Help! iOS 9 - No Service on iPhone 5

Same thing just happened to me. iPhone 5 was working perfectly, until I upgraded to iOS 9.0.2 last night, as soon as I did, 'No Service'. I've tried pretty much everything listed here and around other places:

- Restore. Backup & Set as new iPhone.

- iOS 9.1 Beta 5.

- Back to iOS 9.0.2

- Hard reset. Network settings reset. Full settings and content reset.

- DFU Restore.

- Airplane mode on & off so many times.

- Tried the Sim Card on my old 4S with 8.3, works fine and gets network right away.

It's an FH19 serial, which means refurbished (got it from Apple on July 14th as part of the battery replacement program -my old iPhone had a screen that popped out because of a swollen battery) and the warranty was 3 months as far as I know, being the 19th, I am out of warranty already and options here in Venezuela are very limited. Taking it to the authorised Apple service center here tomorrow, to see what they say. Until then, using my 4S and stuck with an expensive iPod 😟

I reset my iPhone through iTunes and it fixed the problem. I called Apple (it was free because it was a 9.x problem) and they helped me with it. After doing the iTunes reset (it's apparently more thorough than settings reset) it fixed the problem.

absolutely DO NOT do this! do not attempt to reset your phone, perhaps you might get lucky like this last guy or you might end up in WORSE shape like me...

I tried this just now and guess what... not only do I continue to have "no service", but my iphone is stuck in the activation screen. Even when connected to WIFI and to iTunes I cannot activate my iphone 4s. I got some screen that said "unknown device" - ummm.... great....

after 2 weeks of walking around with a phone that could only use wifi, but at least I could use imessage and whatsapp... and now I have a phone that is truly just dead weight.

I wish it wasn't so but I don't think I will want another iOS device again in my life after all the time I've wasted in the last few weeks with this issues.

Same here, I've tried to revert back to 8.4 which has failed during installation so I decided to go back to 9.0.2. Cannot activate the phone anymore.

my recommendation, and i know this ***** a lot, is to not reset the phone because then you lose all access to your phone numbers, photos, messages and so on... just go buy a new phone (i'll let you decide what manufacturer you want to go with...).

Then at least you can have access to your old iphone and all the important data on it.

I know it is not what people want to hear, but trust me it is better to at least have access to all your friends phone numbers, and your apps over just wifi then NOTHING at all... shame on Apple.

Mine got stuck on activation when I did a settings reset, making it a useless brick. It wouldn't do anything when I plugged it into my computer. Apple said to hold the power+menu button until it showed the iTunes symbol with a cable on the screen. I did this and when I plugged it into my computer, it said something like 'there is a problem with this iPhone,' and you could click 'update' or 'restore.' After it restored itself (took a while), it finally got service again. I was able to go through the activation part after that and put all my stuff back on with iCloud backup. Hope this helps.

I too got this message "there is a problem with your iphone" but when I try to restore it fails with error 50. I tried several times with the same result and gave up. Now i have phone with the Itunes symbol on it. Nice

well consider yourself very very lucky!

but for anyone else, unless you want to lose your contacts and access to other important stuff on your phone, don't play with fire. just accept the fact that you will not get SIM telephony service on the phone and DO NOT try to restore.

I just spent the entire day with Apple support (again). At one point we were able to get a clean install of ios9, but when we tried to the the restore the activation problem started again. Then the rep logged off.

Spoke to two more reps. One just basically told me sorry your phone is 3 years old what do you expect? LOL

Told me that there is a manufacturing defect that the new ios9 exposed... but of course since the warranty is done 2 years ago I have to pay to get it fixed. LOL

Wait it gets better... I asked him can you at least help me get it to the clean install like the other guy did. Couldn't do it and couldnt forward me to anyone else because he was in the "top of the support chain".

So now if I want my contacts I need to go purchase some 3rd party software to try to suck out the data from my icloud back up.

isn't that just dandy? i'll probably spend the next few days trying to do that.

thanks Apple, wonderful QA, tech support and all that.

Well thats what I was afraid of, it affects only a small portion of the customers with phones out of warranty, so they don't care. But I don't care either, so threw it to the bin.. Have you seen Fight Club? Your're not your phone

Yes, I understand. My issue however is that the only back up phone I have that works is an android from 2012. So now I need to go procure a new phone, and if I want access to certain apps which are only on the back up I have to get an iphone.

So either I need to buy a used iphone 5 and hope this does not happen again when I install the back up or perhaps find someone to borrow one from. Either case a lot of time and money wasted because the people working for this company don't care.

9.1 was released and "Fixes an issue that caused activation errors on some carriers." This might worth a shot

Yep. I was happy to see it this morning too. My hopes went through the roof, I got up, pressed the update button and, lo and behold, it does not fix s***. Sorry for the early spoiler, everyone. Hope this update helps some of you.

I opened a case with apple support over the phone. I went from an advisor to a supervisor, both asking me to "try" things. I had to stop both short and go through everything I tried, including a new SIM from my carrier. My case was escalated to the engineering team — I would get an answer in 3 business days. It was Friday so more like 5.

I finally lost it the next day when my wife's car broke down and she couldn't get a hold of me for an hour. I ended up sending a pretty assertive email and asking that a replacement phone be sent asap. No response.

When the sup called back she had a whole new list of things to try. I stopped her short and asked if she had read my email. She put me on hold for five minutes and then came back and told me a replacement would be sent out immediately. The only downside is I had to put a hold on my CC for the full price of the phone.

The new phone showed up the next day and I sent my phone out that day. So far everything is back to normal (knock on wood). But I'm super hesitant to upgrade to the latest release.

Just went to the Apple Store. They ran diagnostics on my phone and said nothing came up wrong but were happy to give me a new iPhone 6s to replace my new one. They updated it straight to 9.1 and I am still having the same problems, so it might not be the phone. Going to try and get a new SIM card from ATT next

Did you do a restore or a fresh install? When I got my replacement, I set it up like a new phone, then did a restore to get my data back.

I have AT&T as well and got a new sim, didn't change a thing.