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

Hello Dabrat!

I have wanted to reply to your post of March 10th for some time now. I have just not been able to find any words worthy of the beauty with which you expressed yourself. I remain speechless. The fact is, you said everything that needs to be said and you said it with such grace.

Your words are worth publishing as they are a moving and poetic reminder about what things in life are most important.

As I recently wrote to Pat, it has been my great, good forture to have made your acquaintence in this forum and I wish you the best of luck. I hope you continue to enjoy a fully functioning iPhone 4S :-). I also hope you continue to enjoy living in one of the most awe inspiring places on the planet.

Always the best from the central part of North Carolina, USA.

Your friend, Mr. Luigi

Hi Pat...sorry, me again.

I checked into updating roaming capabilities on the AT&T network. I thought you would find this helpful.

http://forums.wireless.att.com/t5/Apple-iPhone/Update-Roaming-Option-or-Somethin g-like-that/td-p/1628938

Mr. Luigi

Hi Giacomo!

Sorry to only update just now...

This is successful :

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....

Cheers!

Hey Mr. Luigi!

Thanks for the roaming update concerning AT&T! I had never heard of that before but it was certainly something to check out.

In order to 'save juice', I do not have pushing enabled, nor do I have any 'automatic' functions enabled (such as e-mail, location services, etc). I cannot tell you if the new software has been responsible for what seems to be longer battery life or not...I just do everything 'manually'. But it appears my battery is doing better but I cannot say it's the software or my miserly ways of conserving the battery. Maybe a little oof both?

One thing I did notice with the new software, however, is that now up in the left hand corner it now reads 4G instead of the older 3G. Any ideas on that?

One more thing....if you do any surfing on your phone, I'd suggest trying out a new browser other than Safari. It's called Mercury, it costs $0.99, and man, it is SO much faster than Safari. You can really tell a difference in how fast stuff loads. One of my better .99 purchases, for sure.

Three days since "the Incident". No other NO SIM messages. Still holding breath, slowly turning blue! :-) It also seems the number of posts concerning the SIM problem has really tapered off overall. Perhaps for most the recent upgrade did the trick? I certainly hope so.

Thank you for all your help!

Pat

No the issue is not fixed in update 5.1. My gf 4s is shutting down atleast 4-6 times a day. I have never had the problem on mine but hers is quite bad. Shouldn't be that big of a problem to fix. Im sure the issue is hardware since all the phones aren't doing it. How about it apple?

Oh ya, 198,388 views so far. How many does it take to get it resolved.

Hi Pat!,

That is great news about no SIM incidents for an extended period. Your question about 4G involves some controversy, but the bottom line is...iOS 5.1 brought with it the capability of AT&T customers to tap into AT&T's HSPA+ network. Strictly speaking, people would say that this is not true 4G and some have questioned AT&T's getting Apple to change the logo at the top to 4G. But HSPA+ does offer you substantive download and upload speed improvements over traditional 3G. So, from one perspective...who cares! The fact is, YOUR iPhone 4S now has the ability to download and upload quite a bit faster than it used to before iOS 5.1 when you are in an area where AT&T supports its HSPA+ network. HSPA+ is still quite a bit slower than 4G LTE. 4G LTE is considered a "truer" form of 4G technology and most major carries are moving to a 4G LTE high speed network. That will take some time.

In the meantime, enjoy your faster download and upload speeds on your iPhone 4S. I am pretty confident that AT&T probably has targeted a major city like Atlanta for a well developed HSPA+ network. The iPhone 4S is NOT 4G LTE capable. So, you will never be able to tap into the incredible upload and download speeds that type of network offers. The new iPad IS 4G LTE capable. Because of that, I am POSITIVE the iPhone 5 (or whatever they are going to call it!) will be 4G LTE capable.

If you get an iPhone 5 (scary thought!) it will also probably say 4G on the top, but that will mean 4G LTE when you are in an area that supports the LTE technology. Your phone will be faster that a nitro-burning fuel dragster at that point.

Verizon does not support HSPA+ so my iPhone is still chugging along at 3G speeds.

This YouTube video may be more clear about all this than I've been.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QT0OqodeeQ

I am not sure, but this may have something to do with the super fast performance of Mercury. But, you imply that Mercury is faster than Safari NOW...in other words you are not comparing Mercury on HSPA+ vs. Safari on 3G. I will download Mercury as I am a glutten for exploring browsers on my iPhone in the search for the perfect browsing experience.

Hope this helps and thanks for the Mercury tip.

Mr. Luigi

TM17:

Just look at the length of this thread and how long it has been running.

It cannot be said that this is just a hardware problem....there is quite a large number

of very bright folks here who have been dissecting this problem for months now and for what appears to be a majority

of them the new software has banished their demons.

May I suggest you go back several pages (if U haven't already) and see the OTHER things you can do to your gf's phone that may take care of this problem. You may save yourself a headache or two but you may wind up getting rid of her problem too.

Good luck with it. :-)

Pat

Mr. Luigi!

Thank you for the 'inservice' on 4G. I must admit I am a little behind the curve when it comes to all of that and your explanation cleared up a lot 😉

Let me know what you think of Mercury......I have been more than pleased with it. Take for instance The Drudge Report. Safari chokes on it but Mercury zips right through it. It is now my main browser....if I could only figure out how to make it the default.

