Chosen Solution
I have tried everything here and nothing seems to work. Still getting a searching sign. Tried to remove the sim, did a restore, tried airplane and the time/date change. Any other suggestions here? Thanks for advice in advance.
You are getting the “searching” sign with the SIM both inside and outside the phone? Look at Settings => General => About => Baseband and IMEI numbers. Are they there or missing? Are they complete? If something is missing you may have 2 issues:
- Hardware baseband chip issue: may be failing or not receiving power.
- Software issue requiring a restore. However, if you restore your iPhone and the baseband chip is damaged, you may become stuck in restore mode. If you’re willing to take that chance, at least back-up your data first. To correct time and date, you can connect to the Internet (unless the WiFi chip has failed as is common on this model). Or connect to iTunes. Or sometimes it works simply if you insert a valid SIM and reboot (and unlock the SIM if locked).
