Sim Card Failure No Sim with iPhone 4S Anyone Else?

Dear Sir

I live in sri lanka.my dad bought me an iphone 4s 32gb from apple store opera france..Today in the evening i connected to my cousin's wifi connection to check siri.it was working fine .after few minutes i got an error 'Invalid SIM'.then i got scared and i rebooted the iphone .then it says No sim .now my iphone 4s is not working.i tried removing the sim and reinstalling the sim back.there is no way to get the network connection(edge).

Please help me .

If there is a solution .please let me know .otherwise i have to ship my iphone to france .it will be very hard to do that .

Thanks

Francis Roshan

Don't send it back to France.

It's a software issue, not hardware.

Reinstall the iOS5 - just sync with iTunes, hit the restore button, and it'll clean the 4S off and reinstall everything.

I did that and everything was fine.

It's not the SIM.

This has so far happened to me twice. Same day, roughly same time, and at the same exact place. When I noticed I had no service in a place where i should have service I turned airplane mode on and off to see if it would help. My phone just told me "Sim Failure". Thought this was odd since im on Verizon and don't have a sim card.

32gig Black

Well....I just my second sim failure since Saturday. My fix then and now was to remove and reinstall the sim. Restart and hard reset did nothing.

Just set up a Genius appt for right after work to get this resolved.

There is also an AT&T at the same mall so they are my backup plan.

Steve

I have been speaking to friends who have iPhone 4S's; nearly all of them got new SIM cards with their phones and haven't encountered any problems.

I am now wondering if the 4S requires a new SIM card and this has not been widely stated by Apple.

If I encounter problems with my new handset (when it finally arrives) I will then try a new SIM from O2.

I received my phone from AT&T (pre-ordered & shiiped to house). It came with new sim card installed (Oct 20).

I had the "sim failure" / "invalid sim" twice.

Got new sim card later that day at AT&T store and have not had that problem since.

So - the first new sim which came with phone had the problem; the second which I got at the store seems OK.

So not all new sim cards are trouble free -- something else is going on.

By the way, the local newspaper tech editor (San Jose, CA -- Silicon Valley, home of Apple) had an article yesterday about the battery problem. I sent him the link to this board so he can (if he wishes) become aware of this issue too.

When my coverage is gone I turn of the sim pin code. I put on flight mode for 15sec after I turned it on I get coverage again than I return the pin code on. This helpes a few hours. If the new update 5.01 doesnt help I will defently go back to the apple store to get a new phone.

So....I go to my Genius appt. They determine they are going to replace my phone...but don't have a phone. Send me to another store that has my 64 Gig White phone. Wait about 15 minutes to see a Genius, he does some more tests and then swaps my phone for a new phone. All is good.

I get in the car and drive 20 minutes home. Pull my phone out to do the restore from backup. Guess what....Sim Failure. Not a happy camper.

Call the store back. Explain my situation. Puts me on hold to talk to Genius. Comes back on and tells me the next step would be to go to replace the sim at AT&T. Dummy me thought...new phone....new sim. Nope. The new replacement phones apparently don't come with a sim. They put my old...apparently defective sim....in my new phone.

The people were all exceptionally helpful....but I am still not a happy camper.

Pulled out the sim and put it back in and now it is working and I am doing my restore from backup. Tomorrow at lunch I apparently get to head to AT&T. Lucky me.

Steve

Message was edited by: normwood

Well, here's my update. Three days after my original issue (which was triggered by a restart, then corrected by a FOURTH restart), tonight I again checked my phone, wihtout a restart or anything, and saw "No SIM" where I should see ATT. This time, no amount of resetting, hard or soft, solved the problem.

Just got home and tried removing the SIM. Strangely, the card fell right out of the metal casing upon removal; that doesn't seem right. I'm not sure how to wedge it back in there properly. I just stuck it where it seemed right, after blowing out the slot with an electronics air duster, and of course that fixed nothing. After a restart it searches, then reports "No Sim card installed", and then just says "No SIM" up in the top left.

