iPhone 4S call function died

[laracroft]

I got an iPhone 4S from the US less than three weeks ago. Since yesterday it's call function has stopped working. The phone is not receiving or making any calls. This event was not preceded by any accidents to the phone. All other apps, wi-fi, email, messaging are working just fine. So far I have done a system restore and re-inserted the sim, all to no avail.
Please help. Off to Emax to buy a 200 dirham Nokia.

[laracroft]

Just wanted to post an update: call function was restored after is reset the phone and set it up again as a new phone without backing up from iCloud. Saved from a stodgy nokia for now.
Just curious if anyone has had a similar experience using a 4S, unlocked iPhone with Etisalat.

[michl]

Just curious, when you say "call function has stopped working", do you mean that you had "no service" at all? (You would see that in the top left of the screen instead of the usual signal bar and carrier name.)

That problem has been reported (and I faced it myself) and is due to the (Etisalat) signal being so weak that the phone doesn't detect any at all. And again that is an issue with the 3G signal, and the fact that the 4S doesn't automatically drop to 2G as it should. The fix with previous iPhone models was to manually toggle to 2G, but that option has been removed on the 4S (should be back with iOS 5.1 "shortly" though).

Sometimes there is no way to get any signal back unless one reboots the 4S. No need to restore anything (in my experience anyway) - just a restart will do.

[laracroft]

Michi, sadly my phone's problem has persisted. I will try and post screen shots that show that Etisalat signals were at full strength. What happens when the call function 'dies' is that I get the screen say 'calling abc' and the call never gets connected. Then I press the End Call button and the screen changed to 'ending call' and remains stuck there till i use the home button to turn off call function. Same problem applies to sending messages.
PS: Sorry my first post on here is about my phone's problem. Being severly tech challenged I can never hope to contribute on here, can only hope to learn from the superior wisdom of all you techies.

[michl]

Not a signal problem then... According to your description this is a rather common issue. See this thread for instance...

Apparently it's a software bug with the Phone app iOS 5.0.1. Some people manage to fix it, but most don't. Looking at the threads you'll see fixes mentioned such as, doing a full Restore from iTunes, turning the SIM card PIN on/off, changing the time zone... worth trying I guess.

[asdfg]

I have had the same problem with my iPhone 4, since I upgraded to iOS5 before Christmas. As I live in a rural area I resorted to constantly restoring from back-up, and then when that failed, resetting the whole phone, until THAT stopped working. Finally someone from customer care said I could get a replacement phone in the city - brand new handset. This worked...for 2 months...and now it has just stopped working again.

Yesterday I was online downloading some new apps...could that be the cause?!

During the whole episode I was also contacting my service provider and even got a replacement SIM card. Throughout, the network was showing full strength and when people called me it would ring on their end, but nothing would happen on my phone, so I wouldn't even realise there was a problem until people got mad at me for never answering my phone!

I'm going to try a complete factory reset now and hope it works. Otherwise it's back to MacCare in the city... :/

[michl]

So any success in fixing the problem?

As discussed elsewhere, an iOS update / bug fix is what's really needed... Hard to say how many iPhones are affected though.

[asdfg]

Thanks Michl. All of my attempts have failed and I now have a tiny computer with no working phone functionality.

The new handset, which I got as a replacement when the first handset phone function stopped working, lasted 2 months before the problem surfaced. I rebooted the phone and even tried jailbreaking it - but no joy. This is the second handset I have had with the same problem. I don't know what to do!

The first time this happened I was forced to reboot several times - mostly to tide myself over until I could get to MacCare in the city, as I live in a very remote area (in Thailand) - and eventually the phone function didn't even respond to reboot/restore factory settings. So the problem seems to snowball until everything just stops.

After my last post, on Feb 13th, I restored factory settings, and today, the 21st, it stopped again. Though, I have seen signs that it is going to stop, such as: needing to switch the phone off/on to regain signal after being in the mountains where I lose signal.

As a non-techie, I'm very grateful for your advice and support, especially since Apple Care is nigh on impossible to get answers from. Do we just sit around and wait for a bug fix? Does Apple know about this problem? Are they even working on a bug fix as yet? It scares me that TWO separate handsets have had the exact same problem, which I put down 100% to iOS 5.

[michl]

Thx for the update, and sorry to hear you are really so unlucky with 2 iPhone's in a row. Certainly Apple knows about the problem, but as for when we'll see it fixed... iOS 5.1 is on the radar, might even come out next month, but there's is no telling what issues it'll address.