iPhone 4 reception issues- "no service"

My daughter and I were on a trip across some western states recently. We both had our iPhone 4's, both phones from the initial preorder.

We're driving across the middle of nowhere. She's texting and so forth, I pull out my phone and it says "no service". An hour later we stop in a little town for some food. Sitting in the restaurant she says she has plenty of signal so I pull out my phone and again it says "no service". How can there be this much difference in 2 phones in the same place? (Both are in cases so the antenna's are insulated from hand touching.)

It's also frustrating to go to places where you have voice service but "cannot connect to the data network". I'm not sure how this works.

Also we discovered that even when I do have service, her GPS works and mine doesn't.

bjmini said:

My daughter and I were on a trip across some western states recently. We both had our iPhone 4's, both phones from the initial preorder.

We're driving across the middle of nowhere. She's texting and so forth, I pull out my phone and it says "no service". An hour later we stop in a little town for some food. Sitting in the restaurant she says she has plenty of signal so I pull out my phone and again it says "no service". How can there be this much difference in 2 phones in the same place? (Both are in cases so the antenna's are insulated from hand touching.)

It's also frustrating to go to places where you have voice service but "cannot connect to the data network". I'm not sure how this works.

Also we discovered that even when I do have service, her GPS works and mine doesn't.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you need to take your phone in.

Apparently, from what I have read, iPhone 4 issues generally fall into two categories:
A) User error and the phone is fine
or
B) All cellular phones have that issue and the phone is fine
Not sure what to tell you quite honestly. Perhaps there is something AT&T or Apple can do if you bring it in to them.

I've seen this with my iPhone 3G when traveling with friends. Often you have to reboot the phone. It often times may be random but it may have to do with coverage in that specific area and what the network load in that specific area is at any time. If you're in the middle of nowhere, there's probably not a lot of bandwidth to go around.

What weirds me out is as you travel you look at your iPhone and is say "Happy Time" or some such thing instead of "AT&T". Saw that all through Southeastern Ca. and western Az. a few months back.

When she and I were comparing phones, she said that when she had no service she would put her phone in airplane mode then back in normal mode, forcing the phone to search for networks, and then it would find a network. I was having problems with airplane mode so I just turned the phone off then back on. It started searching and couldn't find service so I turned it off and on again. This time it searched for awhile and found ATT network, but had no bars. She picked up the phone and did the airplane mode/normal mode switching and this time it found the ATT network and had 2 bars of signal. No explanation for why it would be erratic like this. I would think that as you travel in and out of service areas the phone would be continually searching for networks. You never know when you will receive a call, or when you will have an emergency and need to make a call, so the phone really should try to maintain a connection to the network when a network is available.

My guess is that it does. You might want to get your phone looked at....