 3GS. I've been to the Apple store checking out display units and I've seen the display units jump from 1 -3 bars repeatedly.

I suspect that many more people are experiencing this as well but aren't noticing it because they're still able to download and view the web sites they usually do.

When I first got the 3GS I noticed the bars jumping up and down but I didn't think anything of it - until I bought an iPod speaker dock and tried streaming the AOL Radio, SHOUTcast and Slacker apps through it. The music on Wifi would buffer and timeout while on 3G, I would get a perfect stream. That's when I noticed the problem - but for everyday web browsing, the wifi seems to be just fine despite the sporadic signal strength.

For some odd reason I've found that I can get constant wifi music streaming this way:

1) Turn off Wifi and run the SHOUTcast app for a few seconds to a minute
2) Exit out of the SHOUTcast app, turn Wifi on.
3) Start the music wifi streaming app of your choice.

For some oddball reason, I am able to get consistent Wifi music streaming with no interruptions.

Based on user reports of returning iPhones and getting ones that exhibit the same problem, I suspect that a majority of the Wifi issues encountered are software (and not hardware) related, except for those few who are actually having hardware wifi issues.
 
The sad thing is, I've been running 3.1 Beta 2 and the problem still exists.
 
Xolan is right on the money. I disabled everything internet related on my router with a DFU restore and no dice (also following Apples specs for how they run there test for batteries). It jumps up and down and never once did this with the 2.2.1 iphone 3G. My friends 3G does it on his phone too ever since the 3.0 update and he never once experienced flaky frequency on his either.
 
djinn said:
The sad thing is, I've been running 3.1 Beta 2 and the problem still exists.
Click to expand...

+1. I've been sending tons of device logs and still isn't resolved. It's incredibly frustrating. I'm also having networks be forgotten arbitrarily.
 
Along with my dancing wifi is my crappy battery. My battery went from 86% to 72% in 3 mins. Just sitting not doing anything.
 
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