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

I am one of the many who posted in this thread a week ago and for several days it seems that i have no solution. I brought my iPhone 4S back to globe store and the technical man did a full restore and was able to bring back the ios and firmware to what i have in my previous iphone 4. For two days after that, i still had invalid SIM and SIM failure and very erratic signal. UNtil, today, to my surprise without doing anything, the phone seems to be working fine... I had no invalid SIM this morning and hopefully for good. SIgnal is superb as well as 3G data... I am actually ready to try and unstall ios 5.1 beta 3 but i guess I just have to wait the final release.

I am really hoping that my phone working well right now is for good.

will update everybody....

It appears from comments made about the iOS 5.1 update that MAYBE good things are on the horizon for all of us afflicted with the SIM Plague. Not to get overly confident, but I would like to mention a couple things in the hope that there will be no need for this discussion forum in the near future.

1. I have hated having to deal with this SIM problem. It has been one of the most frustrating "bugs" I have encountered in my almost 3 decades as an Apple customer.

2. I have LOVED the international flavor of this forum. So many people from so many parts of this beautiful planet we share, suffering together. :-)

3. Sharing this problem with all of you has made this almost bearable. I think there is a good lesson about human nature there.

4. This has been one of the most SUPPORTIVE Apple Discussion Forums in which I have participated. Everyone seemed eager to lift each other up, offer encouragement and good techno-friendship. I LOVED that too.

5. This forum has taught me that there is indeed hope for the Human Race...that when the need is greatest, we put aside our differences and come together for the common good. :-)

6. I am very impressed with the English writing skills of so many posters for whom English is not their native language.

7. I hope the moderators don't delete this post as a rant. :-)

Thank You all !

well, i have just tried my new sim, it lasted about 20 minutes and then sim failure. although the sim is the same design which probably didnt help. am currently downloading the new link ios 5.1 beta and hope that will fix it.

its a shame, this is my first iphone and although i love the phone it is no good when it's not a phone! lol

chin up all and i agree this is a very supportive forum and no-one is screaming and shouting. apple should take notice and maybe get involved in the discussion

Dear Friends,

Im not sure but supposedly there were 2 manufactuers for the 4S i.e. Pentagron and Foxconn. It is impossible that only a percentage have faulty devices and not the whole lot as we were stuck with lemons.

First it was the static in the earpiece then sim failure problem.

I do not think it is that much a software issue as why some folks have no issues.

As mentioned earlier, were stuck with an expensive ipod. Yeah!

Thank you Apple for the overpriced gadget.

Please folks do not replace the sim, etc.

More problems will arise.

These are the facts

Regards,

Ghassan

My first iPhone, week forty (came on day of release) was a serial DN which is Foxconn, if I turned on sim pin I lost network until I turned that off, in the end that stopped but it always lost network, second was a C38 week 46 no issues with sim pin or network, and also good battery life, the thing is that could be a fluke, or the foxconn handsets may have been the faulty initial bunch, the updated 5.0.1 did not help the loss of network either that much on the DN handset either.

just a notice to those (simpletons) like me, the shift+update means:

on macbook or similar - press and hold the alt button and click on "check for update" in itunes whilst iphone is plugged in

on pc - press and hold the shift button and click on "check for updates" in itunes whilst iphone is lugged in

then choose the file location of the downloaded update, itunes takes care of the rest.

i'll let you know how i get on

This says it was branched to a new discussion but i can't get to it. Anyway, I don't see any actual results of people bringing their phones in, and even more of people saying that they ALSO magically have this problem!!

I'm bringing my phone to the apple store tonight. I'll report back later on with my progress. Standard course of action for those of you afflicted by this:

-Get a new sim from AT&T. It may not work or it may work, but it's free so why the **** not.

-Perform a network reset. Yes you lose all your settings, but it's also worth a shot, because it's free.

The next step apple will tell you to perform is a restore. DON'T BOTHER. If after all that the sim is still not recognized, restoring will only lock you out of the phone as you will not be able to activate it, due to the sim not being recognized. At this point is where you should set your appointment up.