I'm busy as **** this week, and out of town the next, but it looks like I'll have to blow time taking the train to an AT&T store, and after this thread, I have no confidence that anyone will be able to solve the problem. I'm highly annoyed, and tempted to say the **** with it and get an Android phone from Verizon.

PS - I got my phone on launch day. First issue didn't show up until two and a half weeks later, so those of you declaring victory after your problem is fixed by a new SIM or whatever for a few days might want to hold off on that ...

So, here's another update.

Went to the ATT store this afternoon. They suggested it was probably a faulty SIM, and exchanged it. Worked on the spot, and has been fine since then (a few hours). And it never did revive after last night.

At this point, I think this probably really is the issue, especially since this thread is really not too heavily populated, considering how many iPhone 4ses are in the wild. I mean, nobody has posted here since I did last night. If you don't here from me again, you can assume I got a permanent fix..

(and sorry about the apparent cursing in my above post. Both **** were just the ole' H-E-double hockey sticks. Is that really a bad word?)

UPDATE: I was the fourth poster on this thread...

Oct 15. When I got the error, I first attempted reboot, which didn't help. I then removed my sim (phone was powered on), blew out the slot, rubbed off the contacts with my shirt, and reinserted the sim.

It's been almost three weeks now, and I haven't had another issue, other than iOS5 hard-locking once. (Did it to my wife's iPhone 4 as well, so there you have that...) I'm glad it hasn't returned, as I hate stripping the Otterbox off the phone. Oh, and I had Siri go to sleep and not wake up again, had to reboot to get her back.

Hopefully it'll be fine now. Battery life also significantly improved after the above steps. Well, I also turned off a lot of crap I don't use...lol.

iTunes has been a nasty, nasty bear since I got the 4S...I don't think it likes the wireless sync very much. Keeps crashing and causing all sorts of problems -- however, it may be partly because I'm (yes, still) on XP.

Went to AT&T at lunch. They installed a new sim in my new phone without batting an eye. I got the impression that this wasn't the first time they had seen the issue. I got the same impression at both of the Apple stores last night.

Only time will tell if this was the fix.

Steve

I've been having the same problem, every few hours or so, I get an invalid SIM alert. a problem I can fix with a quick reboot however it's happening sometimes can stop me from getting messages or emails etc. and so causing problems.

I know this has nothing to do with ATT or O2 or anyother operator as I am using it in a country where the iPhone isn't officially sold. I know it isn't the SIM card as I am using the same SIM I used on my last iPhone 4.

at the moment, I have 2 theories, either this is caused by the fact that we who are experiencing this problem have restored from a backup of our iPhone 4 and therefore caused the 4S problems to which the solution would be for restoring and setting up as new iPhone. Or that this is a simple software bug for some of us. a bug which I expect apple will fix in 5.0.1 which is due this week. for the time being just stick with reboots every once in a while.

unless you're getting the NO SIM alert, that is something I haven't experienced and certainly hope I won't any time soon.

This could still be SIM related; despite the SIM working in an iPhone 4. I am starting to think that newer SIM cards may operate at a different voltage level. Older cards (like those sold with the iPhone 4) may become unstable when driven at the standard voltage level used in the 4S. Therefore a software change to detect the older cards and drive the reader accordingly would fix this.

Looking at Wikipedia, SIM cards operate at three voltage levels (1.8v, 3v, 5v) depending on the SIM; commonly they only operate at 2 of these, it would be interesting to measure the operating voltage level of a "bad" SIM in an iPhone 4 and then in a 4S.

My replacement handset is due today, when it arrives I will feedback my findings.

So here is my update:

Purchased 4s in the UK on launch day, put in new Vodafone sim, few hours later got "invalid sim"

Got "invalid sim" roughly twice a day for 2 weeks, turning phone on and off restored it

After 2 weeks got a new sim from Vodafone, now get "invalid sim" less than once per day, so better but still not good.

I am hoping the promised software update to fix the power problem also fixes this problem