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

Thank you, Mr. Luigi!

That's about the only other thing I can come up with concerning this problem. Perhaps I have a corrupt file that is causing this? Granted, I have only seen it once sinse installing the new IOS version and it did not "act" like all my other error messages..

Again, thanks for looking into this for me.

Pat

Hi Pat,

I'm still asking around, but I thought I'd pass this on now as I have 45 minutes between classes.

Since the "personality" of your SIM message this last time was not typical of the earlier SIM popup warnings I would consider that a good thing (you have alluded to that yourself). I think it may mean the latest event may have been generated by different cause and hopefully a more innocuous one.

If you remember, I posted much earlier in this forum that SIM errors are not all that uncommon. They can arise from a vast selection of reasons...some benign and temporary...some malignant and persistent. This forum was created to address a SIM problem of the latter type. It could very well be that your last SIM episode was of the former type. The timing does seems weird, but with the way a lot of the members of this forum seem to be frequent travelers...having SIM/connectivity issues may just come with the territory...especially with the iPhone which is still maturing as a World Phone.

Lastly for now...if you are on Verizon I can speak from experience that "updating your programming" and "updating your roaming capabilities" can repair a multitude of sins. For example, my iPhone was displaying all its contacts in the format XXXXXXXXXXXXX instead of 1 (XXX) XXX-XXXX as it should. The format, however, was correct in my Address Book on my Mac! Weird as my iPhone contacts were synced from that Address Book contact list. Believe it or not, calling *228 (which gets you to Verizon's update programming and update roaming options) and then pressing 1 or 2 (can't remember) to "update your programming" FIXED this contact format program. Who would have figured that!? So, if you are on Verizon, it might be worth your time (a minute or two) to dial *228 and first "update your programming" and then also "update your roaming capabilities." You should actually update your roaming capabilities pretty regularly (once a month?) to keep your phone running at peak efficiency-especially being a big traveler as you seem to be. I believe if you "update your programming" it will also "update your roaming capabilities," but I have never been sure this was the case so I do both (I have had my contacts revert back to the lousy format 3 times over the life of my iPhone 4S, so I have had to "update your programming" several times.

If you are not on Verizon, perhaps your carrier has a similiar feature you can access.

All righty...Mr. Luigi signing off.

Hi Pat,

Decided to ask one of the IT fellows at school who is very Apple savvy. Tech is nototiously slow in responding to messages so it may be a while before I can get back to you as to any opinion he may have on your one time SIM event.

Hope it IS still a one time event!

Best, Mr. Luigi

Thanks, Mr. Luigi! I appreciate you asking your IT contact this question.

So far, just that one isolated event. Maybe what you said in your previous post holds true. I hope so anyway.

Worst case scenario is I try another SIM card. I am leaving the Boston area at the end of the month and heading home after four rough months. There is an Apple Store walking distance from my house and if this happens again, I'll just go there (that's where I bought this unit along with all my other Apple stuff) and I'l have them deal with it. Perhaps my AT&T store there has a different kind of SIM card there? I'll make sure its a 128k card too..I learned that here, for sure ;-)

I'll look into updating the roaming capabilities too....I have never done that....did not know I needed to ever do that. Never had the SIM card problem at home though...but was just there a week or so with the new phone before moving up to Baahstun area. That's when all this happened (and when I updated to the 5.01 (?) version of IOS.

Again, thank you for your assistance in this matter ;-)

Pat

So far, only one error message yet no reboot or loss of signal when it happened.

I bought an iPhone 4s last month (AT&T) and it was working fine up until I installed iOS 5.1. About a week after that, I started getting the SIM failure about every hour or so. Turning off the phone for a while or removing it from my spec case seemed to help, but did not resolve the issue. Anybody else notice the phone runs hot when you are making calls, and that he SIM failure happens more often during calls? I really think this is a firmware or software problem. I tried some of the suggestions on this thread (except for anything to do with removing the SIM because I am a weenie about things like that), but it actually seemed to get worse (failing about every fifteen minutes). The iPhone was also acting flaky - randomly freezing, the volume bar disappeared, my text chime would not play the tone although the call ringtone would sound,etc.

Somehow, I managed to get it to stop and it has now been working fine for several days, no failures! I did three different things and I'm not sure which fixed it so I will list everything I did. Perhaps this will help somebody else.

1) I backed up the phone via iTunes and did a Restore from iTunes. After the phone rebooted, still had the SIM issue after about a minute.

