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iPhone Users Report iMessage Deactivation Issue Linked to T-Mobile eSIM Accounts [Updated]
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I had this exact issue a month ago. Probably happened sooner but the phone just switched to using my email for iMessage and I don’t notice. Wasn’t until a friend said why are you messaging me back from your email that I found out something was wrong.
Apple tried to help but it was a joke. Just the same repeated troubleshooting steps of try deactivating and reactivating and logging in and out etc even though I had already tried all that on my own and worked my way up to supposedly the highest support tier.
We even 3 way called T-Mobile support and they just suggested the same trouble shooting steps Apple already tried. I suggested maybe we should try a new SIM card and the T-Mobile rep was like no eSIM is superior because it’s constantly updated unlike a physical SIM so that can’t be the problem.
I had an extra new T-Mobile R15 SIM laying around so I just tried switching to it on my own and voila iMessage was back.
Apple tried to help but it was a joke. Just the same repeated troubleshooting steps of try deactivating and reactivating and logging in and out etc even though I had already tried all that on my own and worked my way up to supposedly the highest support tier.
We even 3 way called T-Mobile support and they just suggested the same trouble shooting steps Apple already tried. I suggested maybe we should try a new SIM card and the T-Mobile rep was like no eSIM is superior because it’s constantly updated unlike a physical SIM so that can’t be the problem.
I had an extra new T-Mobile R15 SIM laying around so I just tried switching to it on my own and voila iMessage was back.
Have a ticket open with Apple Engineers for well over a month on this issue since Apple Genius was unable to fix. They've been unable to resolve it, finally went to T-Mobile to try a physical SIM. Walked in told them the issue and they said I was like the 8th person that day to get a SIM for their iPhone. Incredibly frustrating.
So that’s what’s going on with my phone. I’ve had a case open with apple support for 5 weeks and they’ve been spinning their wheels. No one suggested this. Glad I can finally resolve this myself.
Same issue here! It started months ago (3/24/22) on iOS 15.4, and I’ve been working with 5 senior Apple advisors, Apple engineers, and T-Mobile. Engineering said “the eSIM isn’t being provisioned correctly on T-Mobile servers, it’s being blocked.” Apple confirmed its on T-Mobile’s side, although their customer support has been one of the worst processes of my tech life.
Switching to a physical SIM does solve the issue, but eSIM is where smartphones are headed, so they need to solve this now. Months later and they still deny there is a widespread issue.
Switching to a physical SIM does solve the issue, but eSIM is where smartphones are headed, so they need to solve this now. Months later and they still deny there is a widespread issue.
Same! It started for me shortly after the iOS 15.4 update. I factory reset my phone twice, turned on and off iCloud, had to re-sync everything across iCloud so many times. Back and forth between T-Mobile support and Apple engineering. Finally, when it started popping up on forums I tried to walk a T-mobile tech through the process of removing and re-adding the e-sim but the stupid QR code to re-add this sim refused to come through either by text on my wife's phone or email! Finally gave up and just went into the T-Mobile for a physical sim about a month ago and it worked. Maybe I'll try e-sim again in a year but that was ridiculous.
Within the past week the battery in my former unlocked (ATT) iPhone XS finally convinced me that it would not make the 3 year (!!) purchase anniversary so I reluctantly bit the bullet and bought a 13Pro (friggin thousand dollar phones), locked in to ATT. The XS had 2 phone numbers assigned, one to an eSIM and one to the physical ATT SIM originally used on a 6S. In summer 2019 when the XS was purchased, ATT and Apple subjected me to 3+ weeks of getting the eSIM and SIM to play nicely together - really screwed it up for a while then finally fixed and worked flawlessly until the battery recently died. Having not purchased an new iPhone for almost 3 years I was pleasantly surprised with the wireless near field transfer of my XS's configuration and content to the new 13pro. The eSIM and physical SIM were transferred transparently to the 13pro's two eSIM's. All seems well after a week and a half. Wonder why others are having such difficulty - maybe the carrier's inexperience with Apple's eSIM's?
Apple's Darth Vader-like logistics partner, Geodis, provided a whopping $200 for the old XS. Did you know Geodis sux? I gotta whopping tale about a four month long multiple return episode with airpods max's, but that's another story.
Apple's Darth Vader-like logistics partner, Geodis, provided a whopping $200 for the old XS. Did you know Geodis sux? I gotta whopping tale about a four month long multiple return episode with airpods max's, but that's another story.
