My daughter's iPhone 5s stopped working a few weeks ago while she was in Europe. I think it has something to do with her phone being locked by O2 in the UK. Here is an outline of what happened.
1. My daughter was studying in the UK for 3 months. Prior to leaving, we confirmed with Verizon that her phone was unlocked. I also logged into My Services and suspended her service.
2. When she landed in the UK, she purchased a monthly PayAsYouGo sim from one of the local carriers, called O2. Her phone worked great for 2 months.
3. Then she tok a weekend trip to Ireland. Her phone worked for a few hours, then it stopped working when she used it to take some pictures when it was extremely windy. Not sure if the wind could have caused the problem. I suspect it was the fact that she was in a different country. Regardless, she noticed that on the top left of the screen it said "Searching...".
4. She returned to the UK and her phone still did not work. She went to an O2 store and they put her SIM in another phone and it worked, so they ruled out problems with her SIM. She tried rebooting her phone and nothing worked. So she only used texting on wifi the last few weeks of her trip.
5. She returned to California and we pulled out the O2 SIM and put her original Verizon SIM back in. I also confirmed online that her phone was no longer suspended. We rebooted the phone, but it still does not work. I checked and Cellular Data is turned on. I then looked at the APN settings and the phone still has the settings for O2 in the UK! I tried to manually enter settings for Verizon, but did not see a way to save my changes.
My daughter was told she needs to go to an Apple store to have experts look at it. I am wondering if there is a simpler fix we can do ourselves.
Q1. Is there any way high wind alone could cause a phone to stop working? She was on the cliffs at Ireland and winds were 30 mph+ plus it was cold.
Q2. How can I change the APN settings back to Verizon? What should the settings be? How do I save these new settings?
Q3. Would a full reset to factory settings fox this? If so, what do we need to do in iTunes to make sure she can recover all of her data?
Thanks in advance for your help!
MrChip - Having a device that functions everywhere you daughter goes is crucial. Let me provide the answers you seek. High winds would not cause the device to stop working. If you go to Settings>General> About does the Network name show Verizon? What software does she currently have? Settings>General>Software update. I would suggest doing a factiory reset as a last resort. Please make sure the device has had a back up. Performing a back up will allow to store all of the personal data your daughter has on the device. She can do a device restore by using this link. Check it out. http://vz.to/1EnJvoZ
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Glad wind could not cause a failure.
1) If you go to Settings>General> About does the Network name show Verizon? NO, it shows O2
2) What software does she currently have? Settings>General>Software update. Unknown at this time. My daughter's phone is locked with a passcode. I will need to ask her. I just wanted to clarify that the phone still thinks it is an O2 phone (network and APN settings) even though it has a Verizon simm.
You might try removing the SIM card and restarting the phone. Then shut it down again, put in the Verizon SIM card, and restart again.
If that doesn't sort it out you should do a full backup to iTunes and then restore the iPhone to factory settings. Once it's restored you can then get your data back from the iTunes.
Try resetting the Network settings on the iPhone. It sounds like the APN settings didn't clear when the SIM Card was switched out.
Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.
Doing this should make the phone read the SIM and re-activate itself with the Verizon APNs.
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