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

Update:

I am in the UK on Orange network. Got my iphone 4s 32g on day of release (well done Apple). After registering my sim, I got the dreaded "sim failure" message and "invalid sim" for network status. I turned phone off and to reboot phone. Got onto Orange, they said it was Apple. Got onto Apple, they said it was Orange!! I reset settings on iphone, still got error message. Arranged for replacement sim. After 4 days the replacement arrived. I treated the replacement sim like gold dust making sure I placed it in the metal tray very carefully. What I will say is that the previous sim card was cut very close to one edge so that may have had a bearing on it. Activated new sim on Thursday night, it is now Sunday afternoon and (touch wood) I have not had the error message since then and everything is working as it should.

Will come back to this thread if message appears again.

Status Update:

So, after getting replacement sim from AT&T around 4PM Thursday, the 4s has had no further occurrences of the sim problems. Before replacement I got the "invalid sim" mesage twice; each after about 1 hour. The replacement sim was new and the AT&T store person put it in the phone (carefully).

So I have been up and running with no further occurrences for over 48 hours.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

I have same issue with Sprint 32g white iPhone 4s and no service. In last 24 hours had no service twice with message No SIM. I have a Sprint phone and should not need a SIM card. I can get service back with a reboot but I don't trust my phone now as I have missed some important calls. Only have phone for 3 days. Went to the Sprint store and they want me to take a screen shot when this happens again. They also put me on the list for a new phone incase this happens again.

About 3PM today I got home and the iPhone said "no service." I re-booted and things looked normal again.

So, after about 3 days of things looking good, I see that I still have a problem.

Just finished reading everyone's posts. Here is one to add, and why I think this is a sim card problem and not hardware problem. I owned an iphone4. My wife owned a 3gs. She was able to upgrade, I wasn't. Long story short, on Saturday, we upgraded her phone to a 4s (activated it in store), and when we got home, I switched sim cards. Voila, both of us now have upgraded iphones (I'm sporting the 4s-white-32gig, she has my 1 yr old 4). Fast forward 29 hrs.

She gets a "no sim card" error in the upper left. My 4s is still going strong (cross fingers/knock on wood/other anti-jinxing mechanisms). The 4 has never had problems and was robust as can be over the 1+ years I used it. The 4s, so far is using my old sim card and is flawless.

I reseated the sim in the 4 after blowing on it and the slot. Seems to have fixed it for now, but if it gives me an issue again, I'm planning on getting a new sim from ATT.

Good luck all.

So I got an appointment at the Genius Bar this AM. The guru had no specific answer for the problem but surmised that it could be a sim problem. He did not dismiss the possibility of it being software related but he has not heard this from Apple.

I have a personal issue going on such that there is no way I can be without phone over the next few days. Since my 4s problem is very intermittent (3X over 4 days) and always recovers with a re-start, I do not want to replace this with new 4s which, based upon this board,could be worse.

So, my plan is to live with situation for a few days and if I get in real jam, revert back to old 3G (I would have to have AT&T switch their records for sim card number).

If sim issue does not get worse, I will wait for next IOS update to see whether this fixes things. Otherwise I will swap for new 4s w/ Apple. They said that would not be a problem anytime within a year.

If it helps anyone here. I got the 16Gb ATT on launch weekend and had no problems.

Then I upgraded yesterday and got the 64GB and started having the no sim error today.

Called applecare and they said take it to genius bar and they'd replace it.

tinkered abit with it and found that if i took my wifes micro sim from her 4 and put it in it works but mine wont work in hers. On close inspection the copper contacts on the new sim are smaller than on the old. Don't think that would make a difference but it is undoubtably a different type of sim card

(looks like ATT tried to save a couple cents by shaving off a couple millimeters of copper, bad ATT ➖)

Given that I think I'm going to try to go to ATT before my genius bar appointment tomorrow.

SUMMARY:

Old SIM (from wifes iPhone 4) works in iPhone 4s

New SIM (that came with 4s) doesn't work in iPhone 4

Update: My 4S progressively got worse over the first 48 hours until it could no longer recover from the No Sim error. Apple geniuses had no answer. A new sim from AT&T worked immediately and has now performed flawlessly for over a week.

hi,

i bought the iPhone 4s in silicon valley 2 sundays ago.