Timely. I just got a T-mobile 13 Pro and am going to Europe and was thinking about trying for an eSim. But my phone is locked (probably because I'm paying over 24 months. Imagine it would unlock if I paid it off). My wife's X is unlocked, but with this fiasco will stay with physical SIM.
It's not easier because now you have two points of failure, Apple's servers and the carrier. Also you need Apple's permission to use a certain carrier. They may call it compatibility, but it's still permission.
Not good. Things like this give me pause when I think about going to eSIM.
I had this problem a while back, AND I think this has to do with corrupted ESIM profile, and I think unfortunately this is issue with both iOS updates and T-mobile’s e-sim profile setup that causes the e-sim profile to get corrupted.
THERE IS A FIX THOUGH……. But you won’t like it….. as Mark mentioned as it goes through the lousy 30-45 min process of your time.
You’ll need to delete your e-sim profile from your phone, call T-Mobile support to get the account back into e-sim set up mode, shut off your phone, restart your device, and then add your e-sim back.
This is the ONLY SOLUTION unfortunately to fix the profile since e-sim profile is corrupted and there is no way to fix the corrupted profile. Patching up the bug on both end won’t really fix the issue on already. affected devices unfortunately.
(Seriously though, Mark complains about this issue?!?!?! This is why I have him blocked on my Twitter profile. This isn’t amateur hour, you don’t work for punk $&@ teenage 9to5 anymore…... you work for BLOOMBERG…… which I pay subscription to, and I expect more professionalism from him. “it just works” theory only applies if it only involved Apple. If the issue involves T-Mobile also in this case, you can throw the theory out the window)
THERE IS A FIX THOUGH……. But you won’t like it….. as Mark mentioned as it goes through the lousy 30-45 min process of your time.
You’ll need to delete your e-sim profile from your phone, call T-Mobile support to get the account back into e-sim set up mode, shut off your phone, restart your device, and then add your e-sim back.
This is the ONLY SOLUTION unfortunately to fix the profile since e-sim profile is corrupted and there is no way to fix the corrupted profile. Patching up the bug on both end won’t really fix the issue on already. affected devices unfortunately.
(Seriously though, Mark complains about this issue?!?!?! This is why I have him blocked on my Twitter profile. This isn’t amateur hour, you don’t work for punk $&@ teenage 9to5 anymore…... you work for BLOOMBERG…… which I pay subscription to, and I expect more professionalism from him. “it just works” theory only applies if it only involved Apple. If the issue involves T-Mobile also in this case, you can throw the theory out the window)
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This is my life right now! I literally have an Apple loaner phone because mine got sent off so Apple could poke it with a stick for a week. Looks like a quick trip to the T-mobile store could've saved me hours worth of time with on the phone with apple and T-mobile support.
This sounds like a provisioning problem.
Somewhere there's a database that links Apple IDs and phone numbers. There's another database somewhere that links phone numbers with SIMs/eSIMs (or the equivalent for CDMA) and carriers. And somewhere there are credentials so the systems can talk to each other.
Note that these are logical entities. They all could be the same database.
The carrier-side provisioning system pushes data to Apple about activations and deactivations. That way a phone number's status moves in realtime, so if service is terminated the phone number in Apple is terminated as well. It's unclear if activation data is pushed to Apple directly or not, because Apple can detect activation via the SIM activation process.
That carrier de-provisioning used to have problems back in the day, if you remember correctly.
I'll bet the eSIM stuff on the carrier side has a de-provisioning problem, and is telling Apple the eSIM is dead. eSIM is new enough that there might be bugs in the link between the billing system (the part that said you paid) and the eSIM provisioning stuff.
Since it's intermittent, it could be something simple like a batch gets generated and the last line in the batch isn't processed, which leads to that line being dropped on the eSIM side. Since the line still has service that implies there's a database that's for Apple/eSIM/iCloud that's not getting the update (or is updating incorrectly).
Most likely this isn't Apple's problem, because Apple's talking to the carrier's systems for this information. Apple's iStuff has been told the eSIM/number is inactive by the carrier, for whatever reason. Apple can't reactivate because the carrier system is the source-of-truth for this information. And the eSIM stuff is so new that the CSRs are clueless.
Removing and reinstalling the eSIM kicks the provisioning process, which makes everything work again.
