[Q] "SIM card removed" error DRIVING ME CRAZY

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JacksonHawk

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Oct 2, 2015
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I too, am convinced this is a software issue. It began just after UCUFNJ5 was pushed out OTA in August. Up to that time the phone has worked well since it's purchase in November of 2013. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason for when the error happens. I did note that on one Saturday when I was home and connected to wifi, the error happened and would not go away. I left the house to go to the store and while out itr began working again. IWhen I got home it immediately popped the error, but I also noticed it was downloading updates at the time. I turned off wifi for the rest of the weekend and the phone was fine. I will typically go up to 2 weeks without incident. Usually it requires one reboot and it's fine again. The time I just described it was not. It also was flakey as hell last weekend. Friday afternoon it wigged out and would not come back with a reboot. I had to power down and pull the battery, and I did reseat the SIM and put it all back together and it was fine that night. Saturday it was wiggy for a time, and Sunday evening it forced a reboot once. It's annoying as hell. Phone is stock. I rooted it after this began in August and have shut down a lot of apps using Titanium. I run Nova Prime, but nothing fancy. I rooted primarily to remove crapware and have some control over the device. I'm tossing out this information in the hopes it might help someone figure out what is happening. It does not behave like any hardware issue I've ever seen and I can say for a fact that during at least one of it's bad episodes it was trying to update something...
 

s8freak

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Jan 17, 2013
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How long have you went without error? Hours? Days? Weeks? I went a month error free and thought it was fixed using every "fix" found on this thread BAH maybe just past a month was the longest I've been and the error came back from 10 or more times a day to once a week. I finally dumped the piece of junk and moved on.
This error is multiple carrier and doesn't matter from what area it's world wide.

"And on that bombshell!"
Sent from my SM-G928C Rocking AUDAX+Rom
 

mrclfdz

Member
Feb 2, 2014
24
1
How long have you went without error? Hours? Days? Weeks? I went a month error free and thought it was fixed using every "fix" found on this thread BAH maybe just past a month was the longest I've been and the error came back from 10 or more times a day to once a week. I finally dumped the piece of junk and moved on.
This error is multiple carrier and doesn't matter from what area it's world wide.

"And on that bombshell!"
Sent from my SM-G928C Rocking AUDAX+Rom
well like I said I've been having it for the past 3 days, I noticed that with the other methods I reduced the number of times it happened, probably because of the pressure, but by placing the piece of plastic there I just hit the nail on the head, I've been from 14 until now 21 and I haven't had the problem, it's never been this stable before, I can't see it happening again, honestly, if it's a matter of pressure so it makes correct contact, I definitely found the spot where it needs to be applied, at least on my phone. If you haven't put anything on that area, try it out and see if it fixes it.
 

s8freak

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Jan 17, 2013
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well like I said I've been having it for the past 3 days, I noticed that with the other methods I reduced the number of times it happened, probably because of the pressure, but by placing the piece of plastic there I just hit the nail on the head, I've been from 14 until now 21 and I haven't had the problem, it's never been this stable before, I can't see it happening again, honestly, if it's a matter of pressure so it makes correct contact, I definitely found the spot where it needs to be applied, at least on my phone.
Go a month or more honestly I hope it works I dumped my S4 because of it. Wonderful device otherwise

"And on that bombshell!"
Sent from my SM-G928C Rocking AUDAX+Rom
 

s8freak

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Jan 17, 2013
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so, you don't have it around anymore?
No moved to s5 then OPO then S6 Edge now International S6Edge+
I gave my S4 to my son and then my wife's cousin. It still happens with her. There's another thread about this error as well that I've posted quite a bit on in the past.

"And on that bombshell!"
Sent from my SM-G928C Rocking AUDAX+Rom
 

mrclfdz

Member
Feb 2, 2014
24
1
yeah the thread where I posted my fix. Well if they haven't tried that yet maybe it could help, this phone is amazing, has great screen and 2 gigs of ram, and it's incredibly cheap, in my case I got it 5 days ago for 30€. The previous owner was sick of all the rebooting.
 
