iPhone 4S "no service" problem

Manual selection of the carrier did not work for me. I was able to select ma carrier manually, but the iPhone did not connect to it...

Got a 4s phone made at factory C3, week 39...

Same problem, SIM lock active or disactive doesn't help, manual or automatic network selection doesn't help, but it only appears when coverage gets very bad, and doesn't retrive the network. switch to airplane mode doesn't help to restore but a reset do (works every time).

HW or SW issue??

same problem here, as described by almost everyone on this post. losses connection to carrier, even though it shows signaL and network. but when trying to call someone, it shows searching, and then sometimes reconnects by itself, sometimes shows no service. got to return it. this is the second really big problem since iphone 4s launch, after well known battery issue. incredible. I guess it would be better for apple to have a very limited number of users, to make really good products. now, when the whole world has iphone and apple products, they simply cannot keep up. surely i will switch to something else, you know what, and so will many of you, sooner or later. thanks apple for this very expensive IPOD, and sometimes, randomly, PHONE.

What really bothers me is that this issue is over a month old and Apple simply ignored it.

I've managed to switch my device to one running 5.0 and that way I've solved my problem. But in any case this is a complain of thousands of people, most of them loyal Apple customers, and the company simply ignored a major flop. For me this is even worse than the antenna gate of the 4 model, there the phone at least worked, in this case people who paid over US $ 600,00 in a iPhone ended up with a heavy iPod. Sad!

I'm sorry to inform you that simple replacement of the phone does not work in some cases. At least it did not work for me.

I got into lenghty discussion with Apple tech support and from it I understand that for some SIMs (not 128k) the iPhone replacement is rather a lottery then a solution.

I'm also in conversation with my carrier regarding the SIM / they apparently do not offer the 128k option, so I'll be forced to switch the operator / as a developer I need the phone working reliably.

And as I learn from various unofficial sources, I have really bad luck as it seems that my current carrier is really the most affected... &@£$^&@!!!.

We are approaching 2 months and no word from Apple on what is going on. I am thinking we should contact the blogs and media and direct them to the Apple forums to raise awareness of this and many other issues.

Mine just started doing this tonight. It's a 4 with 5.0.1. It has worked pretty flawlessly until today.

I use my phone constantly for business. They better fix this real soon.

Hi,

I am from Hanoi, Vietnam. I bought a new iP4S from Melbourne, Australia. Its firmware is 5.0.1 and the same happened to my iP4S. The network coverage is very weak and sometimes suddenly turns to "no service" or "searching". I turn on airplane mode on but it can not recover. Then I have to restart but the network coverage is still weak. Event, the phone showed a signature "simcard failure" or "invalid simcard" then I had to restart.......

Indeed, this problem happened to many iP4S in Vietnam with 5.0.1 firmware. In many forums, the reason for this problem was confirmed that it was due to software not hardware.

We are all waiting for Apple to provide 5.0.2 or 5.1 firmware in the hope that this kind of problem will be eleminated soon.

I'VE SOLVED IT!!!!

I had this problem from last friday (2nd December). Given I was overseas, and only got back to Australia last night, I figured there was a problem with Vodafone (Australia) and non-agreements with Argentine phone carriers. Why? Vodawoe has given me woes in Australia, and Argentina is so fickle at times. Just now I thought I'd google "no service on iphone", clicked on this link and felt comforted that there were 9 pages of woes with what I now understand has nothing to do with the above, BUT a simple Iphone4s glitch. So enough rambling....

1. switch phone on/off about 5 times quickly, then

2. HOLD IT DOWN for about 20 seconds until it completely shuts down.

3. wait about a minute or so

4. HOLD IT DOWN again for about 20 secs or until the apple icon appears, black screen with icon looks frozen, but don't do anything as it's thinking....

5. then presto, your back in services apple denizens!

Wait, please can you explain more detailed.

