I spent most of my day, Saturday, driving to the Orlando Apple Store and back in an effort to revive my iPhone. The problem began on Friday. I was heading over to my Father-in-law’s home to help with a small remodeling project. I decided to leave my iPhone at the home where we are staying rather than bring it along. For some unknown reason, I decided to press the sleep button and hold and then swipe the red “turn off” button on the screen. No big deal – I typically do that every night and then turn it back on by holding the sleep button until the white apple shows up on the screen. I think it helps to recover the iPhones system memory so I try to do it once a day or at least when I remember. Friday, however, I figured I would save battery by leaving the phone turned off for most of the morning and afternoon.
Later in the day, when I returned, I turned my phone back on. It displayed the white apple logo for an unusually long time and then it showed the image of the USB cable with a note that the iPhone need to be restored. What? At least I have my iPhone backed up so other than the mild inconvenience, no worries. I tried to plug my iPhone into my Mac and start up iTunes to do a restore. After waiting a few minutes, I received an error message in iTunes stating: “iTunes cannot activate your iPhone because the SIM card is not inserted or a SIM PIN is required.” OK, this is a little more serious than I thought. Now what do I do. Part of what I do for a living involves troubleshooting technical issues. I am a good troubleshooter, I even enjoy troubleshooting problems. This however was new territory for me. First step, ‘google’ the error message and see if anyone else has run into this problem and find out what steps they took to resolve it. I found an entry on Apple’s support site that said I should use a paperclip and eject the SIM card and make sure there was no dust, etc. I tried that step twice with no resolution. I tried a reset of the iPhone by holding both the sleep and home buttons for more than 10 seconds until the phone reset and the Apple logo appeared. Keeping my fingers crossed and waiting rather impatiently by now, I watched as the same unfriendly screen came up showing the USB sync cable with a message saying I needed to restore. By now I was thinking my iPhone had gone bad. I didn’t consider that there was a problem with the SIM. It is just a piece of cardboard with a chip on it – no moving parts. I hopped online on my MacBook Pro and searched for the nearest Apple Store to Sebring. There was one in Brandon just outside of Tampa, one in Naples, several in Miami, but the closest one was in Orlando at the Florida Mall. I scheduled a reservation with an Apple Genius at 12:15 p.m. and for the first time since last August, I was iPhoneless. I kept trying the rest of the day to see if it would recover from this malady but each time I ended up with the same USB cable and message screen.
Saturday morning, after a run and haircut, I headed off to Orlando with Dad and Emilee to keep me company. We arrived at the Florida Mall with 5 minutes to spare. After a long walk, I found the Apple Store and moseyed up to the Genius Bar to wait my turn. The young Genius that assisted me was very good and helpful. He talked through the whole process of possible problems and fixes. He said that most of the time, it was in fact the SIM card that was the problem. The first thing he would do, was perform a factory reset and see if it recovered. He also used some compressed air to blow off both the SIM card and the compartment in the iPhone which held it. I learned something new at this point. The type of “factory reset” that he did involved the same steps I had taken with an additional step. He held both the sleep and home buttons until the phone turned off. Then he pressed the home button and held it until he plugged the iPhone into the Macbook he was using. This forced the iPhone to “completely” reset and restore. It took a while but eventually, my iPhone came back to life. I tried a few test calls and all seem to be in working order. When I got back home, I restored my iPhone with my latest backup. That process took about an hour or so. When finished, I had all of my applications, data, and iPod media back on the iPhone. The only lasting issue was that all of my application icons were now alphabetically arranged on 9 pages of iPhone screens. Rearranging them back to where I originally had them took a while longer, but at least I was back up and running.
I was surprised at how much this device had become an integrated part of my life. My email, calendar, todo list, Bible, as well as a bunch of other tools and references were tied up with this device. It makes me wonder what I might do if I was traveling to a place where I did not readily have an Apple Store available.