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s8freak

Senior Member
Jan 17, 2013
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yeah the thread where I posted my fix. Well if they haven't tried that yet maybe it could help, this phone is amazing, has great screen and 2 gigs of ram, and it's incredibly cheap, in my case I got it 5 days ago for 30€. The previous owner was sick of all the rebooting.
Yep can't beat that price

"And on that bombshell!"
Sent from my SM-G928C Rocking AUDAX+Rom
 

JacksonHawk

New member
Oct 2, 2015
4
0
How long have you went without error? Hours? Days? Weeks? I went a month error free and thought it was fixed using every "fix" found on this thread BAH maybe just past a month was the longest I've been and the error came back from 10 or more times a day to once a week. I finally dumped the piece of junk and moved on.
This error is multiple carrier and doesn't matter from what area it's world wide.

"And on that bombshell!"
Sent from my SM-G928C Rocking AUDAX+Rom

After the major meltdown I had to power down, and remove the battery for it to work again. I disabled location services and went for just about two weeks error free. I did notice recently that at the time I was having all the issues the phone burned through a gig of data. When I look I find it was the Android Operating system that was doing something... So I still think it's software, and I think I may try going back to NJ4 soon to see If I can prove my point.
 

mrclfdz

Member
Feb 2, 2014
24
1
it can't be software problem, I have tried with several official and non official roms, several basebands and kernels, it's not a software problem, at least for me. I've been error free since I posted in here, and the other day I opened it up to put a new battery because the old one was 2 years old and I left the piece of plastic out. Didn't even put the cover of the phone back, just powered it, and the error started again, then put the plastic on and it stopped, also I noticed that when I pressed on the area it would go down a bit, maybe the fact that I have a TPU cover applying pressure on top of the usual s4 cover helps, I don't know, all I know is that it solved it.
 

Ricky Divjakovski

Recognized Developer / Inactive RC
Feb 4, 2013
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Sydney
it can't be software problem, I have tried with several official and non official roms, several basebands and kernels, it's not a software problem, at least for me. I've been error free since I posted in here, and the other day I opened it up to put a new battery because the old one was 2 years old and I left the piece of plastic out. Didn't even put the cover of the phone back, just powered it, and the error started again, then put the plastic on and it stopped, also I noticed that when I pressed on the area it would go down a bit, maybe the fact that I have a TPU cover applying pressure on top of the usual s4 cover helps, I don't know, all I know is that it solved it.
roms dont replace the bootloader, it may or may not very well be a system error.

## lets try to fix this
id like to try fix this for you guys with the s4, a few volunteers please try the following and report feedback

find someone with the same device without the error and swap simcards, if the other simcard works we can assume its got to do with the simcard settings(contacts, saved messages, settings, etc) that will narrow it down to a internal system error(could be hardware, could be software) - noone can fix this besides samsumg due to no sourcecode.
try flashing a new modem via odin if it works we can narror it down to a modem error(software) - again noone can fix this besides samsumg due to no sourcecode.
try flashing your stock odin firmware via odin if it works we can narror it down to a system error(software) - once again noone can fix this besides samsumg due to no sourcecode.
flash a new rom and if it works we can narrow it down to a version or rom error(software) - fixed by simply flashing a new rom if you havent gathered now

thats all i can help you guys with, if none of the above work contact samsung as i would be claiming warranty
 
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mrclfdz

Member
Feb 2, 2014
24
1
I have also replaced bootloader, I had to do a lot of stuff in order to unlock this phone and it happened in all the roms I used, with several bootloaders.

I have done everything software related and it isn't, when I only managed to avoid the error was by doing the piece of plastic thing, the effect is immediate, and it proves that it's not software related.
 

JacksonHawk

New member
Oct 2, 2015
4
0
I have also replaced bootloader, I had to do a lot of stuff in order to unlock this phone and it happened in all the roms I used, with several bootloaders.

I have done everything software related and it isn't, when I only managed to avoid the error was by doing the piece of plastic thing, the effect is immediate, and it proves that it's not software related.

I suggest software because in my case it started the day they pushed NJ5 to me. I have rooted and uninstalled or disabled a good many apps and it seems to be an issue when It's trying to download something. I have gone 2 weeks at a time with no issues. I want to go back to NJ4 and see it it goes away, I just need to do so. I'm assuming I'll lose root when I do so.
 

