Why is iPhone 5 stuck on "searching..."?

please never restore a phone that has wrong time and date and says searching

it will brick your device

you have to go into airplane mode and toggle,

on and off

and connect to wifi to get network time.

Try a factory restore :)

A hard reset usually works.... Power and home buttons together until phone reboots :)

I got a small amount of water damage in my 5C 6 months ago and havnt had any trouble with it since until the other day it just started showing searching.. . I took the two little screws out of the bottom pulled the front off and lightly pushed on the sim card holder (With sim in it) and it started going again. This might be a quick fix for some. Hope it helps.

I had the same problem , 2 Apple stores said the Antenna was broken , and wanted £200 to replace as it was a few months out of warranty.

I tried resetting network etc etc .. Then tried an update which came up with a 4005 error message , Apple are pathethic , the software updates are rubbish.

I then did a full restore to factory settings .. which crashed , then crashed again even through itunes which i was using . Then 3rd time lucky it worked and the sgnal was back.. phone now working .

So Apple store advice of the phone being needing replaced couls have cost me £200 .. disgraceful service .

I tried everything: resetting, setting the clock, rebooting, turning on/off. The only thing that helped was logging into iTunes and hitting "restore iPhone" and resetting everything from the absolute scratch.

Make a backup before you do, though

Hope this helps

Had this same issue after replacing the front assembly. Reseated all the connections, reset the phone several time to no avail. Then I try popping the SIM card out and putting it back in (with the phone on) and suddenly it gets signal.

I went to settings>general>date and time>timezone>manually time fix !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! still not fixed even though people said this would work. :(

Hi.

I tried many things from this post

• Go to airplane mode for some minutes
• Fix the date and time
• Reboot

Nothing fixed the problem I had.

But I managed to fix the problem with this:

One thing I noticed when I went to Settings is that I didn't have the Carrier option. I didn't either have the IMEI info in the About section. I thought this had something to do with my SIM card.

So, I turned off my iPhone, took out the SIM card and put it in an old iPhone that I was not using. I turned on the old iPhone with the SIM card inside and the old iPhone asked me to unlock my SIM, asking for its password (something that didn't happen in my current iPhone even if I rebooted the phone). So, I put the SIM password and the old iPhone did get a cellphone signal, 3G signal and started working fine. At this point I had probably "re-unlocked" the SIM card, I guess.

After this, I turned off the old iPhone, took out the SIM card and put it on my current iPhone. Then turned on the current phone. The phone said "SIM locked" but didn't ask me for its password. I waited a few seconds and the phone was displaying "No service" (which was different from the previous "Searching" message). I went to Settings and I noticed that the Carrier option was now there, so I selected the Carrier option and then the phone let me choose the carrier for my SIM card .

I hope this helps someone out there with the "Searching" problem.

Long story short: take out your SIM card, put it in another iPhone, unlock the SIM card and then put it back to your iPhone. Go to settings and select your carrier.

guys is you are tearing your hair out. if you did ANY repairs or have had any repairs done to the phone before your sim issue do this (if you have the tools)

BACKUP TO ITUNES (with the password to save everything)

open back up the iphone screen

unscrew the 2 little tin plates that cover the charging port ribbon and battery ribbon (youtube charging port replacement if unsure. its litterally just after opening it up)

remove SIM card

locate and remove the battery ribbon for 30 seconds

replace ribbon, boot phone while still open to check if it has resolved the issue. mine started reading no sim immediately

while its open just quickly check to make sure no other plugs are loose or unplugged and if ti works re assemble.

its just taken me 3 hours to figure this out. and i did absolutely everything right down to a full factory reset, but short of the "mechanics fix" that others have attempted.

to buy these tools are nothing if you buy a replacement iphone battery or whatever from ebay. and new batteries are only 15-25 dollars depending on location. you can get a tool set alone off there too.

my problem was when i had to replace my charging port this afternoon as it was worn out and not charging anymore.

Tried everything listed above only thing to solve my iPhone from searching... Was to connect to iTunes via computer it said iPhone recovery mode and took 40 minutes + to do a software update but BOOM it worked!!!!

Don't give up keep trying

hy .... sir please guide me what i can do ... my iphone 5c suddenly drop the signal and show serching from last 3 days ... i was cheaked by some shop expert every say me here is no solution to fix it .... just this is modem currptd ..and there is no solution just your iphone is dead ... what i can do ... i done every way ... reset on off ... but no way ... to find a solution ..., plz help me

dear sir my iphone stock all time searching how to solution

What work for me was

1. Connect to wifi

2. Date and time recognition

3. Deleted some apps

• Read that limited storage could be causing the issue

4. Hard press reset

Very nice responses.., I too had same problem on my 5S.

