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

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.

I stopped reading at "supposedly".

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.

For what it's worth, it also helps to be apple certified when you get to the genius bar 😀

its been almost about 3 weeks since i updated to ios 5.0.1 ( 9A406 )

and that happened because i was really frustrated and angry about losing signal, no service, sim failure, no sim and lots of problems.

at the begining, everything was working perfectly, no errors and i was able to send / recieve messages make calls and never lost the network or missed a call.

but i noticed that whenever im in a low coverage area, my device showed the no service message and it took about 10 min to get the signal back.

but i found a way to force it to catch a signal much faster and that is by calling myself from the same number.

but 3 days ago, i waked u having the no sim error ! and for a second, it felt really bad, then the situation occured again after 6 hours, the in waked up in the last 2 days having the same problem and nothing fixed it other than restarting my device or reseting network settings. and the frequency of losing the signal increased dramaticly.

i think 5.0.1 ( 9A406 ) was a temporary fix and it was aimed to calm us or make us think that our problem is solved what gives apple extra time to find a solution ( although i think that they never will ).

over 12 hours now and the 5.1 beta has kept my phone working, fingers crossed.

14 hours using 5.1 beta 3. All good. Bettery still has 82%. I even turn on iCloud sync.

friends... i have some problem with SIM( from Russia... just for solidarity

So why mention the fact then? By the way there is more than one factory making iPhones, maybe you should have read that post after all.

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!