Thursday, October 10, 2013

Apple iPhone 4S wifi errors

Do you recognize the following problem?

You have upgraded your Apple iPhone 4S to iOS 7 and now you find your Wifi is greyed out.


Please check the following:
  • Your phone affected is the Apple iPhone 4S ?
  • Your problems occured after the upgrade to iOS7 ?
  • The issue you are now experiencing is a greyed out WiFI button, which was not greyed out before ?
  • You have (to the best of your ability, and within reason) tried all options advised by Apple to resolve this issue ?
  • You find you are unable to resolve this problem yourself ?
  • Your iPhone 4S  was operating without any noticable problems prior to the upgrade to iOS7 ?
  • You feel Apple needs to come up with an acceptable solution for this issue

If all the above is applies to you please read on:


Dear everyone, 

First of all, just like you I am experiencing this problem and it is very frustrating!

I like to draw your attention to the following discussions on the Apple discussion website:


Upgrade to iOS7 most likely cause of an overheated wifichip. Resulting in a defective iPhone 4S

After the upgrade to iOS7 hundreds and mostlikely many thousands of Apple iPhone 4S users are experiencing serious problems resulting in an overheated WiFi chip with as result a greyed out WiFi button in the settings screen. 

This results in lost WiFi communication and -because both the WiFi and Bluetooth are integrated in the same chip-  in lost or severely deteriorated Bluetooth communications.
The serious overheating of this WiFi chip on the mainboard results in an unusable iPhone 4S.  (Unfortunately I have hands-on experience myself)

According to Apple the WiFi chip was "most likely already broken" before the upgrade took place and the customer just was not aware of this. And it is just 'coincidence' that now after the upgrade to iOS7 the phone's WiFi and Bluetooth completely stopped working.

As you can see from the below threads desperate Apple iPhone 4S customers are trying out every possible way up to even using fridges and hairdryers to get their phones working !

Up to now Apple in no way is supporting these thousands? of users affected and even states  (like in my case) that the upgrade to iOS 7 was fully 'at your own risk' 
(quote 'sir, it says so in the small print in the legal statement during the upgrade procedure' unquote)

History of the WiFi problem
This problem not only occurs now with iOS 7 but also occurred last year with the introduction of iOS 6. 

Doug Aamoth of TIME Magazine wrote an article on June 3, 2013 on his identical problems:  
At that time however most iPhone 4S customers could still claim warranty since iOS 6 was introduced shortly after the iPhone 4S. This kept this issue less relevant and thus drew less anger and frustration.


Practically all iPhone4s users now find they're (just a few months) out of warranty.
With the iPhone 5 introduced in September 2012 and now iOS 7 introduced in September 2013.

The result is that our iPhones 4s phones -in quite a few cases only just over a year old-  are now without working WiFi, Bluetooth and oftern with a degenerated Battery life of in most cases only a few hours. This all makes our iPhones completely unusable

I would like to bring this under your attention since Apple is -as you see in these discussions- not giving any support or comment on these cases.
Their line: 'sheer coincidence', as you can read from the communication between the owners of broken iPhone4s phones and Apple support employees.

For me, an affected user, with a now worthless iPhone, it feels very wrong when a company like Apple brings out a new faulty firmware iOS 7- which obviously does not work together well with a 'shaky' wifi chip- states it is meant for the iPhone 4, 4S and 5, 5C and 5S  and then shoves the responsibility on their customers by saying: you upgraded at your own risk.

As you can understand I am very frustrated in the support Apple is giving her customers.
Even more so knowing Apple made over $ 6 billion profit in just the third quarter of 2013.

If you have any further questions, please feel free in contacting me. 

