Chosen Solution

Hi! I’m experiencing huge cellular reception issues after upgrading from iPhone 5 to iPhone 6. All from drop outs in calls, other end cannot hear me, and general very poor reception on places where I had good reception with my iPhone 5 and the same carrier/sim card. I have tried all the software things: New sim cardLock it to 3GReset network settings So I may think that there is some problems with the hardware antennas. Does anyone know where the actual cellular antenna(s) is located on the iPhone 6? Is it the one down with the lightning port or is it one on the top? Or maybe both are used as cellular antennas? Thanks for the help!

The case it’s self are the antennas. Best to get it exchanged at the Apple Store or your carrier as it it likely covered under warranty. Update (07/02/2017) Let me expand on how the body is designed. There appears to be some confusion on where the antennas are. Here is an image showing the bare case from the inside where you can see the isolation of the antenna bands which are the top & bottom sections of the body:

If you look at the green marked sections you can see there are two isolators the white plastic and the black injection that glues things together. How this is done can effect the effectiveness of your phones ability to send & receive signals. Many knockoffs don’t use the dual isolators so the effectiveness of the antennas can be effected as the material choice may not offer enough impedance. Here are the two antennas upper bus bar assembly and the lower antenna cable

There is one more antenna piece the logic board bus bar assembly which also has the NFC antenna the rectangular bar, Unlike the other antenna’s this one is aligned right at the insulator (just enough of a signal window) so its focused directly down:

The screws that hold the bus bar need to be spotless (nothing underneath the screws head). Make sure you wipe the surfaces with a reagent isopropyl alcohol as you don’t want the impurities to interfere with the signal as well as your finger oils. The logic bus bar also has a label on it which isolates it the from the case if the label is missing or shifted it can effect the signal. A phone thats gotten wet can have a film of corrosion build up that effects the effectiveness of the transmission. Corrosion on the bus bars also can effect there ability to carry the signal to the case antennas and lastly the antenna screw hole surface (mounts) also can get corroded. Using a pink pencil eraser can clean off the film from the circuit board gold contacts. A more aggressive grey pen eraser can clean the case mounts. You may need replace the bus bars if they are badly corroded.

Hi Martin, sorry for my bad english, just imagine my german accent while reading and have fun with it. So i had the same problem with a iPhone6. After trying almost everthing i could read here, i found the “connection sticker” on the clear copper field of the double antenna flex. https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/ig… This sticker was not on the copper and coudn’t connect to the metal peace behind the display. I put the sticker back in its position and the phone back together. After a restart and a reset of the network settings the iPhone quickly found a Service. I hope this helps! Stefan

We are seeing more and more of these in our shop in San Francisco, four in the last 10 days in fact. We’ve seen them occasionally over the last year but now we are starting to see them more regularly. In most of these cases the metal casing is bent. When we bend it back (ie. straighten it out) we are able to re-establish service. I never knew if this was a lasting solution because we never heard back from people. We’ve always warned people that we don’t know if the connection will last. Two customers recently followed up a couple of days after we got it working and told us it wasn’t working again. I have a theory based on similar problems over the years with other models. I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere changing the flex cable or other antennas. I believe this is an IC chip issue. My theory is that when the phone casing bends, the circuit board bends. The circuit board bending causes the solder connections for the chip that deals with cellular reception to break. By straightening the casing and thus, the circuit board the chip makes the connections to the broken solder joints and we are able to temporarily get the phone on a cellular network. But, the damage has already been done and the solder joints are still broken which means they probably aren’t going to keep making contact if the phone is dropped or just even used in a day to day manner. Unless you know how to do a BGA solder repair there is no permanent fix for this issue.

you are correct my apologies the grounding clip is indeed on the 5S the “fake cellular " thing seems odd. can you possibly test the phone with a different Sim , preferably a different carrier?

Hello friends. The cellular antenna is the dock connector iPhone 6 Lightning Connector and Headphone Jack Notwithstanding, the signal of the antennas of the iPhone, is a set of several pieces well embedded within the iPhone. As the staff this already indicating above, you need to check if everything is in place ..

I have a question. Will iphone 6s antenna be supported by iphone 6???