iphone 3g and reception problems

[Anonymous]

I have this issue for a long time but it turned into a problem after iphone 4s.
I live in central london, between tottenham court road and holborn stations. After a period of inactivity (around 3-4 hours) I can't receive calls or texts. Only after I make a call or send a text, I can receive calls and texts another 2-3 hours. And the phone shows full reception while all these things happening. So there is no way to understand if the iphone is active or not.
Its a re-creatable problem, for example every morning I wake up, my phone is off the line. (again showing -wrong- full reception)
When I was using iphone 4, disabling 3g was solving this problem completely. Now after upgrading iphone 4s there is no way to do that.
When I call O2 Customer Services, they did not accept it as a reception issue instead they advised some steps to solve the problem:
1- disabling voice mail.
2- disconnecting/reconnecting my account.
3- replacing the sim card.
4- replacing the iphone 4s.
5- replacing the phone number.
I followed all the steps, disabled voicemail, reconnected my account, changed the micro sim, went to apple store and replaced the iphone 4s, finally purchased two seperate pay&go sim cards. none of them solved my problem.
Is anybody else having same issue?
summary:
when 3g active, iphone 4s shows full reception, can't receive calls after a period of inactivity, did everything customer service adviced, problem still there.
thanks.

[adamtemp64]

this has been reported before in another thread if you go here you can request the the 3g switch is added back into ios5 for 4s http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=69886&hilit=turn+off+3g

[Anonymous]

hi, thanks for the reply.
Already sent a feedback to apple.
I still think this is o2's reception problem, 3g should work properly. Unfortunately I can't test my iphone with any other gsm provider. its locked to o2 sim cards.

[Anonymous]

Update:
This is getting very weird. Today I found out how to see signal strength on the iphone(using *3001#12345#*).
I tested the phone both when its reachable and unreachable, signal strength shown by the phone was around -85db on both cases.
Also made a speed test:
While o2 was giving "its not possible to connect your call" message, my phone was showing 3g connection and speed test result was 1.86mbps down, 1.59mbps up, and 90 ms response.
I was getting "its not possible to connect your call" message before, during and after the this first test. Than I made an outgoing call which activated my line and repeated the test with the following results: 1.99mbps down, 1.56mbps up, and 96ms response.
So when the problem is there, 3g connection is working without problems and signal strength is stable but I am unable to receive calls or texts.
Any experts comments on this?
Will continue to test.

[Anonymous]

to rule out any effect of an installed app:
I erased my iphone and set up a new system
Disabled all push services.
No email account
No game center
No app store
No siri
No location services
No cloud
No wireless network
Basic iphone 4s setup, with everything disabled + o2 sim card.
And the result is the same; my phone line is off the line and again showing -wrong- full reception.

[Anonymous]

Exactly same problem described here too with my 4S. O2 are blaming Apple and Apple are blaming O2 - meanwhile O2 were happy to deprive me of £290 for the privilege of owning a device their very own network team state has too poor an antenna to utilise the 3G network properly!
Am rapidly running out of faith in O2 - there is clearly a process that is NOT occurring at their network end to facilitate the iPhone making calls via 3G.

[Anonymous]

I had exactly the same problem with my iPhone 3GS, AFTER updating to iOS 5.0.1. Not sure if it was there after just updating to 5, but definitely there with the latest version. So I think if it is a problem with O2, it's been introduced by Apple.
Like you, the only solution I had was to turn off the 3G. I don't appear to be having the same problem with my iPhone 4S, although I am having a 3G issue in a particular area near Reading where I have full 3G signal strength shown and yet no/little internet connection, so I would like the option to turn off 3G so I can check if an EDGE or GPRS connection is any better in this area.
I will try and confirm if the issue is with iOS5 by restoring my 3GS phone to an earlier OS at some point. If I have any success, I'll let you know.