No SIM errors today....growing more confident that all of this IS, in fact, a software problem. :-)

Cheers!

Pat

Hello Pat! and others,

I thought I would summarize my SIM experience as a, hopefully, final post to this discussion forum.

1. About a week after iOS 5.1 beta 3 was released, and several forum members shared how to download the update without a developers license, I did so. Immediately, all my SIM problems stopped on all 3 of my iPhone 4S's.

2. I never had another SIM issue with my iPhone 4S's after installing iOS 5.1 beta 3.

3. I installed iOS 5.1 and I have continued to have no SIM problems.

4. Because my focus was so trained on the SIM issue I have not paid attention in any scientific way to the battery issue that received a lot more press. However, my battery situation is a non-issue in my opinion. Example, I left home this morning at 7:00 AM. My phone was fully charged. It is now 4:04 PM and my battery reads 94%. Admittedly, this has been a very, very mild useage day and I have not had to use 3g as I have had constant wifi access. With 3g, battery life is less, but I typically can go two days before having to charge the phone. I do not consider myself a power user, not because I don't use the phone quite a lot, but I don't need to access 3g much.

5. I had no problems installing iOS 5.1 despite having iOS 5.1 beta 3. All I did was Google how to do the install. The instructions were easy to follow. I know Apple probably was throwing a fit with non-developers like me installing beta software, but the circumstances, IMHO, warranted such action. As all of you know, this problem started for many of us in October of last year.

Pat, I do like Mercury a lot. I especially like the Readability functionality as I am somewhat visually impaired. I use "Reader" functionality in Mobile Safari whenever it is available, but it is not available on all websites...including these Apple Support Forums (try to figure that one out)! I have Instapaper installed on my iPhone and use it to be able to read web sites like this forum on my iPhone, but Mercury's Readability is more convenient as it is just one click away. You are right, Mercury does seem to download web sites faster. At first, I was a bit thwarted by Mercury as it didn't have my bookmark collection. But, it does have a Firefox sync feature. So, I installed Firefox on my MacBook Pro. Synced all my Safari bookmarks onto Firefox. Then did a Firefox sync of those bookmarks onto Mercury. Wonderful! So now I am using both Safari and Mercury to see which I like better. I can DEFINITELY see why you were so enamored of Mercury.

I am interpreting the lack of comments in the past week as meaning that most of us have found relief from our SIM troubles.

That brings me great joy.

I am a sucker for stories with a happy ending. 🙂

Best to All, Mr. Luigi

Hey Mr. Luigi!

On my drive home from work I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, this problem with the iPhone SIMS has been corrected due to the lack of posts here. We used to average several posts a day here....but it's been more than a week since I have seen any action here.

I am glad you like Mercury. I, too, still use Safari from time to time...still 'learning' Mercury...but its speed is truly measurable. ;-)

I haven't seen any SIM errors in over a week now so I am considering this problem solved, at least for me. As you well know, my problems were pretty well documented here but right now? No complaints!

My 'assignemnt' here in Massachusetts is thankfully ending next Friday and on Saturday I am heading back home to Georgia. It's been a long 4 months....and even though it is 85 degrees here in MA today, shattering all previous records for temps, it's been a very mild winter here in New England. I am thankful for that! :-)

I hope our paths cross again soon....but hopefully NOT over iPhone problems! :-)

Take care, my friend!

Cheers to all!!!!!

Pat

Like a few of the guys here, I have also experienced the "Invalid Sim" problem after upgrading to 5.1. Had no such issues before. Tried many different solutions offered but no success.

What to do?

ntilly:

Without knowing what you have tried, it makes it a little more difficult to assist you. Can you give us a little more info? When do you get these Invalid Sim messages? How often? Have you done a restore yet?

More info, please! :-)

Pat

There are some very knowledgeable people on this forum and when given a little more info I am confident that someone can come up with some suggestions for you. :-)

Hi p_rod50

My apologies, i have been reading so much on this topic that i assumed you guys knew the symptoms.

I purchased an iphone 4s in december 2011. I always kept my software up to date and had no issues whatsoever. On 18th March, i updated to ios 5.1. On 20th march, i began getting the "invalid sim" message. I reset network settings, restored it twice, tried hard restart, switched auto lock off, put double sided tape on part of the sim card, and a few other things, but still no success. I can only use my phone if i switch it off for about 2 to 3 hours before restarting. It will then only work for a few hours before the dreaded message reappears. The sim is fine as i tried it on another phone, and it works fine (tried for 24hours).

I am very disheartened.

ntilly:

I can feel your disappointment. It sounds to me like you have done just about everything you can do to tackle this problem.

Did you buy your phone at an Apple Store? If so, I would head right down there for a replacement phone. I am on my 5th iPhone now but since the new firmware was released I only received a "partial" Sim card error yet never lost service. It's been a couple of weeks now without any problems.

My next suggestion would be a new Sim card even though you tried yours in another phone if it is easy for you to get one I'd give that a shot. It has worked for a few here and on other forums. It should cost you nothing to replace it.

I understand the disheartment. Been there too. Hopefully a few others from here will ring in with their suggestions. I cannot think of anything else off hand right now for you to try.

I just hope you can easily get a replacement...that's probably your best bet.

Pat