Q: iPhone 5 and "NO SIM CARD INSTALLED" error

I got the same message. I tried blowing it but it did not work for me. I will head to AT&T for a replacement sim card

When I got up this morning top status bar show "No sim card" on my brand new iPhone 5.

Turning power off and on again brought signals bar again. I hope this doesn't recur.  I had similar problem with 3G.  This is disappointing.  Apparently this happened in 4 and 4S.  Any solutions ?

Crap!!  I was first in line at the apple store for launch. I wanted this phone so bad!!  Got the black 64Gb iPhone 5 and after 1 hour of using it. "No SIM card". Power off and it worked again. For at least 45min. Then "no SIM card" again. This time removing card and cleaning, powering off, everything I can think of and still does not work. Well looks like Genius Bar for me.

I keep getting this error as well.  I have the White 64GB iphone 5 for AT&T.  I have been powering the phone down and turning it back on in order to have the phone connected to AT&T again.  It's has happened 3 times in the past 4 hours.  I hope there is a fix soon!

I had the same problem. Last night, when I went to charge my iPhone 5 for the first time, I had an error message displayed, "No SIM Card Installed".

This is what I did to solve the problem.

Powered the phone down.

I removed the SIM card.

Use a small paper clip and insert in the sim card hole and push firmly. Don't use a large paper clip. While they fit the hole, are too large to push on the mechansim that pops the card up.

I lightly cleaned the SIM card contacts with an alcohol prep swab (the kind they use when you get a shot). Just so you know, I did try dry cleaning the card with a soft cloth at first, but it didn't work for me. Try it, if you don't have the prep swab, it might work for you.

I then made sure the card was dry of the alcohol before I reinserted the card in the phone.

Restarted the phone.

This solved my problem. The phone booted up normally.

I hope it solves your problem too.

I have the 5. It did it once. But to me that's once too many and I took it by AT&T and had the Sim replaced. They said that they had a few people with the same problem come in today.

I've had my AT&T white 32Gb iPhone 5 for two days now and all of the sudden its like it went crazy. Within a few minutes of each other I had it send out a jibberish pocket-email, compose a ransom-note inspired emoj email and if that wasn't scary enough I got the dreaded "No SIM car installed" error. Rebooting the phone didn't clear up the problem, at least initially, but on he third attempt the card seemed to work again. 

Well they gave me a new phone at apple, and so far this one seems fine.  Using the same sim card so it looks like a hardware problem.

I was thinking about going to apple but being that its intermittent I would think that if they could not replicate it they would say the phone is fine.

I was up and running for a day then after a restore I received the "No SIM card Installed". I tried turning off and removing the SIM (dug out the SIM remover from my 3GS) powered back up but no success. Getting frustrated I removed the SIM with the phone powered and I'm now back up and running.

I too had the same problem with the NO SIM CARD error.  Tech support had me reboot several times and remove the SIM card, and blow into the slot.  Nothing brought the phone back.  They told me I needed to go to the Verizon store to get a new sim card but I needed to wait until Monday since they did not have any now.  This morning on Sunday after reading about cleaning the SIM card with an alcohol wipe I tried that and phone is now working.

Same "no sim" message here with  16 gb iPhone 5 on AT&T. cleaned sim and rebooted. Worked for awhile but now no sim message is back. I guess it's back to AT&T on Monday. Hope it just a bad sim and not a handset problem.

Yesterday morning I experienced this twice.  Both times all I did was restart.  I have been using it since with no issues.