The $400 version, because that was all that was left. The $400 version, because that was all that was left.

Since then it was giving occasional "No SIM" messages.

Finally tonight (Monday, Oct 24, 2011) it only says "No SIM" on top left corner, and in a popup window.

I've shut it down, restarted, taken out the SIM card, put it back, restarted. Same error message.

Have to take off from work now to drive to an ATT store to convince the minimum wage clerk to replace the SIM card.

Thanks Apple.

I should have cut my losses with the Apple ][gs lack of support.

UPDATE:

I went to ATT and got the SIM replaced and it seems to be working fine now. I did take a look at the SIM from my old iPhone 4 and my wife's iPhone 4 against the new one they gave me with the iPhone 4S and they are noticably different.

The one on the left is from the iphone 4 and the one on the right is the new one from the iPhone 4S. Notice that the contacts are smaller on the newer chip.

When I went to the AT&T store the new SIM they gave me looks like the one from the iPhone 4 (The one with the bigger contacts).

Not sure if that is what is really causing the issue. But I haven't had the SIM problem yet. Hopefully it stays this way.

I have been having this problem with my 16GB Black 4s bought directly from Apple. I got the phone and did a restore from my iPhone 4 and within an hour I was getting SIM failure. Turning the phone off and back on cleared it for another couple of hours and I got it again. This went on for a couple of days, so I contacted Orange UK and they replaced my SIM. Still happened. I got on to apple and they arranged an appointment at the "Genius" bar, but not for over a week.
I tried restoring the phone to factory defaults and restoring from my backup but the SIM failure continued, along with quite a few app crashes.

So in a last ditch attempt I thought screw it, I reset the phone to factory defaults again, and then set it up as a new phone, NOT from the backup.

So far after 3 days, this seems to of sorted my problems, no app crashes, no SIM failure, and the phone seems to be a lot quicker, soooooooo I am wondering if there is a problem restoring the iPhone4 backup onto a iPhone 4s.

Maybe I just had something on my 4 which the 4s didn't like?

Either way, this seems to of cured it for me, when replacing the SIM didn't.

Maybe someone else could give this a try? Just make sure you can recreate your personal data, etc and start from scratch.

Thought I'd step in and add to this discussion.

My new iphone 4s arrived a couple of days ago and today while it was in a stereo docking bay and running Pandora the music cut off and when i looked it said: SIM FAILURE and there was no connection to verizon wireless.

I rebooted the phone and its working fine again but I'm worried.

@AmishOne

I have had this same issue with my Verizon 4S on and off. At this point I want to say that this is either related to the SIM being seated poorly or overheating or a combination of the two. The odd thing is that I've seen this error show up on my phone even when it has just been sitting on my desk horizontally (with no movement and the phone not running anything!). One of the times this happened, reboots did not fix it at all - I had to eventually pop the SIM card out, and push it back in before the phone picked up the cell network properly again.

I also once popped the SIM out of my phone and a friend's Verizon 4S (which has not had this issue at all) in order to compare them, and noticed that our SIMs were completely different. Apart from the fact that mine was slightly closer to the edge of the metal SIM-card tray when seated (possible shorting?), the metallic contacts on the card were also of different size and shape.

I'm not sure why these phones would suddenly have issues with the SIM card when they are just sitting there quietly, which is why I am suspecting it might be a combination of the way the SIM card is cut and overheating or something. But perhaps a different SIM from Verizon will alleviate this issue.

This could be the case akmakm.

I have 14 days to return it if need be and I'll do just that every month until I get a iphone 4s that works. I think I may call Verizon to have them put notes on my account that this issue is happening.

I never had any issues with my iphone 4. Lets hope this is something that gets a fix soon.

It is now just over 3 days since my last problem.

I have changed nothing since getting the new sim from AT&T and then, 3 days later, getting the "no service" message.

That said, I have now received my micro sim adapter which will allow me to put the 4s micro into my old 3G if things fail and I am in a bind. I plan to take the 3G as backup on travel until I feel secure with the 4s.