Skyrider

Senior Member
Apr 10, 2011
131
25
I started receiving this SIM Card removed pop-ups ever since I flashed a stock OS and switched to CM12. While I switched to another ROM to see if it would fix the problem, it didn't. I am personally convinced that this is not a hardware issue in my case, because:

1), Doesn't matter how much I shake my phone, I don't get the SIM Card removed message (if it was a connector issue, you'd expect a pop-up)

2), Whenever I use my phone, so far I never received the SIM Card removed message. It's always when I put it in stand-by modes (screen off).

In my case, I think I9505XXUHOF2 has something to do with it. The only thing I did thus far is replacing the bootloader and baseband with I9505XXUHOB8 and still receiving the SIM Card removed pop-up. I'll see if I can find something else to replace the BL, PDA, CSC and Baseband.
 

Skyrider

Senior Member
Apr 10, 2011
131
25
Sorry about the 'double' post, but I wanted to share an update. I've attempted to make a stock installation (bootloader only) and from there, upgraded to CM12. After a day, I received the 'sim card removed' pop-up. So, I've made a different approach. I've installed my GT-I9505 stock - Android 4 (vodafone, nl.. I know, bit outside this section's range) firmware, csc, modem, ETC. And from Android 4.4.x (non-root) i've upgraded officially to 5.0.1 on (LRX22C.)I9505XXUHOF2

It's been 1 and a half day, and I haven't received any SIM Card removed error as of yet on the official build. Now I could be wrong, but thus far it appears to be software related. Maybe? some kind of protection? I don't know.

EDIT!

Afraid regardless of reinstalling EVERYTHING on stock, still received the sim card removed. Shame. Guess I'll send it to samsung for repair.
 
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pete3000

Senior Member
Jul 4, 2008
79
8
Fixed this by turning on NFC and leaving it on..

I hope I'm not jinxing my situation, but my daughters sim card removed error has gone away (3 days now) after turning on her NFC chip and leaving it on.. it was asking to reboot up to 10+ times a day. :D
 

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    I haven't been able to confirm it yet but I think I might have a solution. I was going to wait a couple of days before posting but then I figured that I can post and collectively we can get a better sample size of data to come to a conclusion. I had long suspected that this was somehow due to location services as the problem first began for me when I downloaded Find my Friends and Glympse. I tried everything under the sun, factory reset, new roms, disable xposed, adding apps back one by one to find the cluprit (over 400!), paper in the sim tray to improve connection, everything!

    The other day I had just freshly restored my phone from a Nandroid backup as I had noticed that when first restoring the phone would seem to remain problem free for a couple of days before I started getting the messages again. Well yesterday I was problem free until about 20 minutes after I first downloaded an application from the playstore following the reset. Then it hit me, all the other times the problem starting popping up again was always right after downloading all the of the application updates that piled up since my last backup. Initially I always thought that one of the application being updated was the problem (thus the adding of them one by one!) but in that moment I also realized that my Playstore app on the backup was the older version and would get updated when I made my first download. The problem must be with either The Play Store or Google Play Services! I used my trusty Rom Toolbox to go check the latest update for play services and, sure enough, play services had been updated maybe 5-10 minutes prior to the problem, probably receiving the prompt when I first tried to download something, or in the original cases, when I started the updates!

    The Solution!
    I froze Google Play Services as a test and low and behold, no pop up for over two days! But Google Play services is so engrained in our phones that suddenly my playstore didn't work, maps was acting wonky, and Google Now wasn't playing nice anymore. So I went back to Rom Toolbox and defrosted Play Service but turned off all location based intents, receivers, and services. Since then I'm almost 1 day error free and haven't seen any adverse effects in maps or navigation resulting in the disabled receivers, intents, or services. The answer seems to have something to do with Google Now's Location services which are constantly pinging your location. I haven't seen this fix recommended anywhere (and I've checked!) so hopefully this helps some of you out. I'd love to hear back about your results one way or the other.

    Unfortunately for those of you who are not rooted, this fix does require root access and an root application manager that can manipulate receivers and intents. If you are not rooted you can try deleting the data from play services and removing updates. It may help temporarily but you may end up needing to do it regularly. You can also just disable play services all together if you can do with Google Apps.
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    yeah the thread where I posted my fix. Well if they haven't tried that yet maybe it could help, this phone is amazing, has great screen and 2 gigs of ram, and it's incredibly cheap, in my case I got it 5 days ago for 30€. The previous owner was sick of all the rebooting.