Tag - slideshow

Tonight I failed the husband geek-test: fixing something electronic for your wife.

“But it’s not my fault,” I told my wife. “It’s Apple’s fault – WiFi is buggy on the iPhone.” And I think that’s more than a excuse. I think it’s true.

Here’s the deal: we have a wireless network. My iPhone connects to it when I’m home, as does her iPhone. No fuss, no muss: fast free connection to the internet.

But when Teresa puts her phone in Airplane mode at night (as do I) and then wakes it back up again in the morning, turning Airplane mode off … WiFi never comes back automatically.

On my iPhone, turning Airplane mode off returns the phone to the state it was in when Airplane mode was first activated. On my wife’s, it changes the state to something different. In other words, it does not fully undo Airplane mode.

Now, before you ask:

• same phone (iPhone 3G)
• same firmware (latest updates from Apple)
• same settings (General, network, WiFi, you name it)
• OK, hers is black and mine is white

So what gives? In doing some googling, I notice that someone has the exact opposite problem. Others, on Apple’s support forums, have the same problem. Some can fix it by resetting network settings, some can’t. (You can put us in the can’t category.)

Very, very, very odd.

Here’s a visual overview of the problem in a slideshow: