iPhone 5 and "NO SIM CARD INSTALLED" error

Happened to my wifes 2 week old iPhone 5 today. A reset and it seems to be working, but I have a feeling it will happen again. Never had an issue like this before with iPhone, Palm, Droid etc. This is a verizon phone btw. I refuse to put tape on the sim as this is a new "state of the art" device! Poor quality control from china I would imagine. I am a huge Apple fan but if this was any other manufacturer we would be bashing them to no end. Apple needs to fix this asap...

@doubleroll... If you would read previous post this is a very simple fix. Quit complaining and go to the AT&T store and get a new SIM card... That's it! Seriously, how difficult is that?

FYI - it's been a week now without issue since I reset the network settings and cleaned the SIM with an eraser.

My question would be why a new iPhone/sim would have any corrosion built up on the contacts to require cleaning?

Have you ever dealt with VZW or ATT tech support? It all depends on who you get and could take hours and even days sometimes to get an issue resolved...Apple should insist on better Q/C.

After the 3rd occurrence e of this issue, I opted to go to the local AT&T store and have the SIM card replaced. The said was replaced without question in some 5 minutes. It's been 4 since and the issue has not returned nor do I expect it to.

I had considered removing the SIM card and applying a small piece of tape to the back of it. However, I did not want to deal with the future potential of any adhesive creating any internal problems.

This has worked for me for years. I mentioned it above and it has worked for all who tried it. It is probably some residual manufacturing goo left on the contacts that is preventing a good electrical contact. The Scotch tape on the back also helps.

Try it. You won't hurt anything and I'll betcha it works.

I think it's just beyond ridiculous that this issue happens at all. I never had this w/my 3G or 4, but for it to be something that has obviously happened in the past and is *still* happening means that Apple needs to get their butts in gear to make sure it doesn't happen further in the future.

I'm certain I could get my SIM card out, etc., but my question ultimately is: why should I? (or any other customer, for that matter!) Granted, complaining about it obviously hasn't brought a solution from Apple, but IMO it really shouldn't be something where the customers have to either (1) attempt to fix it themselves or (2) spend yet more time w/either Apple or their phone companies' customer service people. Apple should have been making sure it wouldn't happen before they released the phone in the first place, especially given that the problem had occurred in previous phones!

I'm taking my 5 to a local AT&T store tomorrow, b/c I'm tired of the stupid thing "deciding" that there's no SIM card while it's simply lying on the table beside me. It hasn't been dropped, or had anything else "happen" to it. It's about 10 days since I finally received it, and it's been doing this for the last several days.

Personally, it just bugs the heck out of me that a product with this much anticipation and release mania and this sort of cost on a regular basis is having this sort of lame-brained issue!!

As mentioned in another reply, I cleaned the contacts of the SIM with alcohol and have not had a problem for a fews days. It may be that the SIMs contacts were not clean when inserted.

What i did was go to
General>Reset>Reset Network Settings and it was fine, I'm not sure if this is temporary or not but getting a new sim card would be best.

This is a great forum and it had a lot of great ideas, but in the end I had to go to the apple store to get it replaced. I had a sprint 32GB black iPhone 5 and after 3 days I started to randomly receive the no SIM card detected error. I was able to restart the phone to clear it for a few days, which was getting annoying. After a week of having the phone, it was a constant failure to detect. I googled the issue and found this forum and tried everything, reset network settings, restore iPhone, factory reset, remove SIM card and clean with IPA, use eraser, etc. I first went to the sprint store and they were absolutely no help, which I expected, then went to apple store where they tried a few of the things I had already done then finally pulled the SIM card and put it into a brand new iPhone and it worked fine. There is definitely something wrong with this part of the phone - most likely the contacts for the SIM card.

😠 not happy, got third no sim warning today, although i can get it back to work by power off the iphone 5, btw am AT&T customer, i am thinking about go to local AT&T store to change the sim card, do they charge on that? thx. btw, is this just some glich or some major issue, beside reset the network and power off the system, is there any other way to fix this? i dont want open the sim tray

It's been over a month now, since I had my SIM card replaced. No more problems. At&T won't charge you any thing. Get it replaced.

AT&T should replace your SIM card quickly, no questions asked, for free. I did this in late Sept -- walked in & had the card replaced within 5 minutes. Easy fix -- no problems since. I think some of the nano-SIMs are just a bit too small.

I got the No SIM message on my new iPhone 5.

After fruitlessly repowering it, I noticed the SIM card tray panel wasn't fully flush.

Taking the card out, I realised the remains of the tab where it broke away from the rest of the "credit card" holder were preventing the card inserting fully.

After scraping away the leftover plastic with a fingernail and re-inserting the SIM, the holder inserted fully flush with the side of the phone and hey presto, the SIM was recognised!

There's some very tight tolerances at work here. Nano SIM card vendors might need to reconsider the "breakout" strategy - it's pretty hard to control...