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Want a second carrier for your iPhone that won’t break the bank? Try Visible

Anthony Bouchard / May 3, 2021

It wasn’t long ago that I shared my personal experience with using the Google Fi cellular service as a secondary carrier on my iPhone. But my curiosity pertaining to a dual carrier setup on my iPhone led to me to research several other Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), and you can probably take a few accurate guesses as to where that rabbit hole took me.

Upon being blown away by Google Fi’s cellular reception and data speeds, I decided to drop AT&T as my primary carrier and switch over to T-Mobile. To those asking why – the T-Mobile network powers Google Fi in my region, and the un-carrier provided an enticing offer after announcing its new truly unlimited Magenta MAX plan earlier this year for a fraction of what I was paying AT&T.

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How to optimize 5G on your iPhone for speed or battery life

Christian Zibreg / October 27, 2020

By default, your iPhone uses the Smart Data mode feature in iOS to ensure that 5G data (and voice) are used only when doing so provides a noticeably better experience. You can manage your 5G settings if you'd like to manually optimize 5G networking on the handset. In this post, you’ll learn how to optimize 5G on your iPhone for either speed or power consumption.

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Fix cellular data errors after updating to iOS 14

Guest Author / September 18, 2020
Cellular update failed error message

After updating your iPhone, it is possible that the baseband firmware which controls your cell signal got corrupted. You may see an alert on your phone that says that the cellular update failed, or you may see a message in your cellular settings that says an update is required to use cellular data on your device. This can be frustrating to deal with, but this article will walk you through some basic troubleshooting and then an advanced solution if all else fails.

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NetworkManager gives iPhone users more control over cellular radio selection

Anthony Bouchard / July 10, 2019

As you move from one part of town to the next, your iPhone intelligently moves from one cellular connection to another in an effort to maintain the highest-quality internet connection that it can. Unfortunately, sometimes the iPhone favors slower connections with a higher signal over faster connections with a lower signal, and this can impact performance.

Those who’d like to have more control over their handset’s cellular network selection might take a liking to a newly-released jailbreak tweak dubbed NetworkManager by iOS developer NoisyFlake, as it lets you switch between preferred network type(s) on the fly.

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