Iphone 5 keeps searching network problem....

Had this problem 2 years ago after returning from long stay trip abroad (where I was going from one carrier to another). When I called my carrier at home, they said this happen from time to time... They replaced the SIM card and everything went back to normal...

By any chance, have you travelled recently ? (If this can help 🙂 ...)

Cheers,

Rob

Similar to someone above.

iPhone 5s showed "searching". Reset settings and it worked for a day or two then issue returned.

Apple Store told us it was likely a bad SIM reader.

Tried a reset/restore from iTunes as a last resort and the issue was fixed (at least for now).

I had an expanding battery problem with my nearly 3 year old iphone 5 so I sent it to apple and they completely replaced the device. It is a few weeks later and I am experiencing this exact problem. signal randomly drops and won't come back without a full restore of the phone.

it has happened twice now in the past 2 days and I'm thinking I have to go back to them to get it replaced again because I'm not finding any definite answers here in discussions... anybody?

I had this same issue, and previously tried:

On/Off

Restart/Reset

iTunes Restore

All to no avail. Had a great chat with Apple Senior Advisor who recommended the following (pretty much a last resort, and you need a Macbook). Its a full phone wipe and software upload, so hopefully you'll have used iCloud to back everything up.

Unplug and power down iPhone (i.e. Hold power button and slide off)

Connect lightening cable to Mac

Open iTunes on Mac (dont connect the phone yet)

Press and hold the home button on the iPhone until the 'Connect phone to iTunes' appears on the screen.

Connect the iphone

Release the home button

The Mac will download the latest iPhone software, and proceed to upload the software onto your iPhone i.e.

The screen should go white with the apple symbol, and the upload bar will fill twice over.

Once complete the phone will restart

Start the phone as it were a 'new iPhone', and enter your icloud username/password.

Hopefully this works for you - it did for me, most helpful.

Hello. If you've tried to reset network settings, eject sim in and out, you will have to do this (after backing up data in iTunes):

1) Power off your iPhone.

2) Hold down home button **While off** and plug into your computer with iTunes running.

3) You should see your phone saying connect to iTunes.

4) On iTunes, you will have a window asking you what to do. Click "Restore iPhone."

5) Hopefully that solved the apple server connect issue or carrier "Searching..." issue.

Thank you so much!! Mine stopped working recently and I thought because i dropped it and broke the antenna inside, litrally replaced the antenna this morning and still didnt work... Looked on google found this forum, saw your comment and im not gonna lie i doubted it.... tried it nevertheless and yo boom its working!!! I felt obliged to leave a comment dude thank you!! same thing happened to me it worked on the 2nd try

Hi there,

I had the same problem , and was tempted to open my iphone 5s to replace motherboard.

Yet, i managed to solve the problem with very few easy steps, I restored the iphone with my Macbook , please do not forget to backup your files and pictures , then connect it to Itunes-

You need to make sure that itunes is the last version , then click restore and wait , it might take sometime, i left on my table at midnight and in the morning the iphone was ready to go...

good luck

I had this problem today - and I noticed the time settings were weird on my phone. I unchecked set time automatically (settings>general>date and time) and changed the time zone to my current one and backed the time up a few minutes. After the time set for a bit it finally recognized my SIM. Then I changed the time back to auto set time and it worked again.

Hope this helps!

I had the exact same problem! I went abroad for a few weeks, and from there on my phone decided that it would be "searching" and not be connected, super annoying! After i returned home, i tried taking out the simcard, restarting, etc. Then I tried restarting my phone, shock therapy style, which you do by holding the home and power button, until the white apple sign appears! This finally worked

My IPhone 5s (purchased when it released, so 4 years ago) also encountered this issue on July 30, 2017. No matter how I reset the networking configuration, restart the IPhone, shift air-plane mode on and off. None of them works.

My problem is solved by updating my IPhone to the latest version of IOS (an update is happened to be available at that time). I updated it through the ITunes in the computer. Interesting thing was that if I updated it directly in the Phone,

it will fail and ask me to try later. So I bet the reason of the "searching..." icon is due to some software bugs (issues) when you IPhone is out of power. (The battery of my 4 years old IPhone has already been losing its capacity and "shut down due to no power is quiet normal for me here).

Since an update can solve my problem I think this is not a hardware issue (still possible tho) but a software issue.

I have same problem my iPhone 5s signal always searching, but now my phone already work properly about signal network. If u have problem about signal "SEARCHING......" u can flash ur iphone to factory setup.

or u can contact me.

Thank u

Make sure you have the latest iOS software update on the phone , may need to update via iTunes . I had the same problem and third parties said the phone was a write off . Apple support took me through all checks and the software update did the trick so don't give up

I have an iPhone 5 SE. I tried everything after noticing a very poor or non existent data service after updating to iOS 10.3.3. Tried all the toggling airplane mode, removing sim, downgrading to 10.3.2 and reinstalling from fresh using iTunes. After all this, in the end what worked for me was going to SETTINGS > MOBILE DATA > MOBILE DATA OPTIONS > ENABLE 4G > I set this to "OFF" and full data service resumed, albeit is using 3G but it is a helluva lot speedier than it constantly searching for 4G and loosing connection. Perhaps this is a bug within the latest update. I hope this solution helps peeps with a similar problem. Cheers.

Reset network settings

Go to settings > general. > reset then reset network settings

How long does it stay fixed for? im having tthe exact same problem But randonly it finds the network. But then when the signal goes weak. it goes back to searching again.