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

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.

For ATT phones in the states, my phone, no hiccups. Nor for any other iPhone4s (only two so far) I have set up...

Remember that the no service error is completely different than the No Sim-Card error. The No service error can have many more variables and really should be in a it's own thread, and only pointing to this one if it was caused by trying to fix the SIM Card issue.

Update on my issue. Considering I'm on Verizon and as of this moment I'll not need the phone out of the country I removed the SIM card and so far I have had no issues at all.

Verizon told me to stop by any Verizon store to get a free replacement sim card when I want.

I'll just wait because I don't plan on leaving the country on vacation for another year or more. (We vacation once every other year.)

Update to my problem....

After 3 days, following wiping my 4s and setting it back up as a new phone, I got the Invalid Sim message again. This time the phone was sitting on the table over night, not charging, and not being used. I woke up and there it was.

This is after I have had the SIM replaced, after I have wiped, reset and rewiped the phone, setting it up as a new phone and not restoring. So tonight I am getting it replaced at the Apple Store.

Will let you know.

I have been following this discussion since last week as I had the exact same issue. Unfortunately Vigin don't do a micro sims in the uk for the iPhone 4 & 4's, but we just used scissors. My Mum cut her sim months ago for her iPhone 4, all worked fine, no issues touch-wood. I decided i would just do the same when i got my iPhone 4s. I done the whole launch day thing and within two hours i had the iPhone 4s 32GB in White. Once home we cut up my sim, for 5 minutes all was fine and then 'Sim Fauilure' message appeared, followed by invalid sim. After turning the phone on/off several times, yet the same thing kept happening. I then tried my sim in the iPhone 4 and all worked but yet failured in my 4s. I also tried the sim from the iPhone 4 and the exact same thing happened. I reluctantly ordered a replacement sim, which costs a fiver each time, thanks Virgin! While i was waiting i ordered a free 3 PAYG Micro sim from their website, which turned up before my Virgin sim (irony) The 3 sim worked ok, no sim failure, nothing. Now and again the 3G would run incredibly slow or not load after spinning the activity wheel for minutes. I decided it must be Virgin, yes i did call them a few names for making my sim fail. Days later i recieved my new virgin sim, the replacement one. I turned it into a micro sim using scissors, all was ok for 7 minutes, hmm improvment by 2 minutes, result! It turned into Friday the 14th October all over again, the exact same things happened. Both virgin sims would not work but worked in the iPhone 4, both sims failured in my phone in minutes but were fine in the iPhone 4. I was then speaking to my cousin, who is much more intelligent and tech savvy than me, we went through this discussion page seeing what helped others. We tried, rebooting, restarting, reseting the newtwork settings, sim in and out, the lot. We then tried a restore as we honestly thought it would help, sure enough it did.... for 4 hours and then Sim failure and back to square one. During this time i realised there was some other things going on like my wi-fi sync through iTunes would work once and then you try to do it again and get an error message along with your device being removed from iTunes. The battery was lasting a couple of hours, even though 3G was off, forced close all apps and wasn't even using my phone as i was getting bored of the lack of things to do without a sim and completely frustrated. There was a list of 5/6 things that i couldn't blame all on virgin. On Wednesday 26/10 I took my iPhone 4s back to the Apple store, the same store it was purchased at on Launch day, which might i add was amazing and believe everyone should experience it at least once. I explained all to the Apple guy, he gave some reasons but said i would need an appointment with a genuis, which unfortunately we couldn't go back for in 4 hours time, he then said there is enough wrong with it and as I'm in the 14 day period he could replace it with a new one, which he did. No drama, nothing. All very pleasant. He then put my Virgin sim in my phone and started the set-up process. So far A full 48 hours later all is fine and dandy, no sim failure messages, nothing. Everything seems to be great (again) touch-wood.

However, i do have a slight issue with iCloud. As soon as i try to set up my emails from my mobileme account and get the 'this address is already registred with iCloud,' which I'm fully aware of as it's me, and i done it back on the 14th but for some reason it just will not allow me to set up, which is a tad frustrating but on the brighter side, this iPhone 4s is working and touch-wood that it stays like that.

I'm on Orange in the UK and have had the same problems. I don't see how this can be a SIM issue like others are saying in here as I have had the same problem with different SIM cards, which all work fine in my iPhone4.

I'm getting my 4s changed tonight at the Apple store, so hopefully that will be the end of it for me too.

I landed in Germany a few minutes ago, obviously removing the PIN from SIM has worked with O2-Provider. No longer Loss of 3G, after losing connection due to missing basestation in train it's reconnecting to Edge and 3G very well.

So I'm waiting for Apples Firmware Update!

We bought two iPhone 4S 32GB models directly from Apple on launch day. We use AT&T. They've both been absolutely great (we upgraded from the 3g versions). One experienced the "Invalid Sim" error last night and after multiple reboots never recovered. I just rebooted it again this morning and it worked fine for about 15 minutes then exhibited the error again. Reboot has not helped. The other is fine.

I am getting more optimistic. It has been 10 days since AT&T replaced the sim on my 4S and I have not had a single "sim failure" issue since. The only problem I had was a week ago when I got a "no service" in an area where there is service. I now think that may have been a software issue.

I know that Apple monitors these boards lookiing for issues needing attention (on another discussion about short battry life someone posted that he was contacted by Apple to monitor usage as it relates to the battery drain). So I am waiting for Apple to release its next ios update to see how things go then.

Just had to deal with the same problem. I got to the point where it said there was no SIM card. I did the turning it off and then back on, I remove the card a reinserted it; and those were not working anymore. The apple tech guy had apparently never heard of the problem (they must not read there customers concerns here). He forwarded me to AT&T and the lady had me erase the gold part of the sim card with a regular pink pencil erase. Apparently that magically erased the problems away because I'm back in business....for now. She says it shouldn't happen any more. Can't say I'm totally convinced. We shall see.

I took the phone to AT&T where a tech popped out the card and reseated it. He may have cleaned it too, but it didn't help. He said to take it to Apple which I did. Had to wait a couple of hours because it was busy, but after the tech there checked it out he gave me a new phone since it's still under warranty. Was not pleased about having to spend a lot of time out during the season's first Nor'easter, but iHappy again. Live the 4S.