Over the past few weeks as friends on my twitter timeline start picking up the iPhone 4S, I am noticing a specific issue with folks buying an iPhone 4S from UK. The iPhone fails to work with local carriers. Though the carrier name is detected, it shows no network bars at all. But this doesn’t end there, it gets a little more weird.
We were puzzled to see that these phones caught EDGE / 3G networks and that worked! Yes you can use data from the same SIM without any network bars or voice calls happening. We loaded web pages, download app, etc and it all works over the cellular network.
So far we have only seen this happening with iPhone 4S bought in UK and attempted to be used with Indian telecom operators (GSM).
One of our friend also tried the following troubleshooting advices he got:
- restore network settings
- erase all data
- reload iOS 5 firmware
- load a UK SIM and attempt to activate it (yes iOS 5 doesn’t need it, still tried)
- select network manually
It is clear that something is wrong with the network profiles or network settings on Apple’s part. We also wonder if folks roaming with an 4S in India would also face this? At the same time we are fairly certain that the upcoming iOS 5.01 would resolve this issue. Any one else with the same issue on the 4S?