Thursday, October 20, 2022

SOS in the iPhone Status Bar

Adam Engst:

Anyway, if you see SOS or SOS Only in your iPhone’s status bar when it should be working normally, there are two likely possibilities:

  • Your carrier has no accessible service, but another carrier’s cell towers would still enable you to place an emergency call.
  • There could be something amiss with your iPhone or account such that the carrier doesn’t recognize your iPhone as having service.

In the first situation, there’s nothing to be done, but if you suspect the second, Apple suggests possible fixes.

2 Comments RSS · Twitter


I also saw the SOS when I popped the SIM card out of my iPhone 13 mini.


Calling it SOS only is not entirely accurate. When you have some other or no SIM but connect to Verizon (for example) and dial something other than 911, you are offered the opportunity to enter a credit card number to connect the call (at what I am sure is some kind of unfavorable per minute rate).

I would much rather see the actual name of the network I have connected to rather than "SOS only"

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