Somewhere there's a database that links Apple IDs and phone numbers. There's another database somewhere that links phone numbers with SIMs/eSIMs (or the equivalent for CDMA) and carriers. And somewhere there are credentials so the systems can talk to each other.
Note that these are logical entities. They all could be the same database.
The carrier-side provisioning system pushes data to Apple about activations and deactivations. That way a phone number's status moves in realtime, so if service is terminated the phone number in Apple is terminated as well. It's unclear if activation data is pushed to Apple directly or not, because Apple can detect activation via the SIM activation process.
That carrier de-provisioning used to have problems back in the day, if you remember correctly.
I'll bet the eSIM stuff on the carrier side has a de-provisioning problem, and is telling Apple the eSIM is dead. eSIM is new enough that there might be bugs in the link between the billing system (the part that said you paid) and the eSIM provisioning stuff.
Since it's intermittent, it could be something simple like a batch gets generated and the last line in the batch isn't processed, which leads to that line being dropped on the eSIM side. Since the line still has service that implies there's a database that's for Apple/eSIM/iCloud that's not getting the update (or is updating incorrectly).
Most likely this isn't Apple's problem, because Apple's talking to the carrier's systems for this information. Apple's iStuff has been told the eSIM/number is inactive by the carrier, for whatever reason. Apple can't reactivate because the carrier system is the source-of-truth for this information. And the eSIM stuff is so new that the CSRs are clueless.
Removing and reinstalling the eSIM kicks the provisioning process, which makes everything work again.
I should note that the nano SIM that was in my iPhone X was moved to my iPhone 12 and it worked fine (generally). But T-Mobile US told me they needed to update the physical SIM to better support 5G, so I went to the T-Mobile store where I bought my iPhone 12 and got it physically changed. So far, no issues with iMessage or FaceTime, so....?♂️
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While this is an annoying bug and needs to be fixed... I get really tired of the click-bait headlines from people like Gurman.
Headline: "iMessage and Facetime get deactivated and there's no way to fix this OMG!!!"
Article: Okay, getting a physical SIM actually fixes it
Article: Okay, some people have fixed it by removing and recreating the eSIM account.
It's like those articles where someone claims something will "brick" your phone, when they mean the phone will just need to be re-setup again.
Headline: "iMessage and Facetime get deactivated and there's no way to fix this OMG!!!"
Article: Okay, getting a physical SIM actually fixes it
Article: Okay, some people have fixed it by removing and recreating the eSIM account.
It's like those articles where someone claims something will "brick" your phone, when they mean the phone will just need to be re-setup again.
What do you mean by “updated in early 2021 to better take advantage of T-Mobile US’ 5G network”? I have a T-Mobile SIM card in my 12 Pro that I’ve been using since 2015 beginning with my 6s. Do I need to upgrade the card to a newer one to get 5G speeds or did you mean something else?
I’m on AT&T and I can download a new esim from my account page with AT&T. No need to call anyone.
I was sent an email from T-Mobile US that iPhone 12 users need to update to the latest physical SIM in early 2021.
I had the same problem. Switched 3 phones with physical SIM from AT&T to T-Mobile. One phone had problem day of SIM swap. Second phone 2 weeks later. The third phone, no problems…yet. The solution that worked for each phone was logging out of iCloud. Shutting off phone. Log back into iCloud.
Bloomberg and their use of "nasty" in conjunction with "Apple" is cringe. They always have a "nasty" something.
I had this very problem a few months ago and didn’t find any noticeable mention by others online experiencing the same problem so I struggled through various options until I fell into the physical sim solution.
I have a second TMo line using a physical SIM in another phone. I loaded it into my 13PM, switched my iMessage to that number and had no sign of the same problem. Thankfully I had a spare, inactivated physical SIM do I deactivated my eSIM, logged into TMo’s site, activated the new physical SIM and was back in business.
I was hoping to leave the physical SIM empty to use when traveling to Europe this summer so looks like I’ll be looking at eSIM options for the second line instead.
I have a second TMo line using a physical SIM in another phone. I loaded it into my 13PM, switched my iMessage to that number and had no sign of the same problem. Thankfully I had a spare, inactivated physical SIM do I deactivated my eSIM, logged into TMo’s site, activated the new physical SIM and was back in business.
I was hoping to leave the physical SIM empty to use when traveling to Europe this summer so looks like I’ll be looking at eSIM options for the second line instead.
Which still more or less proves my point. With physical SIM, all I need is a paperclip to switch phones or carriers. eSIM is a PITA