Tried everything apart from hard reset.

Now my problem resolved after hard reset (press center button and lock button together until phone restarts).

Thanks to the forum..,

I too had the same problem. Here's what I did.

The Problem may be also because of constant updating of the firmware.

First download a software called '3Utools' at 'www.3u.com' . Meanwhile it gets downloaded, make sure you backup all your data that is on your phone either at itunes or icloud.

Before you start Flashing your phone go to ~ Settings>General >About > and from there see the version of the ios that has been installed on your phone. Then,

*Install 3Utools.

*Go to firmware and download the previous version of the ios for the version that has been installed (i.e : If you had ios 10.2.3 recently ,download ios 10.2.2 or 10.2.1).

*First restore your phone(Full Restore).

*Connect your phone to PC.

*Then put ypur iphone yo recovery mode (http://www.iclarified.com/367/how-to-put...).

• Then Install the firmware that has been downloaded.

The problem will be solved.

Thank you!

Hashan.

HEY since i have the same problem and i have the iphone 6 if when i went the the repair store the guy told me its cuz our phones have fallen so much it makes it harder for the phone to get a signal and since im in t-mobile a guy told me that it can be a possibility that our antenna is messed up :(

FIXED!

When I first had this issue I tried everything under the sun to fix it, including disconnecting/reconnecting the battery, SIM card in/out, Airplane Mode etc. Nothing worked. I had been dealing with no service for at least a month.

Today I was using my iPhone on 5% battery and not long after that it died. When it turned back on after giving it some charge I HAD SERVICE AGAIN!

So there's my answer, disconnecting the battery doesn't fix it, but lettting it die on purpose and recharging it does.

I hope this fixes the problem for everyone and not just myself.

HAVE YOU TRIED THIS???

Let your battery go completely dead until iphone 5s switches itself off (I was using mine like an ipad at the time), put charger in and wait till it switches itself back on (I put charger in after about 10 minutes without thinking Id get my phone back network and all).

When it switched back on the 'searching' text had gone and I had my signal bars and network back again.

I had previously tried every other fix online and taken the phone to local mobile repair tech who said it is completely knackered, just use it as an ipad thats all its good for now...Mine was searching for THREE DAYS until I accidentally found this fix!

I hope it helps someone else

Hi!

I have a 2yr-old pristine iPhone 5s...very gently used.

I am on DAY-3 of “Searching” - NO NETWORK-

PHONE NUMBER: Unknown

Wi-Fi is my saving grace;

At least I can troubleshoot...

(Exhausting!) & call thru FB!

My supposed faulty SIM card found a tower instantly, once installed into else’s phone (great phone kiosk fellow)-so, it’s NOT my SIM after all!

The word seems to be that the IOS UPDATE -11 is the culprit;

Geared to later iPhones than my 5s...?

I have tried most of the “fixes” listed everywhere—-multiple times, except for “hard reset & full recovery” (wipe)...

• I cannot risk losing my “GarageBand compositions”...(so much work!) Makes me nervous...and iTunes is not easy for me to understand.

*I am not techy at all, but apparently- it may have been possible to roll back to IOS-10 safely, had I archived that back-up pre-11 update???

Anyway...here I am hoping for a miracle! There must be a way to write my phone number to this freaking SIM CARD...I am intrigued by the guy who installed it in his old phone first...& eventually got to select his carrier in the problem phone...

I will read that again as I have my old iPhone 4 (locked/no service) - but it powers up. I don’t know...

Any new 2018 “Fix Discoveries” for this headache, would be awesome!!! Thanks!

My straight talk iphone 6 plus kept saying 'searching' or 'no service' at the top but then i went into my settings, general, and reset.. I reset my network settings and boom it worked.. i got data and bars back

After trying all the possible tricks and tips out there, simply cleaning the gold surface of the SIM card with a pencil eraser lightly and thoroughly did the trick for me. Worked like a charm to remove very unnoticeable built up, until you clean it and see it lighter color show on the gold surface.

Oh god, iphone sucks, I’m moving to Samsung and you all should too!

Restore the phone on iTunes finally resolved my problem of searching for the SIM card, but I still don’t know why did it happen.