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

Follow up: went to Apple store, they ran a diagnostic, and replaced the handset. Problem lingered. I went to AT&T, they replaced the SIM.  All's good now. Not sure if it was a combination of bad SIM/bad hardware, but I was taken care of.

-End of line.

I've been having this issue for about a month but it only happened three times.

The last one was this morning: the phone was recharging in its dock. When I woke up, it showed the "SIM failure" popup.

I never tried ejecting and putting back in the SIM, I always rebooted the phone and the SIM always started to work again.

My SIM is 2 years old, it's a 128k SIM and from the pattern of the contacts I'd say it's the new type. Still the issue occasionally shows up.

I'm not sure if it showed up in iOS 5.0 too. I'm now running 5.0.1.

On my iPhone 4 never had this kind of problems and I have been running iOS 5 beta since the first release.

It seems to me a hardware related issue, but it would be great to hear something from Apple...

I got a new 4S and a new SIM card. The problem started to show up a couple of weeks after updating to iOS 5.0.1 (mid of November).

The SIM card is not the issue. I can reliably reproduce the issue and have a Bug Report open with Apple.

As soon as the signal goes down to 1 or 2 bars and stay this way for 15-20 minutes, the "SIM Error" shows up.

I produced some crash dumps and sent them to Apple last night (Baseband related dumps) and hope enough is in them to nail the issue.

If the signal is good (3+ bars) I don't see the problem at all.

Apple Bug-Reporter ID: 10490301

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Stefan.

Got the 128k simcard today, but they only had it in regular sim. The connector itself is almost larger than the microsim, so don't really want to break anything by cutting. How do you cut these huge simcards? It looks like the one on the picture "working", so I bet it would work if I could get it to fit in.

Just go mayhem on the card?

-Erlend

From a whitepaper by one of the leading manufacturers of SIM/USIM cards, Gemalto:

"There is a high chance that handset manufacturers, for economic reasons, will eventually stop supporting the SIM in their coming new 3G devices. As a consequence, if a 3G subscriber inserts a 2G SIM into a brand new 3G device, it will fail to connect to the network. There are examples where the SIM card becomes inactive in such conditions. In such circumstances, the 3G mobile operator stands to lose both current revenue on voice traffic and the potential revenue on new data services. To ensure quality of service for its new 3G customers, a major operator in France has proactively replaced their users SIM with 3G USIM cards: When sending a new 3G phone pack (including a USIM) to their current customers, this operator requested the user to insert the new 3G USIM into the new phone. The operator also warned the user that inserting a SIM into the new 3G phone could damage the SIM and crash the 3G phone software."

You can find the whitepaper here:  http://www.gemalto.com/dwnld/5291_3G_network_WP_v4.pdf

I suspect that Apple (or more likely Qualcomm's chipset) may have stopped supporting 2G SIMs in the iPhone 4S. But that doesn't explain why it is working for some people and not others on the same network!?

Apple???  Answers please!

@sschulte yep, you probably right, but in my case, after switched to a new sim card (same carrier) no more sim failure, my friend's phone also have  no problem even at 5.0 or 5.0.1. At some area on my house the signal bars decrease to only one bar and yet no sim failure for more than half an hour, so i guess its not about the ios, but the sim reader on the iphone 4s is not accepting all kind of range of sim cards that used to be work fine under iphone 4.

@earthland i actually cut them manually, because i used to do that for my previous iphone4 ;-)

Hehe, yep. Works well now at least, never had it last this long before without any type of whining from the phone. The apple store here said they wouldn't cut into the sim, saying I had to wait for the microsim version to come to Telenor. But just used some surgical skillz and cut really carefully. The chip was almost as big as the microsim itself, hence it was kind of risky to cut it. (thats why they didn't recommend it)

Nice to have a working phone for now at least!

(Hope I don't jinx it)

-Erlend

This afternoon the issue showed up again in my 4s.

I tried removing the SIM (first time I tried that) and the phone didn't recognize the card being pulled out and pushed back in; not even after several retries.

It was just as if the hadrware had been locked up in SIM Failure state and the phone was stuck in it, even without any SIM plugged in.

After a reboot it worked and as of now it never gave the no SIM error again.

So how could it be the SIM?

Seems like after the issue shows up, the phone never checks again on the SIM tray. Could it be a power issue on the SIM tray circuitry? The tray gets no power, the phone can't read the SIM and if you reboot the device, the tray gets its power back and all goes back to normal, until the next power outage.

This may have something to do with battery issues. Maybe there's a leakage in power circuits that drains the batteries and sometimes causes the SIM tray to be powered off.

I´m with you, if the iPhone is always searching for sinal, the Battery will not last as in normal use...

No word from Apple...

I can rule that out in my case. Even when the iPhone 4s is in the Dock and get loaded all the time, I see the SIM ERROR showing up once the I stay with 1-2 bars for a longer time (usually between 15-20 minutes).

And I didn't have the issue with iOS 5.0.0 so the folks in Cupertino broke something in the baseband part of iOS with iOS 5.0.1

As far as "No word from Apple..." goes, they may read the posts but the right way to get their attention is to file a Bug Report for them as this is not a support channel but a user-to-user discussion board.

I am sure they know exactly how many people are currently upset with the iPhone 4s and work hard on getting things sorted.

Stefan

P.S. No, I don't own Apple shares nor do I work for them or a related company.

I think Toothsaw is right and it's kinda related to battery problem because mine showed the error when I was working with it continuously and the phone became hot and then simcard failure shown up

I have the same problem with T-mobile NL(works for some time and then gives message "Invalid SIM"). I cut my own SIM card first and when I had the problem, I ordered a new SIM but the issue continued.

The guys at T-mobile tell me that there is a slight difference in micro-sim card between iPhone 4 and 4S and I should get myself a new SIM. Ordered a new one then and there, will update you guys when I get the new SIM card and see some results.

How many of you are here still waiting for a Apple´s solution?

Have you tried do use another carrier´s SIM on your iPhone? A lot of Carriers around the world choose not to use a 3G certified card because his a high price. I tried a PRE PAID "3G" chip from other carrier and my iPhone is working perfect..., I´ve contacted my carrier and, until now, they dont use a 3G SIM...

Changing microsim worked for me.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3557499?tstart=0

iPhone 4S - Almost been a month since I had this problem. It suddenly disappeared. I have never had problems with my battery or any other problem with the phone.