Could a damaged SIM be the cause of low quality voice call?

[Populus]

Hello.

I just handed over my old iPhone 8 to my mother, and I put her SIM card into the phone. At first, it didn’t get signal, so I had to review the SIM card and unbend it a little bit. Finally, it got signal and started working.

Now, every now and then, when I call her, she complains about not hearing me well enough, to the point of not understanding what I say. After finishing the call and calling again, the quality is good again.

Could this be an issue with the SIM card? Should I take it off again and try to bend it a bit more to help it improve the contact with the pins? Or it doesn’t have anything to do with the SIM card?

Thank you.

 

[iStorm]

Sounds like a reception issue to me, and could have connected to a better tower when you called her back. The SIM card only contains information to connect you to a network, it doesn't affect reception or signal strength.

 

[Romain_H]

Could this be an issue with the SIM card? Should I take it off again and try to bend it a bit more to help it improve the contact with the pins? Or it doesn’t have anything to do with the SIM card?

Thank you.

Short answer: no
The sim card identifies you (and other stuff), but has nothing to do with service quality

 

[InvertedGoldfish]

Seems phone companies love to pawn off issues onto the sim


Think it just gets people off the phone call with them, “uhh sir I’ll send you a new sim, bye”

 

[Banglazed]

Ask your mother to put the call on speaker or use AirPod/EarPod to rule out whether if it is a hardware issue on that ear piece.

If you hear no sound or distorted sound from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch speaker - Apple Support

If you can't hear a person's voice clearly, hear crackling, hear static, or have issues with sound quality, learn what to do.

support.apple.com

 

[Populus]

I was writing a long reply to each and every of you. Long, detailed responses, quoting one by one… sadly, I don’t know what happened, that all my message got deleted. And.. I’m sorry but I’m not spending another 15 minutes.

Thanks to all for your ideas. For now, it seems to be working fine. Initially I set the network selection from Automatic to manual, but since I changed it back to Automatic it seems to work more reliably.

@Banglazed thank you for your idea, but I’ve been using this iPhone 8 for five years and never had a single problem. It’s been an awesome device, and I hope it continues to be with her.

@Romain_H @iStorm thank you for helping me to rule out any poor contact between the SIM and the iPhone connectors.