All iPhone 4S's came with 1 yr warranty. It wasn't released more than a year ago, so just bring it in.

Again, I'll be reporting back in a few hours.

Well, new phone and brand new sim. The sim reader went bad, which fouled both my original sim and the sim that i got from AT&T earlier today. Looks like a hardware bug where the sim chip no longer makes good contact with the reader, thus not recognizing the sim.

Apple replaced it within 5 minutes (after testing it with their known good sim of course) no questions asked.

well, got a big problem as I hit restore, thinking it will solve the problem, but now it says I need to insert a SIM card to activate the phone. is there anything I can do without going to an Apple store? The problem is I live abroad (out of my country, not going home for some time - 3 months). I've had my dad send me a new SIM, but not sure that's going to solve the problem (when it arrives). Any possible way of instaling the 5.1 beta iOS?

help!

also, another big problem is that when I connect the iPhone to iTunes, iTunes does not see it, i.e. it doesn't react. up to my ankles in s*it I reckon...

please someone help, as I'm not sure if the Italian waranty covers phones bought in Croatia. and I would really love to sort this out myself.

shoker,

Are you trying to connect via wifi or are your trying via the 30 pin connector cable? It should recognize your iPhone via the 30 pin "old style" way of connecting to iTunes. You need to connect to iTunes at least once via the 30 pin connector before it will start to recognize your iPhone via wifi. However, I too occassionally can not get my computer/iTunes to recognize my iPhone wirelessly despite having gone through the required initial hardwire connection. What works for me is to shut down iTunes and then restart it. During restart it will usually "look around" for iDevices it has been paired to and they will once again show up under "Devices" in the left column of the iTunes screen. Another technique that works for me is to take my iPhone and connect it to its AC adaptor. Once I do this, that also often will kick iTunes in the pants and cause it to recognize your iPhone. Once you do get your iPhone to appear under devices in iTunes AND you are wirelessly connected, DO NOT click on the eject arrow next to the name of your iPhone. Just leave it there. I do think there is some buggy behavior with this recognizing process right now. Theoretically I believe once you go through that initial hard wire "pairing" it should forever recognize your iPhone. That has not always been the case for me. So, I have had to employ the methods above.

it doesn't see it at all. I've tried connecting it via cable, restarting iTunes or event the PC itself, but no game. also, I can't get the iPhone to go into DFU mode. I'll try again this evening, but I'm really affraid that it won't recognize the new SIM card that is on it's way to me. then I'll be iPhone-less for 3 months, and I don't like that one bit.

thanks for the advice, hope I can get it connected to iTunes and install the 5.1 beta 3 iOS, and hopefully, that will end my sorrows.

any other useful advice?

Dear Shokre,

Not recognizing your iPhone when connected via the 30 pin connector is troubling. That really should work. Connecting the iPhone to its AC adaptor should also have initated a connection between your PC/iTunes and your iPhone as long, of course, as you have iTunes on. (Duh, why did I even say that?)

Have you tried deleting iTunes from your PC and reinstalling a fresh copy? Maybe iTunes has somehow become corrupted and is causing the non-recognition of your iPhone. Of course, it does take two to tango and it could be the iphone. Do you have other iDevices (iPad, iPod, etc.)? Will your computer recognize them when connected via the 30 pin connector?

Have you gone to iTunes Preferences, clicked on Devices, and checked to make sure that "prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPad from syncing automatically" is NOT checked? Does your iPhone even appear on that same Devices screen under "Device backups?"

Just trying to think of anything and everything.

it would also be worth checking your usb ports are working properly - device manager type test, or even the wire itself.

but to back up the post above, i have an old ipod classic which wont connect to the itunes store with a 30pin due to turning off the auto sync. it stops it from even showing up.

I have also some info regarding 5.1 beta 3. I had today very strange effect. Once my phone had call failed and signal bar began jumping from 0 to 5 bars. It was a loop procces. I could not call during that time. Reboot helped. 3 hours after that phone works ok.