iPhone no longer allows me to locate/use Wi-Fi.

[kavika411]

Thank you for reading this. I noticed yesterday that in places where I know definitively that Wi-Fi exists, such as at work and at home, my iPhone stays on the Edge network. If I go to Settings, the Wi-Fi listing is grayed out, as if to suggest it is no longer an option for me to use. Has anyone else had this problem. It is as if either I (accidentally) or the iPhone itself flipped some sort of switch that bars the use of Wi-Fi.

Please help if you can. Thank you.

 

[Aniej]

its completely greyed out or grey as in the color of the button when it is turned off rather than blue when on?

i notice edge hangs for a little too instead of switching to wifi at times, most of the time it is great and jumps right over. when it is stuck i have found just tapping the safari icon and letting the page start to load for a second can tend to trigger the wifi.

 

[iPhoneGuy2007]

Force the iPhone to search for a network

I've experienced this as well. I'll be in my home office (wifi router on my desk), with the iPhone asleep, turn it on, and it won't be able to find a wifi signal and will remain in edge mode. turning the wifi radio on/off doesn't seem to help ...

However...
I'm not sure if this is documented in the manual or not (I haven't rtfm yet), but if you go to settings-wifi-choose a network and select "Other..." and then cancel out, it will force the iPhone to seek all visible wifi connections. The iPhone is then able to find my wifi network ...

Hope this helps!
CL

 

[kavika411]

Thanks for both of your suggestions. Regarding that last suggestion, however, the Wi-Fi option cannot even be opened/activated. I took it to my Apple store yesterday and they did a ton of stuff to try and fix it. They finally decided it is a hardware malfunction and, as soon as they more 8 gigs in, they will swap it out. I'm really not too bummed as I've already scratched the back of my current one.

 

[Aniej]

well thats a great outcome especially in light of the scratch.

 

[yayaba]

The first iPhone I bought was a lemon -- it had this same exact problem with the wifi greyed out. One trip to the Genius Bar and they gave me a brand new iPhone. Not bad.

 

[runninmac]

I had that problem also, take it to the genius bar. They gave me a new one with no problem.

 

[kavika411]

Wow. That's interesting that it may be a common problem. They got in more 8 gigs yesterday and I swapped it out. As an aside, the one they gave me was out of the box but had the clear cover on the face and appeared to have never been used; but once I got home I noticed that the call log showed about 20 calls having been made on June 29.

 

[Baron58]

Wow. That's interesting that it may be a common problem. They got in more 8 gigs yesterday and I swapped it out. As an aside, the one they gave me was out of the box but had the clear cover on the face and appeared to have never been used; but once I got home I noticed that the call log showed about 20 calls having been made on June 29.

Sounds like a return/refurb. Were those calls before or after 6pm on the 29th?

 

[Googol Star]

I have been digging to find a remedy that didn't include having to go the Genius Bar. The best I've found was suggested at elliottback.com "The solution and fix for this problem was simply to do a soft reset by holding down the top power button and the home button until it restarted, at which point the wifi was working again." I did that and the wifi was selectable again. Only took about 15 seconds.

I will be keeping my scratched iPhone.