Weak wifi on 3GS 3.0 or hardware related?

[firewood]

There's a report that the radio chips and antenna's are more shared in the 3GS than in the 3G iPhone.

Try shutting off Location Services (GPS radio), Bluetooth, and maybe even the cellular radio (with Airplane mode), and see if your WIFI connection becomes more reliable.

y

 

[ct2k7]

There's a report that the radio chips and antenna's are more shared in the 3GS than in the 3G iPhone.

Try shutting off Location Services (GPS radio), Bluetooth, and maybe even the cellular radio (with Airplane mode), and see if your WIFI connection becomes more reliable.

y

Interesting, I never knew that!

 

[TucsonGuy]

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.

There's nothing likely wrong with your hardware. I have a 2G Touch that was working fine minutes prior to the 3.0 O/S upgrade. Now I can't reach the other end of the house without losing WiFi signal strength.

I don't just measure it by bars. Before the upgrade, I could have YouTube load a video, and the pre-fetch (with 3 bars) furiously outran the playback. Now, I barely get one bar, and the playback eats the buffer quickly, causing the playback to stop. Same device, same home wireless G network, same room. The only difference was the upgrade to 3.0. What a mistake! Even worse since as an iPod user, I had to pay $10 for it. I expect better from Apple. I may end up buying the Storm instead of the 3GS after all....

 

[Mademan12321]

That was my issue. My 3G started jumping around after the 3.0 update and before I sold it on craigslist. If it was just the 3GS doing it then I could see it but it jumps up and down frequently on the 3G is the reason I think its software related.

 

[djthomas]

Same weak WiFi issue on brand new 3GS

I'm having the same weak wifi issue with my brand new 3GS 32GB, received new today.
1-2 bars only when right next to my perfectly good O2 broadband router.
My original iPhone 3G 16GB consistently picks up the full three bars of the wifi signal.
Unfortunately, before I started using my 3GS, I also updated to the new 3.0.1 firmware that's come out today, so we can conclude that this new firmware update hasn't fixed the issue.

I'm not sure yet whether the lower number of reported bars actually equals slower wifi performance - seems to work OK although not flawlessly with BBC iPlayer watch again TV streaming - time will tell.

Is Apple aware of this issue?

Thomas

 

[djthomas]

Going into Airplane mode doesn't help

Further to my above post and Firewood's suggestion, going into Airplane mode (thus removing potential sources of interference), does not improve the reported number of wifi bars of reception.

I wrote:

Same weak WiFi issue on brand new 3GS
I'm having the same weak wifi issue with my brand new 3GS 32GB, received new today.
1-2 bars only when right next to my perfectly good O2 broadband router.
My original iPhone 3G 16GB consistently picks up the full three bars of the wifi signal.
Unfortunately, before I started using my 3GS, I also updated to the new 3.0.1 firmware that's come out today, so we can conclude that this new firmware update hasn't fixed the issue.

I'm not sure yet whether the lower number of reported bars actually equals slower wifi performance - seems to work OK although not flawlessly with BBC iPlayer watch again TV streaming - time will tell.

Is Apple aware of this issue?

Thomas

 

[Mademan12321]

Its a common problem as I have been tooting my horn on here about this for wellover a month now. Mavis who was so kind to help me out gave me a lot of advice and still no luck.

I have tried the following
Renew network settings
Restore and backup
Restore and new Iphone
Router changes up the wazoo
DFU restore and new phone
2X phone replacements
I even used the apple router which bounced around at the store.
Even the freezer trick (now I'm not sure if its my mind playing tricks or what but it actually keeped it stable for about an hour like my old 3g)


I currently have 3.1 beta 3 and still so resolve. Not sure what else to do at this point as I have run out of options and all we can do is just hope the official release fixes the problem. If not then we should really push this issue to apple.

 

[caligurl]

i originally thought that (almost) all the phones had the problem even thought my hubby's phone works perfectly.... so i ended up getting mine replaced... now the wifi works just as it's supposed to! (however now i have the yellow tinged screen and no "redeem" area in my itunes app.... *sigh*)

 

[thadoggfather]

Hmmm i'm still going to hold off on getting mine replaced because everything else is perfect, seems like if wifi bars fall to 2 bars, it'll stay there unless I give the iphone activity like a speed test, then it will jump back up.

Signal bars isn't that big of a deal for me, but Apple should definitely fix it.

My screen is awesome too, don't want to sacrifice that if possible.

I think doing a restore helped slightly from the firmware that was loaded on the phone out of the box, but it still didn't fully resolve occasional wifi flakiness.