SOLVED: crazy AT&T with new iPhone 16

BACKGROUND

I helped someone set up a new iPhone 16 (not Pro or Max) about 6 weeks ago. He has AT&T and was upgrading from his iPhone 13 Mini. His wife has an iPhone 15 Pro Max. They have two Apple watches. They all share a cellular plan. His AT&T online customer account showed 5G listed under feature details.

PROBLEMS

His brand new iPhone 16 somehow had a corrupt eSim.

I set up the new iPhone by restoring it from the iPhone 13 mini iCloud backup. That went well. The phone asked to activate and transfer the phone number. Calling and texting worked.

A few days later, the owner emailed me that he could only call and receive calls while home. I went to his house. I took a screenshot of the FTM Dashboard after dialing *3001#12345#* on his iPhone 16. The data above the radio stats was incomplete even though it had 1 or 2 cellular bars.

His iPhone 16 had wifi calling enabled, which is why calling worked at home.

On his iMac, I logged into his AT&T account and generated a new eSim for his phone number. That pushed the process to his iPhone 16. I took another screenshot after dialing *3001#12345#* and it showed the formerly missing info at the top. We turned off wifi calling and tested calling ok. Then I had him drive a mile or two away and we tested calling ok again.

BUT every few days, the iPhone 16 would lock up with a black screen while the owner wasn't using it, e.g., while it was in his pocket or sitting on a table. Only a hard reset could wake it. Just pressing the power button wouldn't do anything. He took it to a local Apple store and it passed their diagnostics, so they said they fixed it by doing a hard reset. Then it happened again a few days later and the same Apple store ran diagnostics again and assured the owner that it wouldn't happen again.

Then a few days later it happened again. I tutored the owner on doing a hard reset, which he had trouble executing.

I called Apple this time since the store refused to replace the phone and the 14-day no-questions-asked return period had passed.

Apple phone support agreed to replace the iPhone even though they'd normally require trying erasing and restoring it in case that fixed it. I told them it would take too much time and it's too risky for the owner who couldn't risk missing medical-related calls.

This iPhone 16 has no games on it, no social media apps or any other fishy/phishy apps. It's pretty basic with just a few mainstream apps, like Uber and Audible.

The replacement iPhone 16 arrived a few days ago.

I set it up by restoring from an iCloud backup, which went well.

BUT transferring the phone number to the new phone failed 4 times in a row with a notice to call the carrier.

So I called AT&T support from another line.

The AT&T agent said he'd do it manually. I read the new iPhone 16's IMEI etc to him.

It failed for him, too!

He contacted his advanced help and came back with this bizarre explanation that's only conceivable for a messed up company like AT&T: he said the phone number was associated with a 4G cellular plan and couldn't be set up with an iPhone 16, which uses 5G. I told him I was logged into the owner's AT&T cellular account and could see that the shared plan was described as 5G. I also told him that the iPhone 13 mini used the same number and 5G no problem. And the wife's iPhone 15 Pro Max also uses 5G fine.

He said there's hidden info about the plan just for that phone number that shows it was on a 4G plan. Unbelievable!

Rather than try to work through the illogical insanity of that, he said we could change the plan for the owner's phone number to make it work. He tried that but the number still wouldn't transfer to the replacement iPhone 16. He consulted with his advanced support again.

SOLUTION

He said he needed to change the entire shared plan for all devices to fix it. It was only $5-$10 monthly more for the whole thing, so we had him change it. It worked! The phone number transferred to the replacement iPhone 16.

The AT&T agent said his advanced support people claimed that sometimes (?!) a new iPhone will work even when a phone number's plan is still 4G. That might explain why the iPhone 13 Mini worked and why the first iPhone 16's initial eSim was messed up but its replacement eSim worked.

AT&T's back-end (programs running behind the scene to serve customer webpages etc) is so old and so many long-gone programmers have worked on it that it's an unbelievable piece of garbage. The CEO of AT&T is more of a figure head like a king or queen. The royal CEO is completely out of touch with the mayhem on the streets among its peasant users.

Steve Jobs main skill was being a customer advocate -- he monitored Apple's products and critiqued them unmercifully. The opposite of places like AT&T. It's miraculous Jobs was able to force AT&T into being halfway decent during AT&T's exclusive 5-year run when the first iPhones came out.