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iPhone iPhone XR occasional cellular data freezes, hardware or software failure?

Stuey3D

Stuey3D

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 8, 2014
836
953
Northamptonshire, United Kingdom
I'm having some occasional weird cellular issues on my iPhone XR and I was wondering if anybody else is having these issues or if its possibly a hardware failure.

What happens is every so often totally randomly and usually days if not weeks apart my iPhone XR will get stuck in "No Service" mode and toggling airplane mode on and off will not fix it, a reboot will restore normal functionality. I have had a couple of occasions where the phone is showing a signal that doesn't change when phone is moved and when I go to use data again nothing works, again a reboot fixes this.

It did this a couple of times on iOS 12.3 so I installed the iOS 13 Beta and it keeps doing it.

I have had a new sim card from my provider and last night I did an "Erase all contents and restore" and then restored from iCloud backup and it did it again today.

I have compared the signal strength to my wife's identical XR on the same network (hers is running 12.4 though) and signal strength appears to be identical between both, with my one in some cases actually slightly stronger.

It is a rare issue and I cant seem to trigger it on demand, and it can go days and sometimes weeks between occurrences with the phone working perfect in between.

I haven't done a full DFU restore yet as going to do it when 13 is released fully so I still cant 100% rule out software yet, but the fact that a reboot always fixes the issue is making me wonder if its actually a hardware failure.

Anyone else having signal freezes since the iOS13 beta?
 
I had something similar on my XS Max whilst roaming abroad - it would often get stuck on 'No Service', toggling Airplane Mode didn't do anything. Sometimes even a restart didn't fix it for me - I just had to wait 5 minutes and it eventually fixed itself.

No idea if it was hardware or iOS 13 though. I'd wager the latter, but no real proof.
 
cambookpro said:
I had something similar on my XS Max whilst roaming abroad - it would often get stuck on 'No Service', toggling Airplane Mode didn't do anything. Sometimes even a restart didn't fix it for me - I just had to wait 5 minutes and it eventually fixed itself.

No idea if it was hardware or iOS 13 though. I'd wager the latter, but no real proof.
Click to expand...
Funny you said roaming abroad, this first started happening when I was on holiday in Tenerife roaming. Had it drop to no service a few times but rebooting always fixes it, at first I thought it was a roaming issue but it did it when back at home too although nowhere near as frequently.

This was on iOS 12.3 but I upgraded to 13 beta to see if updated modem firmware/carrier settings might have fixed it but it didn’t, it’s made it slightly worse if I’m honest.
 
Pepe4life said:
Blame the garbage intel modem
Click to expand...
You say that, but the wife’s identical XR doesn’t seem to suffer the same issue.
Plus after having an Intel iPhone X the XR is leaps and bounds ahead of it. Often the X would indicate 5 bars but only be able to get around 1Mb download speed, I initially blamed network congestion but my XR hasn’t had any such issue consistently being much faster than the X before it.
 
It’s done it again, but this time I’ve managed to get feedback assistant working (god bless McDonalds WiFi) to capture the logs for the issue so hopefully Apple can diagnose and fix it.

Beta 7 seems to have made the issue a lot more frequent, which makes me think this is maybe software more than a hardware issue.
 
Last edited:
My XR will do this from time to time at work (it's a 1970s concrete building with low signal all around). It will simply lose LTE and revert to 3G or even lose it completely.

Intel sucks
 
AppleHaterLover said:
My XR will do this from time to time at work (it's a 1970s concrete building with low signal all around). It will simply lose LTE and revert to 3G or even lose it completely.

Intel sucks
Click to expand...
Thats the problem though, I was in a strong signal area. I drove from my home to the local supermarket which has full 4G coverage, but by the time I got to the supermarket the phone had locked into no service mode even though I could see the transmitter. Managed to get the logs and send them to Apple and when rebooted maximum 4G signal again.
 
Stuey3D said:
Thats the problem though, I was in a strong signal area. I drove from my home to the local supermarket which has full 4G coverage, but by the time I got to the supermarket the phone had locked into no service mode even though I could see the transmitter. Managed to get the logs and send them to Apple and when rebooted maximum 4G signal again.
Click to expand...

Mine will do that from time to time too. Lose all signal
 
Stuey3D said:
Out of curiosity when yours does it does Airplane mode on/off fix it, or is a full reboot like I have to do?
Click to expand...

Generally cycling Airplane mode won't help - I just wait a while and it comes back. Was quite scary at first, but 10 out of 10 times it comes back within a minute or so (not that it happens very often, maybe once a month? or less).

I thought about complaining to the Genius Bar but the chances of it displaying this issue at the Apple Store are zero and they wouldn't believe me. So I've sort of learned to live with it
 
AppleHaterLover said:
Generally cycling Airplane mode won't help - I just wait a while and it comes back. Was quite scary at first, but 10 out of 10 times it comes back within a minute or so (not that it happens very often, maybe once a month? or less).

I thought about complaining to the Genius Bar but the chances of it displaying this issue at the Apple Store are zero and they wouldn't believe me. So I've sort of learned to live with it
Click to expand...
See mine doesn't come back at all until reboot, it completely locks up. I am tempted to go to the Apple store but I want to wait until public release of iOS13 so I can DFU restore to rule everything software related out.
 
Stuey3D said:
See mine doesn't come back at all until reboot, it completely locks up. I am tempted to go to the Apple store but I want to wait until public release of iOS13 so I can DFU restore to rule everything software related out.
Click to expand...

They won't touch an iPhone running an iOS beta. I went there with my 7+ back in the iOS 11 beta days and they told me come back with it running iOS 10. So maybe waiting a bit is the best course of action
 
AppleHaterLover said:
They won't touch an iPhone running an iOS beta. I went there with my 7+ back in the iOS 11 beta days and they told me come back with it running iOS 10. So maybe waiting a bit is the best course of action
Click to expand...
Yeah I figured as much.

I'd like to think it is software though as iOS 13 beta 7 has definitely made it worse, and a reboot always fixes it. If it was hardware surely a reboot wouldn't fix it and it would remain until I did something physical to the phone to fix it.
 
Chiming in from another thread.
I have the same issue. Airplane mode fixes it for a short duration, a full reboot or network reset for a few days. 13.7 definitely made it worse. When I took the phone to Apple they reset it and installed 12 and the phone stopped having issues. It’s most likely software.

I think the issue started happening after I moved my unlocked X AT&T phone to Verizon and when on beta. On 13 beta on AT&T, I didn’t seem to have any issues.
 
cbdoc said:
Chiming in from another thread.
I have the same issue. Airplane mode fixes it for a short duration, a full reboot or network reset for a few days. 13.7 definitely made it worse. When I took the phone to Apple they reset it and installed 12 and the phone stopped having issues. It’s most likely software.

I think the issue started happening after I moved my unlocked X AT&T phone to Verizon and when on beta. On 13 beta on AT&T, I didn’t seem to have any issues.
Click to expand...
Hopefully it is software, would hate to have to travel to my nearest Apple store to get it changed or worse sent off for weeks for a repair.
 
The problem seems to have evolved.

Just been out to the supermarket, this time the signal meter was responding as normal and I even received a call however this dropped the phone to 3G even though VoLTE is enabled.

After the call when I went to use data the phone didn't switch back to LTE and my banking app reported no internet connection even though I was indicating full 3G signal. I tried a speedtest.net test and it reported I was on service provider BT which is my home provider and not o2 which is my cellular provider before it threw up an error as no data was working.

Toggling airplane mode did fix this though and data worked as normal afterwards.
 
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