***********I FOUND A SOLUTION THAT HAS NOT BEEN SUGGESTED AFTER TRYING LITERALLY EVERY OTHER THING ON HERE********
Background:
my phone randomly went into searching mode for service. eventually just saying no service. problem had been happening intermittently now that i think of it for some time but today for about 8 hours just no service at all.
i tried:
airplane mode
reset
shutting off/turning on every button related to connectivity cellular-wise, internet, bluetooth you name it.
long story short i stumbled upon a youtube video stating the issue was with the date and time settings. apparently a bug..what i can surmise is perhaps the phone is getting stuck trying to automatically set the date and time, causing it to not move forward to find service. If i had to venture a guess, i would say that the combination of privacy settings (i try to keep my phone as private as possible via many location services not allowed, however location services on because having to change the settings for maps etc every time is rather annoying). but the system settings portion of the location services tabs had a lot disabled. Im thinking the perfect storm of privacy settings must interfere with the phones ability to figure out exactly where you are located to set the proper time and date based on time zone.
So the guy in the video says to uncheck the "set automatically" feature. then set the tiume and date manually, then restart the phone. This seemed the random promising thing i needed, but it did not work. However, it got me thinking of the idea that the phone is just stuck loading or determining something due to a bug. That guy might have had different privacy settings where the simple manual change did the trick. So basically i went ham and set the phone time and date manually along with enabling all location options and basically simplifying the OS startup, at least in my mind, giving the phone all the options to find info, and not requesting it to do too much. i will list the exact steps i think taking will solve this issue. Sorry for the long book, but the way i see this glitch, varying fixes based on the general principle outlined above may be possible so i felt it important to note ^.
TO FIX (hopefully will work for you also):
1) GO TO SETTINGS - GENERAL - DATE & TIME - make sure 24-Hour Time is unchecked. Uncheck "Set Automatically" Click "Time Zone" then search for your time zone and select it. Im in california, so started to write "Pacific" and "pacifica, USA" pops up. whatever, selected it, and the time corresponded with the actual time. I changed it a minute ahead just to ensure i had set it myself.
2) GO TO PRIVACY - LOCATION SERVICES -Select to have "Location Services" at the top enabled. Go down and click on "System Services".
Enable EVERYTHING. ALL green. Also enable PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT services at the bottom (there are 3).
3) GO TO SETTINGS - GENERAL - BACKGROUND APP REFRESH - Turn OFF background app
4) GO TO SETTINGS - GENERAL - RESET - and reset "RESET LOCATION AND PRIVACY + RESET HOME SCREEN LAYOUT + RESET KEYBOARD DICTIONARY
5) Then RESET NETWORK SETTINGS.
6) once the phone reboots, go to SETTINGS - CELLULAR - and set "ENABLE LTE" to OFF.
7) IN SETTINGS - CELLULAR - also make ROAMING set to "VOICE ONLY".
Im sure theres things in there that might not be necessary. But i dunno what they are. all i know is doing all this worked for me. Doing all this worked for like ten minutes then i coulkdnt make a call... and was very sad..but thats when i implimented steps 6 and 7. looks like this glitch is affecting quite a few settings. hope this helps out