1. switch phone on/off about 5 times quickly, then

So I should completely shut it down and boot up 5 times, right? Or just lock/unlock it?

2. HOLD IT DOWN for about 20 seconds until it completely shuts down.

Um, I should turn off and hold sleep button 20 seconds? But if I do so, it starts booting again in this long period of time.

Anyhow I just tried something like this and I have no idea how in any way should it work.

Also, guys, today I was at my mobile operator and I have changed my microSIM to regular SIM and cut it down. This did not help. Now I have very hard choice - try other operator that possibly will work (they provide iPhone 4s to their clients) or to return iPhone and buy other phone that works. But if I change operator, it will be kind of bad because I use it for years and I have a lot of benefits as good client. But do I need them if I can't call? 😀

I hope that Apple will release update that fixes it real soon. And also I hope that there will be such update, because there is a lot of countries where operators use other type of SIM than 4s "wants". And I am pretty sure that they will fix it, because it will affect lot of customer loyality. I don't think that person will ever want to buy one more product from company, that released not working phone, acted like nothing happened and did not fix it. So we should wait for good news.

my friend, you're a dreamer. please do not be upset. what you are telling us it a fairy tale. this problem is worldwide, and if until now no one has a real fix, a workaround tha fixes this, it has to be apple... i sent my phone to orange romania... i tryed everything.. restore in DFU, normal restore, changing sim card, airplane mode, and so on...i read every forum with sollutions....all failed. this is an aapple fail. i had an iphone 3gs that is working perfect even now....i stayed with apple all this time, even though, apple iphone is an expensive phone in romania. but this time, i really do not have the time to sue orange or apple for this, to have my money back. my iphone is in service for 2 days, and maybe they'll give it back to me restored, but with the same problem. i do not trust orange now, nor apple, for this. please all romanian orange guys that had this problem, let me know, maybe we can do something together. thanks. best wishes!

I went to the apple store and they restored the settings to default and the phone has been fine.

IMPORTANT! WORKING SOLUTION!!!

This most likely will work for guys, who have Touch 4s, that means for those of you who make a call and lose signal after that. This is not solution for guys who can call,but sometimes get Invalid SIM error (I have not tested it for so long yet to be sure that I won’t get this error, then probably it may help you too).

I won't copy all solution in every topic so just check my message in this link:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3390945?answerId=16968088022#16968088022

I bought 4iphone 4s all unlocked and the first one shipped seems to be the one that isreally screwed and everything mentioned in this forum for fixing the problemhave been tried unsuccessfully. It is a manufacturing defect as the same phoneworked flawlessly in Canada without ever losing network or displaying the “SIMFailure” but behaving erratically with other networks. Since I have personally usedthe phone in North America for a month I know for a fact my iphone 4S is defectiveand it may be due to Apples lack of study or testing with the foreign networkor major manufacturing defect on a batch of products. We can all send outserial number to apple (not that the iphone is sending the diagnostics andusage automatically) so that they can identify and apologize to its loyalcustomers who are feeling betrayed by apple. The other phones are working finewith the same sim which is displaying “sim failure” on the defective phone. Forinstance, serial C39GLWZXXXXXX is defective while C39GPCWXXXXX is not!

After changingsim after sim and trying out different carriers, I believe it is not thesoftware but the hardware that is defective. Furthermore, it may further haveto do with the combinations of sim card and network that are not using the samenetwork as North America. The phone sometimes stays connected (i.e., shows thecarrier info) for more than 8 hours in one place and few minutes when you aremoving (i.e, changing towers) so the antennas and the other related hardwarealong with the software must be corrupt or defective.

It is veryunusual for Apple to keep their mouth shut and not address the problem, maybeit is because Steve Jobs is no more!

I have alsonoticed a very strange thing with the defective iphone 4S and that is wheneverthe sim card is ejected it does not register that the sim card has beenejected, keeps the carries name and bars intact! All other iphones instantlyregisters that there are no sim!