Sunday, April 10, 2011

3G Connection Issues on Verizon iPad 2?

A growing discussion over at Apple’s support forum seems to indicate that several iPad 2 owners are experiencing issues with the Verizon version of the tablet. 3G connectivity problems seem to happen randomly, but in one specific case easy to reproduce, the tablet simply refuses to connect to Verizon’s network.

The issue seems to be triggered by users who turn off the 3G connection of their iPad 2 via the Settings app, while on a plane, for instance. Once the 3G connection of the tablet is enabled again, the iPad 2 seems to be unable to detect Verizon’s network, and can take up to 5 minutes to finally reconnect to 3G. In some extreme cases, the iPad 2 will not reconnect at all, and will display the dreaded “Searching…” message on the top corner of the screen instead.

In this case, the only way to get the iPad 2 to reconnect is to reboot the device by holding both Home and Sleep buttons simultaneously for more than 10 seconds – a painful process to get the device back online.
Some comments from disgruntled users on Apple’s forum:

When I try to connect to the cellular data it just says iPad or Searching in the top of the screen. It did work last night. If I do a hard reset I can get it to work. Switching Airplane mode on and off to reset the modem does NOT work. Anyone have any ideas?

Easy way to duplicate: turn off cellular, then reboot normally. 3G will not come back regardless if switched on or off. Only way to turn back on is to 1) switch cellular back to ‘on’ and 2) reboot. All time consuming… Tried restoring, didn’t help……

On my issue, when 3G is turned off followed by unit, it doesn’t come back regardless of toggle but CAN comeback if you leave it in the on switch, then reboot

At this stage, it’s unclear whether all Verizon-compatible iPad 2s are affected by the problem, or only a subset. Some potentially good news though: iOS 4.3.2 should be released soon, and will address “bugs that have affected users.” With some luck, the 3G connectivity bug will be squashed by this new release.

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