Mobile shows full data but cannot connect within 1/3-1/2 mile of the house

beckstar1975

16yo has an iphone XR but cannot get any data within the above range of the house. She's on Vodafone, as is her dad - he has no issue with data at all in the same area so I am wondering if it's a setting on her phone somehow?

Can anyone think of what this could be? She has Life 360 installed on the phone and so I'm wondering if it's something to do with that?

Any ideas?

savergrant

Does she get a strong signal for calls near home?
Some phone models do seem to have better aerials in my experience, but not familiar with the model. Could you try swapping their sims to see if it is the phone or the sim?

SiliconChip

Is it possible that she has wifi turned on and it is connecting to the home router at a distance, overriding the mobile data, but so weakly that it's unable to actually access any data?

cerebus

If her dad has an apple phone then I would compare settings, I don't know apple but make sure WiFi is turned off and check the mobile data is not set to metered connection (not sure if apple has this)

oldernonethewiser

Is mobile data actually turned on?

Very easy to check as the display will show the connection speed, eg 4G or check via settings. 

beckstar1975

Hi - yes Wifi is off and mobile data is turned on, I can tell it too if I track her as she gets to within a certain radius of the house and then it 'jumps' when she's actually here, it stops tracking her (I've only done this with her permission to try and trouble shoot).

She's got the right settings too, her dad is Vodafone but using another operator (Lebara or Lyca, can't remember which).

She can call fine and her phone will show full bars and 4/5g - it's literally like there's some kind of Faraday's cage in the area immediately around the house that's blocking her from using data on her phone - which is a pain as it' means the TFL bus app doesn't work and she relies on buses daily

cerebus

Have you checked another has the sane issue in the same area?

If no issues then clearly there is no Faraday cage involved here

My best guess is something is turning off mobile data until she gets a certain distance from your house, could be some sort of data saving feature on a browser , find me app or other

Turn off GPS, stop all apps from running and maybe start in safe mode , and if mobile data starts working normally , turn on apps one by one until the issue reoccurs 

There's always the option to do a factory reset too 

beckstar1975

Thanks - yes DH is on a MVNO that uses Vodafone and has no issues so I think it's likely a setting on her phone (or more likely one of the find my type apps - she does lose a LOT of things including herself regularly hence having them - she's happy too as was spending a fortune replacing her zip after we'd done it 3 times). 

I'll try turning the apps off and on again, and try disabling Life 360 and seeing what that does as that's the culprit I suspect