iPhone 5 signal \ Areal booster or any other way to improve phone reception

Hugh 2

I like the iPhone 5 as a computer but in the land of marginal reception it is real poor at picking up reception .
Walking to an area where there is reception is not enough -it simply doesn't seem to bother to see if there is any signal ( compared to my wife's iPhone 4s it is a dud she can make and receive calls indoors while my iPhone 5 shows "no signal" even on the window sill (outside) .
Walking to an area where there is known reception in itself ,just to send a text requires me to dial a telephone no or go into settings and turn on then off airplane mode.
Had a look at inter web and see that there was a band available for the earlier phones to improve their reception also came across a cover with areal for the iPhone 5 but on an independent test saw that the phone operated better without it .
Any ideas or recommendations would be welcome .
Thanks
Ps The apple way of sending texts drive me nuts all my older phones once sent would always go eventually when the phone came into signal -and I had no problems making calls in the house with Nokias..

flyguy

If your wife is on the same network there should not be a noticeable difference in reception. I actually find the iPhone 5 better when it comes to reception compared to the 4/4s.
Firstly the simple thing to do is a reset (hold both home&sleep buttons until the phone switches off/restarts). If this doesn't solve anything and its not down to the network there must be a fault with the phone. You can get it replaced by apple (don't bother trying that with your network). Just contact apple on phone or online.

Hugh 2

Thanks Flyguy for the reply.,
I went round the house with both phones and the 5 is a dud compared to the 4s
I took your advice and contacted apple by chat and they agreed that I seemed to have a problem
They tried several things like resetting network connections re booting the phone and then resetting the phone back to default - this took all day firstly had to install new iTunes took hours on slow connection then back up my phone (this took a while as well) then download the phone reset this took about 4 hours and here I am with a reset phone and still unless compared to the 4s
I cant seem to get back onto chat (support) they might only be working office hours (although I felt I was chatting to 2 people in America)
So I might have to wait till Tomorrow or Monday to get info on getting a replacement.
Thanks again for the advice I would have been wasting my time with O2 or will it be 3 now?
Thanks again
Regards
Hugh 2

jamesd

Why not get an O2 booster for the house? Ask an O2 shop about a booster as Vodafone do boosters so surely they do as well.

guil

I think Vodafone are the only ones that do it and you need Vodafone broadband to get it as well.

jca

I had that problem with a 4s. I drive a lot and if I drove from an area with no coverage back into an area with coverage the phone wouldn't pick up the network. No service was the most common state of existence!! It drove me nuts tbh. When my upgrade came around I passed the phone on to my daughter and got an S4. Happy days!!

jamesd

guil wrote: »

I think Vodafone are the only ones that do it and you need Vodafone broadband to get it as well.

You do not need Vodafone broadband. O2 a booster is called a nextivity booster.

guil

jamesd wrote: »

You do not need Vodafone broadband. O2 a booster is called a nextivity booster.

Haven't a clue. Never used it but I'm nearly sure I saw an ad for the Vodafone one somewhere and it said ya needed Vodafone bb.

Hugh 2

Wasted 2 days chatting with Apple in USA
Summary
Told to reset phone back to new (so I had to back up my half full 32g iPhone)(after updating iTunes)
Phone reception no better then they suggested taking out sim for a min and ironically reception improved I now have reception in parts of the house where I never had before (the "muvit" cover was no help either-drops whatever signal I have by at least a bar)
The problem was in restoring my data kept running out of space on PC (failed several times)
Then BAM my backup was gone only offering me one I made when I bought the phone and one (I apparently made a few hours ago) why the hell it did not delete the older one rather than the more recent one.
So Now my phone has all the apps but nothing since 22/10/12 kinda p***Ed off really

So I would highly recommend trying the sim card before calling apple.

The chat went well till I realised this --then my concern changed to how to find my missing data the last fellow (chatted to 5) was an abrupt manager and asked me to call up some help line and logged off (I usually get an email transcript of all the chats but not this one)

flyguy

Hugh 2 wrote: »

Wasted 2 days chatting with Apple in USA

I thought they were in Cork?

Hugh 2 wrote: »

Summary
Told to reset phone back to new (so I had to back up my half full 32g iPhone)(after updating iTunes)
Phone reception no better then they suggested taking out sim for a min and ironically reception improved I now have reception in parts of the house where I never had before (the "muvit" cover was no help either-drops whatever signal I have by at least a bar)

Just checking; the reception was better after removing the sim and putting it back in? If you only removed it chances are you won't be on the same network anymore, phone would say emergency calls only but uses whatever the best signal is to make that call.

Hugh 2 wrote: »

The problem was in restoring my data kept running out of space on PC (failed several times)
Then BAM my backup was gone only offering me one I made when I bought the phone and one (I apparently made a few hours ago) why the hell it did not delete the older one rather than the more recent one.
So Now my phone has all the apps but nothing since 22/10/12 kinda p***Ed off really

That kinda sucks and I guess shouldn't happen, but not really apples fault you don't have enough space on your pc. Also was iCloud backup not available?

Hugh 2 wrote: »

So I would highly recommend trying the sim card before calling apple.

Ok so I guess they haven't offered to swap it then yet? Thought it was possible to do this trouble shooting online and request a replacment if unsuccessful. Haven't used it myself so not sure... If it does work like that seems to be a better option than calling them...

Hugh 2

Hi Flyguy
I chatted with 4 different then supervisor .
The experience was fine cept for the time it took.
It seemed that they were quite willing to replace phone after trying a few things.
Basically resetting phone to like new -and if this did not work they would go and exchange.
Next guy suggested taking out the card (the phone came to life so phone fixed can make and receive calls where never before there was ant reception)
Bummer about not being able to get data back though.
I had imagined that the phone backed up to PC that it would restore but during the several failed attempts iTunes decided or I misread some warning and caused this backup to be deleted.
So My phone is now backed up when I first put my Nokia contacts into iPhone
The administrator gave me some 11800 no to phone to see about recovering my last data but with the fine weather I haven't the heart to face into it.(also I did not type out this chat as all the other times I recieved an email with the transcript - the administrator did not send on the transcript - "not surprising as his part of the chat was abruprt and not nice ata all compares to any of the earlier people i chatted to "

I put on the cover when heading out but have it off when inside

Also have to say the reason for chatting to so many operators was due to PC speed and Internet speed it took a few hours to update iTunes a couple of hours to backup my phone and several sessions of a few hours at failed attempts to re install my backup

One of them asked what country I was chatting from and I asked them and got told they ware working in USA

Hugh 2

As regards iCloud 5g free backup
What would you do with iPad and 2 iPhones would you be able to get 5 g for each?

flyguy

Same problem here, actually one 32gb iPhone was already too much.
I Just do it the "old fashioned" way, wifi backups to MacBook, MacBooks backup to time capsule. No space problems yet...
You can have separate iCloud storage for each device but I find it a hassle as you probably want the same apple ID for iTunes/app store/photo stream so you're going to have to setup up 2 ID's on most devices (one for ICloud, another for the rest).

Hugh 2

Since I re inserted sim card and changed phone cover people who phone me now ask how come my phone is working now.
Apparently phoning me on iPhone 5 was considered a waste of time.