iPhone XS Xs : Unrecoverable signal, after a couple of hour of no signal

[Biko65]

Hello, I don’t know if someone did suffer the same issue, but it did happen to me at least twice during the last week, and I’m a bit concerned at this point.
Scenario : you go at a restaurant in the old part of town, and hosted in a room well inside the old building, with thick walls...long story short: you have no signal from your carrier.
It can happen, nothing to be afraid of, you look at the phone and just see some grey dots instead of the bars.
After dinner’s end, you walk outside the restaurant and notice that, instead of the usual 4G signal with full bars, you still have the grey dots. You wait almost 3 minutes and still you’re isolated.
At that point you try the "airplane mode" trick, to recover from the embarrassing situation...but even if you keep the Xs in that state for a minute, after that you got the animation that indicate the phone is searching for signal, then the dreaded grey dots show again.
The only way to exit this situation is to reboot the phone, then everything returns to normal.
What do you think ? Has this happened to you too...and do you think this could be an issue that an iOS update could resolve ?
Thank you,
Andy

 

[twennywonn]

I have had it happen to me for sure. I think it has happened to other people also. The phone has some kind of an issue with software or hardware that produces a fast beautiful phone with horrible reception.

 

[fred98tj]

My iPhone X sucks regarding signal reception.
Granted my house is in a area of weak signal strength but it’s like the iPhones radio simple goes to sleep. Sometimes even when I’m texting the first few work fine (showing a couple of bars), then the “signal strength” meter drops and itt won’t send text. If I pound the airplane mode off and on a few times then it will get a couple of bars until it decides to sleep the radio again.
Here’s a pic of my X and a Nokia 6 (that I bought so at least I can text which is important here. Cheap phone btw, less than $200.00 brand new) next to each other. Ohh have sims from the same carrier. iPhone X has no signal, Nokia 6 has 2 bars of 4G signal and always send sms text just fine inside the house.

 

[Shirasaki]

I can tell this is not isolated to XS MAX. My iPhone 6s Plus also has difficulty catching the cellular signal when getting out of the basement. Restart is the only fix.

 

[Shadowbech]

Had happened to me twice too and I returned it and got a brand new retail unit from apple.com delivered to me and so far no issues. Typically for me though, putting it in airplane mode on and off did the trick. I noticed the second time this happened I was on my way from Costco and only had the signal bar but no LTE and wouldn't let me send a text message.

 

[fred98tj]

It’s really odd. Seems as though the iPhone puts the radio to sleep.
I can have my phone (the iPhone) just sitting on the table and no bars but it can receive a text. It seems to wake the radio up on an incoming text as the signal meter will then show maybe two bars. I can sometimes answer that text fine but if I try to send several text to them, one after the other, the iPhone seems to just put the radio back to sleep again after the first sent text.
It got worse on 11.4, then even worse on 11.4.1, now, on 12.0 seems even worse yet. So bad that I actually went out and bought that very inexpensive Nokia 6 so I can text inside house.

 

[sjperformance]

This isn’t a XS/X Max isolation. This has happened to me on 7/X and now XS Max. I believe it all started with iOS 11 and now worse with iOS 12.

 

[twennywonn]

This isn’t a XS/X Max isolation. This has happened to me on 7/X and now XS Max. I believe it all started with iOS 11 and now worse with iOS 12.

I have never had it happen with iOS11 or iOS 12 it wasn't until I got a max that the problem came up. There is a 50-page thread with people that have worse reception with their XS and XS Max.

 

[sjperformance]

I have never had it happen with iOS11 or iOS 12 it wasn't until I got a max that the problem came up. There is a 50-page thread with people that have worse reception with their XS and XS Max.

Oh I know. My previous X had better reception and better WiFi. Max isn’t better than X with that. Hope it’s a software issue that can be updated.

 

[Biko65]

It’s really odd. Seems as though the iPhone puts the radio to sleep.

Precisely.
And I never had this problem before, but to be honest, I had an iPhone 7plus running iOS 11.4.1, so that was an entirely different playground,...let’s say nothing that an "Airplane mode on and off" couldn’t cure..
I’m a bit concerned, because I’m pretty sure this behavior is structural, be it hardware or software, so a device change before the 14 days limit could be unproductive...not to mention going through the backup/restore re-authorize in-app nightmare procedures ( I have more than 600 apps on my Xs)..