Bloomberg’s Gurman says he was “bitten” by an “annoying” iPhone and T-Mobile bug
You may be familiar with the physical SIM card that you normally insert into your phone’s SIM card slot so that you can make calls, text, and connect to Internet services. The SIM card allows your phone to connect to your carrier. An eSIM is a digital SIM card plugged into the phone’s motherboard and activated by calling your carrier. The first iPhone models to use an eSIM were the 2018 iPhone XR and iPhone XS.
There are a number of solutions that can help
Gurman spread his complaint in a tweet that read: “There is a very annoying iPhone and @TMobile bug where iMessage and FaceTime for a device’s phone number are randomly deactivated and there is no way to reactivate it. The only solution The one that worked for me is getting a new physical SIM card. An extremely disappointing issue.” Gurman said that to the best of his knowledge, the bug wreaks havoc on iOS 15.4, iOS 15.5, and iOS 15.6 beta 1.
Obviously we’re exaggerating about the complexity, but this should work. Others said deactivating and reactivating the eSIM worked like a charm, while others just activated a new eSIM. Another Twitter user explained what happened to him.
T-Mobile Reps Say Apple Couldn’t Fix the Problem
“Last week my eSIM for T-Mobile on my 13 Pro Max deactivated itself in the middle of the day and kept trying to reactivate in settings but said no service and eSIM said no phone is allowed. Had to get T-Mobile to get new ones eSIM again after they simply tried other things that didn’t work, including resetting the network settings. None of them worked.”
So the Bloomberg writer pointed out that he personally went straight to T-Mobile, rather than… Apple. Why? Because he assumed Apple wouldn’t be able to fix the problem. He said, “There’s no troubleshooting they offer that I haven’t already tried.” He wasn’t wrong.
This bug is everywhere, even outside the US. If we can return to the magical Twitter sign (which smells like Musk these days), check out this response: “This happened to me in India with Airtel. I did everything possible to activate it, but it kept loading and in the end it turned out not to be able to activate. Had to change the sim card and it worked!”