[thehumble1]

I want to see what the community thinks about this situation. I have a 3G that I restored through iTunes to OS 3.0. I then JB'ed it with Redsn0w 0.8 and then unlocked with ultrasn0w. I thought that because I wasn't upgrading to 3.1 I should be fine.

I tried it with my GF's SIM and wasn't getting a signal, so I took it to work to mess with and realized that I had never actually installed Ultrasn0w, just the repo. I installed Ultrasn0w and thought all was well. When I put my SIM in it worked fine. I used it all day and had great reception.

I brought it home and gave it back to her. She put her SIM in and it said No Signal. I put my SIM in and it said No Signal. I tried rebooting, reinstalling Ultrasn0w and of course toggling 3G and Edge. At work it grabbed the signal right away, with or without Edge. Of course it lost signal when I put it on 3G.

But here's the junk. Once in a while it will get one, two, three or four bars of signal. Seemingly unconnected with what I'm doing. I'm wondering if I'm going after a software problem, but it is just a bad antenna connection (I guess you know now that I haven't opened it yet, I moved and can't find my screw drivers). Is there a reason why it would come and go like this? It sure does seem physical more than software, because it has been so sporadic.

I ran FuzzyBand and found that it has BL 06.02, which I thought means bad things. But luckily it's still on bootloader 04.26.08 so I guess it hasn't been upgraded to 3.1 ever. Am I right? Maybe since it's a craigslist purchase, someone botched a downgrade job and I'm stuck. BUT again, I used it all day at work.

Now I'm back at work and I can't get a signal on my SIM. I'm going to do a full restore to 3.0 (Apple version) then Redsn0w (0.8) with 3.0 and then ultrasn0w again. Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance for the feedback.

[Poseidon79]

Your course of action is the best one doing a full restore and re-jailbreak/unlock. This will clear up if its a software issue. If you still have problems you'll know it's faulty hardware.

[thehumble1]

Wow, thanks for the reassurance. At first I was sure the baseband was messed up, but when I saw it was 04.26.08 (which BTW you can't search for on MMI), I figured I had screwed something else up. I had, but even when I fixed that (ultrasn0w), it still doesn't work 100%.

I like being told that what I'm doing is along the right path... as long as it might work. I'm afraid that it's not working. I restored with FW 3.0 and then used Redsn0w 0.8 to JB then installed ultrasnow repo and installed ultrasn0w. Rebooted.

Still no signal.

Just to clear my mind though. If it has BB 04.26.08, I'm able to unlock right? Thanks.

One thing I didn't do as instructed was turn off 3G before I installed ultrasn0w. I turned it off after the reboot. Any idea if this is a serious problem?

[Poseidon79]

4.26.08 is the only baseband that ultrasn0w will unlock. The only thing left to try is restore again and borrow someone's AT&T iPhone sim card. If you get signal then we're back to square one.

[thehumble1]

okay!! I tried pushing down on the screen in a few places (because I forgot exactly where the antenna connection is. And after 20 seconds the t-mob signal popped up!! nice and strong. I let off. off it goes. I'm betting this is why I got it so cheap (2 for $100. I already sold the other 2G w/ cracked screen for $110). So as soon as I find my screw drivers, I'm going to pop it apart and see if I can't fix it permanent like. Thanks so much for helping me realize that I was doing the right stuff software wise, so I could quit barking up that tree for a bit.

[johninho]

did you fix this? i have a similar problem

[08lexus250]

interesting

[thehumble1]

okay, so I've found that if I clean the contacts on the SIM with contact cleaner it works for a while. I even ran a bit of sand paper into the SIM slot to try and remove any corrosion that was there and I got everything to work great for a day, with movement and being carried and everything. Then at the end of the day it just quit. Went back to only getting signal for a few seconds, if I take the card out and apply contact cleaner to it. It really seems like a bad connection in there, so I might have to take it apart and see if I can manually connect it and get good reception.

Anyone have history with a SIM that gives spotty service? I have tried two sims in it with the same response. Like something is getting knocked lose or not connecting right, but it happens even without any real movement. If I could just isolate the symptoms to something happening, it would be so much easier.

@johninho, what's your symptoms? have you gotten any signal at all? what have you done so far? is it different enough to warrant it's own post or being placed in another post?

[johninho]

i'll try the sim contacts cleaning and let you know.

i've pretty much disassembled the phone completely and can see no obvious signs of wear and tear etc.

I moved the "logic board" to another perfectly working iphone 3g phone and the issue followed the logic board.

My exact issue is that from what I can see i have no problems with receiving 3G signal. But the phone's ability to receive the 2g signal is definitely suffering, i have had an exact same model iphone on the exact same network right beside it and ran the "field test Mode" and the 2G signal was far worse on my phone and the 3G signal was similar.

So, the phone really only causes problems when the 3G service in an area is not as good (such as, in the countryside in Ireland) and it has to drop down to 2G.

I reckon that it isn't the same issue as yours, but i do see many "faulty" iphones for sale with similar signal symptoms, so it may be a known issue.

The problem remains with the phone, through OS/Baseband upgrades, non jailbroken/jailbroken etc.

I didn't notice the issue at first when i got the phone... it was my first iphone, so it may have "developed".

[thehumble1]

It actually sounds like a different issue because you have a consistently bad signal. I have one phone that has horrible reception because it has been taken apart too many times so the antenna cable does not sit snugly on it's port(mount), the weak connection greatly reduces the reception. My problem is that it isn't finding the carrier signal, probably because of not being able to read that portion of the SIM that tells it which carrier to search for, not because of a signal strength issue.

If you took it apart, make sure you correctly mounted the antenna cable and also that you keep your hands higher up on the phone. If you check out some YouTube vids, people are getting bad reception because if their hands being near the lower part of the phone. I don't know if this is your issue, but I know it's a known thing.

I don't know how the 2G service issue differs from the 3G, but it might be a signal processing problem, in which case you might have limited options. Good luck

[elduderinoo]

Originally Posted by johninho

i'll try the sim contacts cleaning and let you know.

i've pretty much disassembled the phone completely and can see no obvious signs of wear and tear etc.

I moved the "logic board" to another perfectly working iphone 3g phone and the issue followed the logic board.

My exact issue is that from what I can see i have no problems with receiving 3G signal. But the phone's ability to receive the 2g signal is definitely suffering, i have had an exact same model iphone on the exact same network right beside it and ran the "field test Mode" and the 2G signal was far worse on my phone and the 3G signal was similar.

So, the phone really only causes problems when the 3G service in an area is not as good (such as, in the countryside in Ireland) and it has to drop down to 2G.

I reckon that it isn't the same issue as yours, but i do see many "faulty" iphones for sale with similar signal symptoms, so it may be a known issue.

The problem remains with the phone, through OS/Baseband upgrades, non jailbroken/jailbroken etc.

I didn't notice the issue at first when i got the phone... it was my first iphone, so it may have "developed".

I think I have a similar issue. I have 3gs, and when I disable 3g in networks, the iphone is not being able to get any signal at all, it keeps popping "searching". When I activate 3G again, I get full bar signal. Problem is in places where is no 3g... I have a jailbreakean iphone and unlocked with ultrasnow. Im in firmware 3.1.2. I already tried restoring the firmware twice, though I believe it has something to do with the baseband, which is the old one (i need the unlock).
Any ideas?
thanks,,,
dante