Editing Openai/689d5536-2710-8008-9dd0-96de4530ae04 (section)

=== Assistant: Glad you got it out! ===
Glad you got it out!

Unfortunately, yeah — you can’t really see or reach the contacts inside the phone without disassembling it, and that’s not something you can do safely at home without specialized tools (and it voids water sealing).

Here’s what you can do without opening it up:
# Blow out dust/debris carefully
* Hold the phone with the SIM slot facing downward so anything loose can fall out.
* Use a gentle burst of canned air from several inches away — too close can cause moisture from the propellant.
* Don’t stick anything inside; the contact springs are delicate.
# Alcohol “vapor” cleaning trick
* Put a drop of 90%+ isopropyl alcohol on the corner of the microfiber cloth (not dripping).
* Gently touch that corner to the SIM’s contacts before inserting — this way, when you reinsert it, the alcohol can transfer and dissolve minor grime on the phone’s pins.
* Let it dry 30–60 seconds before powering on to avoid any shorting.
# Test with another SIM
* The quickest way to know if the phone’s contacts are the issue is to put in a known-good SIM from a friend/family member (same size — nano-SIM).
* If that SIM works fine, the problem is almost certainly with your old SIM.
* If it fails in the same way, the fault is either the phone’s contacts or its cellular radio hardware.

If you want, I can lay out a diagnostic decision tree so you can figure out whether this is:
# SIM problem
# iPhone hardware problem
# AT&T provisioning/network problem

That way you’d know before you go to the AT&T store whether you’re asking for a SIM replacement or a warranty repair. Want me to do that next?