2) Found a posting about making sure the SIM lock was not on. Now mine was not locked to start with, but my brain sometimes makes odd leaps. While looking at my general settings, I noticed my auto-lock. On a whim, I set it to Never. The phone froze.

3) Did a hard reset of the phone (on button/home button). The phone has worked fine since.

I have to remember to lock the phone since I have the auto-lock off, but I am not changing it back. It seems a small inconvenience to pay in order to have my iPhone back and functioning again. Because of what I did to get it working, I think Apple has a firmware or software bug. Hopefully there will be a fix for this in 5.2. Being a software developer myself, I find it highly disturbing that they are maintaining a wall of silence about this. Judging from web chatter, this is a pretty widespread problem. Didn't they learn anything from the iPhone 4 debacle? Apple quality has dropped considerably. I recently had a hard drive fail on a year old iMac. If I wanted pc quality, I'd buy a pc. I expect more from you, Apple. Steve would be ashamed.

Thanks for report, AmyKay.

Well so it's not less than four people with kept/awaken symptoms after 5.1. Plus there are huge battery loss - up to 60% a day - for many people (despite the fact Apple manifested a fix).

As the developer myself it looks like the reason is in a number of different hardwares they must support (imo there are two types of 4s at least) each with its set of tricks; and/or in complex software that they e.g. didn't rewrite since 1st iPhone.

All in all, it feels like they're casting magic with no more mana left.

Hi!

I have a concern,

I installed last month the 5.1 beta 3 to my iphone 4S... now i can no longer use it...

a message prompt that i need to register my iphone to the developer portal... i am not a developer...

Any suggestion how can i activate again iphone and upgrade to public ios 5.1?

Thank you so much

you must register here: https://developer.apple.com/

In my case they say that my account is disabled......

And any ways to restore the iPhone to the factory defaults is blocked.

thist time Apple really sucked hard!

Giacomo

Hi Giacomo!

im trying the recovery mode as my jumpstart now....

i hope it work... currently downloading now the public ios 5.1

first, i put my iphone in recovery mode

and then sync to itunes...

then restore....

using the .ipsw from this site: http://cydiablog.com/download-ios-5.1-public-ipsw-for-ipad-2-iphone-4s-3gs-ipod- touch/ seems to solve my problem.

Tell me if you succeded in istalling the final 5.1, that i want to end this devel-situation-comedy.

thanks

Giacomo

Hi Giacomo!

Thanks...

I will also give you feedback...

I cannot wait 🙂

I installed the 'factory' ios 5.1, and the version is the same 5.1 (9b179).

Another thing: I lost the personal hotspot icon....

very boring.....

on this way will OSX 10.8 be a total disaster ?

Giacomo

Hi P_rod50,

There was no joy from IT. My contact was honest...he simply did not feel as though he had enough experience (in fact, any at all) with this entire issue to take a stab as to whether there could be something in your Mac Air repopulating the iPhone 4S with something corrupted that would have caused that single SIM event.

Sorry.

I do think it will be interesting to see what happens when you finally get the chance to get home and stay there. I'm talking out of my butt now, but it does seem as though this SIM issue often involves a less than admirable relationships between the iPhone 4S and its supporting network. Folks that seems to migrate a lot appear to have more problems...although that is not 100% the case for sure.

And then there is the delicious factor that you can WALK to your Apple Store from your home in Atlanta. Although I am VERY annoyed at Cupertino's performance in this whole SIM issue I remain a Apple product fan (it's a relative statement). So, your walking arrangement, IMO, is to die for.

Your friend, Mr. Luigi

Mr. Luigi!

I do appreciate your looking into this matter with your IT contact. I am feeling that what occurred may have been a one time event...and am more focused on completing my work here, getting packed up and preparing to head home. As long as the hospital can reach me when I am on call, that's about my only worry at the present time. ;-)

I'm still watching this thread and will certainly continue to do so; at least to console or help someone facing the same issues I did which brought me here in the first place. ;-)

Pat

Pat,

Enjoy being back home and the comfort such things bring. You deserve not only that, but also a heart felt thanks for your contributions to this forum, your great, good nature in the face of much frustration, and the hand of friendship you extended to so many of us.

You have made this whole experience much more bearable, dare I say enjoyable!, and it has been my great, good fortune to have made your acquaintance.

Always, your friend...Mr. Luigi