Invalid SIM Card on iPhone 4S (5.0.1)

Seems to be a widespread problem, from what I'm seeing in the discussions:


I have an unlocked iPhone 4S (bought in France) and use it with Vodafone in Portugal. I was using the same SIM card that worked perfectly fine for over a year on my previous iPhone 4, and it also worked just fine in the 4S... until I updated to iOS 5.0.1.


The very next day I started having connections issues and invalid SIM card errors - requiring a reboot to temporarily fix it for a few minutes, until it lost connection again - the iPhone would still show it had a few bars strength, but was actually unable to make calls or use data. After a while it would go back to invalid sim message.


I replaced my old SIM card, and I though that was it... It was working fine.. until after 3 or 4 days, I find once again that I had a Invalid SIM message.



I've read reports suggesting that this might actually have to do with using other chargers than the official Apple 4S one - it sound kind of crazy, but just in case, I was also using a 3rd party charger when those issues arised for the first time. Anyway, I was now using my previous official iPhone 4 charger when I got the new error with the new SIM card.


Also, although the iPhone recommends using a non-locked SIM Card, mine has always had a PIN, and always worked through activations without a problem.



Other than being a real hardware problem with my new iPhone 4S (crossing my fingers it isn't!) my guess is that this is a software related incident - as this has just popped up after upgrading to iOS 5.0.1, and it would have been an amazing coincidence for SIM cards to go bust, or for the iPhone 4S to suddenly malfunction, afterwards.


Hope you guys can fix it soon, as well as the phone numbers not showing up the callers name in the contacts (that was a problem I was having from the very beginning, with iOS 5.0.0).

Posted on Nov 16, 2011 2:18 AM

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366 replies

Jan 18, 2012 11:52 AM in response to laundry bleach

Same problem here.


Activated the iPhone last wednesday, jan 11th. This Sunday the problem started. Rebooted and it worked for one day. Monday not even rebooting. Tuesday morning updated to the iOS '6', no changes.


Went to my carrier store, got a new SIM card. Worked for 30 min perfeclty (call, sms, 3G...), then 'No Service'.


The weird thing is that I bought the phone toghether with my brother, and, except the fact that his iPhone is white, we have exactly the same configuration (carrier, plan...etc), and he didn't get any trouble.


If anyone knows of a solution...

Jan 30, 2012 11:01 PM in response to ptnik

Hi,

i would like to share my experience with this problem.

I bought a 4s in Germany from o2 that sells officially unlocked phones. Everything worked fine with their card with 5.0.1. update officially provided by iTunes. Then i went to Hungary and ordered a microSIM from Telenor. Plugged it in, and immediately it did not work at all. Then i followed the tweak given by Apple about the correct update to 5.0.1 (backup, restore and then update again). Worked. For two weeks... The last two days i had 4 times the invalid SIM problem. Can someone tell me how the **** is that something, a software/hardware combination works fine and all of a sudden has a "flash" that it needs to crash??? A private iphone shop/service told me to have it changed by Apple on garantee basis since this a problem of a certain chipset. But then why did it work fine for two weeks? The truth is that a couple of days ago i bought some apps. Can this be linked to this? I have also realized how many low memory messages can be found in the diagnostic reports. Before all the crashes there were some low memory reports. Also the invalid sim crashes happened at low battery...

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Invalid SIM Card on iPhone 4S (5.0.1)

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