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In text messages sent out Thursday, U.S. wireless carrier Sprint said it is working to fix an apparent LTE connectivity issue affecting iPhone users who updated to Apple's iOS 9.3 last week.
Customers affected by the bug are unable to connect to certain bands of Sprint's LTE network, according to a reddit post and users who contacted Apple via the company's new Twitter support account. MacRumors reported on the issue earlier today.
"Your iPhone may be having data connection issues w/ the recent software update. We're working quickly to fix. We apologize for the inconvenience," Sprint said in a free text message to affected users.
While a cause has yet to be identified, Sprint subscribers impacted by the issue are having trouble with 4G LTE data transfer reliability. Some have reported an inability to receive incoming messages, while others have seen their iPhone periodically fall back to Sprint's 3G network. Considering the symptoms, it seems Sprint's infrastructure might be to blame, meaning a fix would likely come as a carrier update.
Apple issued iOS 9.3 last week, introducing new features like Night Shift, secure Notes, additional 3D Touch functions and more. Shortly after the release, however, users complained of an activation problem on older devices, as well as a widespread Web links bug that resulted in app crashes. Apple addressed the activation issues earlier this week, while a patch for Web links was included in today's iOS 9.3.1 release.
Despite the problems, one analytics firm declared iOS 9.3 Apple's most stable release in years, noting a crash rate of just 2.2 percent.
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10 Comments
Hmm. Had that problem when originally updating from iOS 8 to iOS 9, back at that time, on my iPhone 4s on Ting (sprint).
Tok a little effort, but helpful people at Ting pushed some buttons and got it working again.
Sprint = worst carrier by far.
I've been with Sprint forever, and I've never had trouble with them.
If I'm understanding this correctly, the issue isn't with iOS 9.3, it's with the recent carrier update that Sprint pushed out around the same time.
I have great sympathy for Sprint customers who have to live with a crappy CDMA 3G network. Both of them.