3G to LTE handoff

[ramzez]

I have recently switched to Verizon and got iPhone 6 for my wife and me. What i noticed is that it takes very long time to switch back to LTE in places where 3G has stronger signal. I wonder if that's a network configuration issue or Apple's bug. Here are the 2 examples i observed recently:

1. When i leave work everyday i get 3G in the lift and it takes very long time to get back to LTE. Unless i force network search by toggling airplane mode.

2. When traveling if i am using TuneIn, Pandora or Maps, the signal drops to 3G it takes about 20-30 minutes to get back to LTE, although my wife's phone gets LTE much quicker.

I understand that usually network is chosen by the networks strength but 3G on Verizon is very very slow so it should be preferred option to always use LTE regardless of the signal strength. Since iPhone doesn't allow user to choose the preference i guess it is network configuration. And it would be interesting to hear if anyone else noticed it and if Verizon knows the issue and working on the fix.

Thanks.

[Weth]

I Notice this too.  I suspect it is a power saving compromise.  I remember several phones that would constantly search for a higher standard and use up batteries when you were in a low signal or old tech area only.  I saw this with 1x to EVDO 3G and again with the first LTE iPhone, the iphone 5. 

i am not sure if it is Apple or Verizon triggering this.  Having had batteries die quickly in the situations I described above, I'll take the power saving logic any day. 

[stef7]

It would be nice if the strategy was described somewhere and if you had a means to select if you wanted to prioritize speed over battery savings.

[heedshot]

Try activating advanced calling by selecting LTE to do voice and data. This "should" help as it trys to keep LTE for Voice and txting as well as data

[ramzez]

heedshot yeah i have voice and data activated

[ramzez]

still see the same issue

[Loquat]

I've bee having the same isue for quite some time with my iP6+.  I noticed that someone said try activating advanced calling...I've done that as well as the handoff isn't any better and I experience a lot of dropped calls using advanced calling.  I haven't complained much about it because I know it was (and probably still is) in beta and I believe it made mention that there could be call quality issues while using it.

And you're also right...the only way I can get my phone to go back to LTE is if I manually try and force it to...otherwise it'll happily stay on 3G for a while. 

[stef7]

Same thing reported with iPhone5s under this topic:

Re: iPhone 5S won't convert back to LTE once on 3G...

See this post by smith6612 of August 31st.

Re: iPhone 5S won't convert back to LTE once on 3G...

[vzw_customer_support]

Loquat, we don't want this to be an ongoing issue on your new iPhone 6 Plus. Try resetting the network on your device in Settings>General>Reset>Reset Network. Power your device off/on to soft reset and keep us posted.

LasinaH_VZW
Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport

[trada45]

I have also been having issues with this same thing. I can't get more then 2 bars of LTE every and my imessages will not send and sometimes my text won't either. I never had this problem on my iphone 4. So frustrating and I have done a hard reset several times.