SIM Cards Automatically Lock During Sleep Mode on iOS 26

Re: “… not on a forced restart because power is never interrupted …”

FWIW, in the spirit of experience sharing …

… our SE3 (still running iOS 18) requires eSIM PIN reentry after a 72-hour inactivity, on-battery, “restart”

Ditto on the needlessness of applying an eSIM PIN. (Speaking as a long-term SIM PIN user)

[ Unless you have a rationale none in this community have considered]

Have you contacted your carrier?

SIM programming and behavior is entirely within their purview.

… both SIM cards automatically lock …

To ensure that we fully understand your issue, confirm that your phone has 2x nano SIMs? (or do you mean 2x separate iPhones)

Probably - ignore diagnostics logs

Advice remains

• Unlock your SIMs until it is fixed
• Never lock eSIMs (pointless)

I experienced two outages this month and finally changed my SIM card with my phone provider today. I have to wait and see if the issue will occur again or not. Yes, this happened after IOS 26

Same here.. Several mornings after updating to IOS 26 on my IPhone 14 Pro Max the phone prompt for the PIN for SIM-card to unlock it. (Never happened before IOS 26)

I have also missed calles during the morning because of this.

Same problem with ios 26.01 in iphone 13 mini, after updating to iOS 26, it didn't happen to me before.

It only happens some nights, but I think the phone doesn't restart, it's just a problem with the SIM.

revikas wrote:

It only happens some nights, but I think the phone doesn't restart, it's just a problem with the SIM.

I think you are wrong. SIMs only require PIN after a restart (not on a forced restart because power is never interrupted)

Same here. iPhone 14, iOS 26.0.1

My phone has one nano SIM and one eSIM, both active in the same device. Asking for both SIMs every morning.

Don’t know how long I’ve been unreachable every night, but I’m an emergency contact for several elderly. Absolutely life threatening bug!

Same for me. iPhone 14 Pro Max asks for pin in the morning. Just about every day.

this is very annoying as I need to be reachable during the night.

I tried switching back from the wireless charger to a cable. Worked for one day. Now same problem.

fix this. A + 1k phone should work longer than 3 years. This issue is making me consider buying an other brands phone!

I confirm the issue. Never happened for me (iPhone 14 Pro) before iOS 26. Now it can happen so randomly, even 2-3 times per week. This is critical as I am an oncall and if I do not know if my connection is alive or not is simply not acceptable.

I wanted to replace my SIM card as I figured it perhaps gone bad but I started searching online and stumbled upon this thread which scares me since it seems like replacing SIM will not fix the issue and we actually have no idea when it will be fixed and what is an actual root cause.

Same here. Iphone 15 with one nanosim and one e-sim. Does not happen every night but about 3-4 times a week which is becoming pretty annoying as i’m also part of response groups and rely on the proper functioning of my device. Because of the 2 sims i use 2 carriers (vodafone and youfone). This actually started after the upgrade to ios 26….

This issue happens for me too, I don't think it's a carrier issue since as far as I can tell in the thread, the issue appears on multiple carriers, I have a pretty obscure carrier. This never happened before. My phone is on the charger for the duration of the night and the phone is in sleep mode. At first I thought I turned off my phone accidentally, but since this is happening pretty regularly right now, I don't think I am turning it off. Not a big issue for me since I don't receive calls at night, it is just annoying

Hello, same for me on my iPhone 15. It happens to me at least 1 time per week. I charge my iPhone wirelessly during the night and not with a cable, i’m wondering if it could be the cause, like if the battery would overheat and restart the phone or lock the sim.

But if my iPhone had restarted i would also be asked to type my phone code ton unlock it before, but it’s not the case because faceid still works 🤔

What do you think ?