Very best regards,

Bin Kroon

more information:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5331834?start=60&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5328365?start=390&tstart=0
or just do a google search on " iphone 4s wifi greyed out" 

below is an excerpt of one of my articles on this issue on the apple discussions pages:

Let me sum up my observations in these discussions here on the Apple Discussion pages:

Everyone having a problem in these discussions have the following problem:
  • All phone affected are IPhone 4s
  • All problems occured after the upgrade to iOS7
  • The issue we are experiencing is a greyed out WiFI button, which was not greyed out before.
  • We have tried all options advised by Apple to resolve this issue.
  • We are all unable to solve this problem ourselves constructively, although some of us have managed adhoc 'fixes' like hairdryers or using the fridge to 'cool off' the wifi chip.
  • Our iPhone 4s's  were operating without any noticable problems prior to the upgrade to iOS7
The above makes me to draw the following conclusion:
There is a clear pattern and these are obviously not individual cases. It appears the wifi chip of the iPhone 4s is being of a substandard quality and not being not fully compatible with the new iOS firmware which causes this problem. Also most of the beta testing over the past months was done using the iPhone 5 and not the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4s. Most likely because the 4 series were not part of the large scale testing Apple was not fully aware of this accelerated issue with the Wifi chip (when you do a Google search on "iPhone greyed out wifi" you see that this issue is not new, and you see the issue involves mostly the 4s ) But it seems iOS 7 pushed these weak and thus unreliable wifi chips just over the edge, causing them to overheat and thus to stop functioning alltogether.
Apple must be fully aware of this issue by now but they are incredibly silent in communicating with their in my estimation  'multiple thousands' of customers worldwide experiencing this problem. Apple only sticks by claiming the upgrade to iOS7 is "at your own risk" (that's what I was told) and sticking to the warranty period
(I bought my iPhone in Aug 2012, so am out of Apple warranty)
For the iPhone 4S, Apple seems to have used a faulty WiFi chip which in some cases seems not to be able to handle the load of the iOS. This can lead to overheating issues which can eventually cause a hardware failure

  • As customers in good faith we bought this product 
  • We paid a large amount of money  (I paid some $800 last year) since we believed we bought a quality product in the believe we could use it -with good care of course- for at least 2, 3 or even 4 years to come
  • We upgraded the firmware from iOS 5 or 6 to iOS 7 since Apple advised us to do so (as is very obvious from the constant messages in the settings menu of the iPhone and in iTunes)
  • We followed all the regular procedures as advised by Apple in the upgrade
  • There is no way how Apple could hold us responsible for having done a 'wrong' installation, making us responsible for our own actions.
  • Apple has been aware for over a year the Apple 4S WiFi chip is not reliable (A Google search on iPhone 4S Wifi greyed out will proof my point) and was therefor fully aware this "greyed out" problem - which also occurred when iOS 6 was introduced, might very likely occur again with the introduction of iOS 7. 
  • Since Apple did not inform her customers of this risk the customers were not given the choice to either upgrade (knowing the risks) or staying with the previous (working) version.
  • Apple does not enable the users to return to the previous version of iOS, and even if Apple would allow the users to return to a previous version, there is a great risk the hardware has become seriously damaged already in the upgrade to iOS 7, making this not a feasible option.
As result of this us, we, customers are now stuck with an unusable iPhone for which we paid plenty of money and so support from Apple whatsoever in solving this issue.

I feel that Apple should take their responsibility and help her customers in solving this quality issue.
( One thing I am sure of, if Apple would be a car manufacturer or an airplane manufacturer they would never get away with this, and would be forced to do a recall)

My message to Apple:

You know thousands of your customers are affected by this fault. It is now time to act. Taking responsibility never hurts (even if you for some reason feel you are not fully to blame) It gives you credit. And credit gives you loyal customers.



TOGETHER WE ARE STRONG: 
I want to ask all Apple iPhone 4S users experiencing this problem to sign this petition in which we ask Apple to resolve this matter in an acceptable manner.
Please feel free to respond, to comment, forward, or 'like' this page. Thank you!


 I will try and keep you all informed to the best of my ability.

Best regards,
Bin Kroon,
The Netherlands


For more information please also follow the following links:






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