Over the weekend, I upgraded from an iPhone 4 on AT&T to an iPhone 4S on Verizon. For the most part, I’ve been happy with it. But I did have to fix a couple problems. Here are the problems I had, and the solutions I found.

Contact names not showing up for text messages or incoming calls

My wife, myself, and several other people had this issue. Fortunately there’s a solution:

  1. Open the Phone and dial *228. This is a Verizon over-the-air programming number.
  2. When the system answer press 1 for “Program or activate your phone”
  3. Wait for the call to disconnect. You should get a prompt stating something like, “Settings updated.”
  4. Open the Task Manager and kill the Phone, Message, and Contacts Applications
  5. Wait a few minutes (I waited 3 just to be extra safe)
  6. Open the Message App to verify the fix. If you are still broken, kill the Message App again, then reboot your phone.

Siri having trouble connecting to the network

Before you try this, be aware that your phone will reboot immediately, and that you’ll lose your saved wi-fi networks and passwords.

Launch the Settings.app, go into the General tab followed by the Reset tab and tap the Reset Network Settings button

If that doesn’t work, try this more detailed solution.