Signal iPhone 16

[Jod_xo]

Hi, 

My phone struggles to get bars of signal a lot, 

A spanner sign comes up and my mobile data and bars of signal won’t come on. 

In areas where other people are able to connect and use there phone fine, so I was wondering is this an issue with my phone itself? Is there settings I need to be checking. I’ve tried airplane mode , turning it on and off but still having these problems. 

Thank you 

[Northerner]

@bristolian 

No but it would on the data if the signal strength was already poor which the OP is implying. Henve the question.

Yes the sim is working fine in my phone , 

It is when I’m out of the house and at work and in theatres etc it looses signal and I have the spanner appear 

 In theatres and at work could just be coverage and traffic/ interference especially in theatres.

Thanks 

[bristolian]

If the coverage is poor, then that's the underlying issue and I maintain a VPN is immaterial.

The OP mentioned that other users are continuing to use their phones in the affected location, which still suggests an individual issue rather than a general/network one.

What is it about the radio environment in a theatre specifically that you think would cause poor coverage?

[Jod_xo]

So yesterday I was at a theatre interactive where we had to open our camera and join a link to participate, everyone In my group of people could all do it but mine wouldn’t because the signal bars was low and the spanner kept coming up. 

So I wasn’t sure if I needed to check anything in my settings or do something to help with signal 

or is it my internet browser do you think? 

[bristolian]

If everyone else in the group was able to perform this function and you couldn't, then self-evidently it's not a network issue but something specific to your device.

The one exception would be if this is a poor coverage area for EE, and everyone else was on other networks.

 Can you use other internet-based functions on your phone at the same time?

Regardless, the two-way SIM swap remains the way to go. Prove the issue to SIM or phone.

[Jod_xo]

Thank you so much for all your help. 

I will try the sim swap next time this happens! 

When you say internet based functions on my phone, what do you mean? As in watsapp , other apps if so.. no nothing works when the signal bars go and spanner comes on, when this has happened. 

[bristolian]

Yes - WhatsApp, BBC News, Sky Sports, pick your favourite app, these all use the internet and so without a working connection, they won't work.

What I was trying to eliminate, was whether this was an issue specific to the app/function in question, or if (as sounds likely) this is a coverage issue in general. All the symptoms you've described are natural consequences of a loss of coverage. So you need to identify what's causing the loss of coverage...

A SIM/account issue could do so, but it would do so everywhere and not be specific to a location. Your SIM works in another phone, so that's case closed.

A phone issue could do, and there's numerous ways that it could only "show up" in certain circumstances. Putting a known working SIM in your phone, will prove this either way.

A network issue could cause loss of coverage, but it would do so for every user of that network in the location. By seeing other people use their phones in the same place, would suggest this isn't the case.. but ask them if they're using EE.

There's nothing specific about a theatre that should cause these symptoms. Radio microphones, to take one example of an urban myth, are in common use in numerous other places, and operate on totally different frequencies to both 4G & 5G telecoms.