14 DAY TRIAL // Widespread reports of SIM card failures on iPhone 4S handsets may prompt Apple to roll out iOS 5.0.2 early, as the newest iPhone model seems to be plagued by quite a few issues just over a month since its debut.
While Apple is yet to fully address the battery drainage problem experienced by iOS 5 customers and mostly iPhone 4S owners, a new problem has arisen - SIM card is not recognized.
One upset customer over at the Apple Support Communities forum explains:
“Got the new 32GB iPhone 4S today from AT&T, activated the phone was working all morning, I started experimenting with Siri and a couple minutes later the phone was hotter than usual and I get Sim Card failure, and Bad SIM messages. The phone now only says No Sim. I get home take out the SIM card and put it in my previous iPhone 4 and it works just fine. I then put in a blank micro SIM into the new iPhone 4S, but it still says NO SIM. Thinking the SIM reader got fried some how already.”
Numerous users following up on that post are reporting similar scenarios.
The problem may be tied to the iPhone hardware, software, or even the SIM cards people are using, though it appears these problems are not specific to a single carrier / network.
It is therefore believed that the problem is on the iPhone side, and while these customers could be using devices from a faulty batch, the problem isn’t by far isolated.
Some are reporting success by swapping SIM cards in and out and restarting their devices, but this is just a temporary fix for most users, according to their reports.
Apple is currently known to be testing a second incremental update to iOS 5 internally with the purpose of alleviating battery drain woes, though it seems Apple engineers have a new assignment even before the public release.