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New Member

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3 Messages

Saturday, December 4th, 2021 3:54 AM

Two new iPhone 12 Minis - one connects to 5G, the other does not

Hi all,

I've recently purchased 2 new 12 Minis, one for my son and the other for my daughter. Both are on my family's Unlimited plan. My son's phone was an old line, adding a new device. Transferred from an iPhone 6S. My daughter's was a new line, new device.

My son has reported that his phone never seems to connect to 5G - it is always listing its cellular connection as an LTE connection. My daughter's is successfully connecting to 5G.

We explored my son's Settings>Cellular>Cellular Data Options to see if we could toggle a preference for 5G connections. We noticed this difference:

Daughter's Cellular Data Options settings (connecting to 5G):

Son's Cellular Data Options settings (NOT connecting to 5G):
Note the lack of "Voice & Data" settings sub-menu. 
The only real difference between the devices that I can identify is that son's was activated/transferred from legacy device (iPhone 6S) and daughter's was set up fresh with an Apple ID but not restored from any other device. 
Both phones are running 15.1.1. 
Steps already attempted on son's phone:
  • Toggled on/off Airplane Mode
  • Reset Network Settings
  • Reset All Settings
  • Uninstalled/Re-installed SIM card
  • Wiped phone and restored from iCloud backup

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

ACE - Expert

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21.8K Messages

2 years ago

We had a similar issue with different iPhones and iOS's. Have a Corporate Store install a new SIM. A new SIM corrected that issue for 3 of our 4 iPhones. Chat Support won't be able to help other than what they've suggested. It's not your phone, it's on the AT&T side of things and my guess is that your account settings got corrupted for one of your lines.

ACE - Sage

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111K Messages

2 years ago

Agree with @OttoPylot    his sim or line isn't provisioned for 5g.

New Member

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112 Messages

2 years ago

 Ah yes, the classic case of "just swapping the sim" from the old phone to the new phone and not bothering to update the IMEI on your account out of convenience.  Well as you can see, that convenience has a cost.  And the cost is not getting 5g. 

ACE - Expert

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64.6K Messages

2 years ago

@sidney_ponson To be fair, iphone imei’s typically update automatically and no action on the part of the customeris needed.

New Member

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1 Message

2 years ago

@irishlake yeah I'm facing the same issue too what should I do for solution any idea or video tutorial for this....

New Member

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3 Messages

2 years ago

@sidney_ponson we didn't transfer the old SIM in either old device to either new device.

ACE - Expert

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21.8K Messages

2 years ago

About a year ago at this time I was gifted a new iPhone 12. So I just took the SIM out of my iPhone 8 Plus and installed it in the new phone (it was a SIM-less iPhone 12 purchased directly from Apple). That worked just  fine. I took the iPhone to an AT&T Corporate Store because I wanted the newest SIM version in case I decided to update the phone to 5G one day. My son took the iPhone 8 Plus, installed SIM from his older iPhone and he was good to go.

Fast forward to about mid-October and everything fell apart when we switched our plan to the Unlimited Starter. None of our iPhones would work correctly for various functions until we installed the newest 5G SIMs, even tho only one iPhone is 5G capable. But even doing that it took a long time for AT&T to straighten out the account and we actually had to get the OOP involved. There are some serious issues on AT&T's back end, some of which are related to the 3G/4G shutdown that the IT Engineers are trying to figure out one, why it's happening and two, why is it so random.

And yes, the IMEI's do get updated automatically but there is something going on that prevents that from happening as it should be for some customer's which is causing issues.

(edited)

ACE - Expert

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33.2K Messages

2 years ago

I just had a weird issue with a different carrier.  Did the SIM swap.  New phone (including IMEI) showed up on the carrier's portal for the line.  Could call and receive calls. Had data.  Could send texts.  Couldn't receive texts.  Took a 90 minute chat session, with an elevation up to a technical support rep to resolve.

ACE - Expert

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21.8K Messages

2 years ago

@JefferMC Apparently there is something going on with other carriers as well. It took us awhile working with the engineers to resolve our SMS and 2FA issues, which are actually separate configurations on the AT&T side so it's interesting that you had a similar issue with a different carrier. We eventually were able to send/receive SMS but not 2FA for a couple of days.

New Member

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3 Messages

2 years ago

@OttoPylot just following up - AT&T store service staff installed new SIM card and all is functioning as intended. I literally said to them, "a very well-informed person on your community forums suggested that we install new SIM cards and/or re-provision the lines. I've already tried x,y,z." And they were like "No problem! We will do that right now." Took 15 minutes. Thank you for your help. Really appreciate your insight and support. This forum seems like a very excellent source for crowd-sourced support.

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