Telfort iphone 4s ‘lost connection’ problem solved¶

Tags: apple

To replace my iphone 3, I bought an iphone 4s from Dutch provider Telfort a couple of days after it was out. Quite happy, especially because the connection I got was much better than the often-slow one from T-mobile (which was the only provider operating iphones when they first came out). I was not even using T-mobile’s 3G network as that was too unreliable.

Happy happy. Until two months or so ago when my phone started losing its network connection from time to time. It slowly became worse (which is weird), so I cannot pinpoint the cause.

• Perhaps one of the IOS updates as there are reports that older ones work fine. And my phone worked OK at the start.

• Perhaps Telfort? Other providers in the Netherlands seem to have fewer problems.

• Telfort apparently is the only provider that used a bad/incorrect/old batch of SIM cards, so the SIM card might also be the problem. For some people, from reading forums, getting a new SIM worked, for others not.

Telfort itself tells you to mail the phone to their repair shop. You don’t get a replacement and you lose it for two or three weeks. Most of the times they apparently fix the phone (or get you a new one), but sometimes you get it back the way it was. That’s what I got from reading some forums.

Solution (for me). On one of the (Dutch) forums I read the tip to install the “iPhone 4S iOS 5.1 Beta 3” (5.0.1 is the current stable one right now) from some site where they host those betas. I suppose that’s not the most legal of websites, but the 5.1 beta is a real IOS version, not some jailbreak thingy (as far as I can see). I could also install it just fine with iTunes, which even said it “verified the download with Apple”, which, I guess, means the md5 hash checked out OK. If being a terribly unofficial beta tester for apple means I don’t have to restart my iphone four times a day… :-)

Yeah, it works. No more “ongeldige simkaart” (invalid sim) or “netwerk niet gevonden” (network not found) for me.

Upon re-reading the info on the beta download site, it seems my iphone’s ID needs to be registered to some developer’s account to be able to install an IOS beta. Ah! That’s why it all works: I helped beta-test an iphone app a while ago, so my iphone’s ID is registered just fine. Which means that many people won’t be able to use this beta… So they’ll have to wait for the official 5.1 (which I’ll of course also use).

Well, the good news is that 5.1 will probably solve the connection problems.