Chosen Solution
I’m trying to push the SIM card tray back into this device when empty and it doesn’t quite fit all the way inside the device. It gets about as far as the picture here:
…and won’t go further. I’ve pushed and pushed on this delicate piece of plastic as much as I dare, but the top won’t go flush with the rest of the body. If I apply enough pressure, I can seem to push the end with the hole for the button down, but the other end (top of the photo) won’t go further down. I’m inserting this tray empty, so I know there’s nothing stuck inside the device, but then I compared the “spearpoint” of the device to the end of the broken SIM tray that came with the phone and I found an irregularity highlighted in red here (this is the best picture I could manage):
Both trays have a sort of slope at the corner, and the new one’s slope is noticeably different from the one in the old tray. I’m not sure if that’s the cause of the problem here, but I wanted to mention it anyway. Has anybody else experienced this issue or know of a possible solution? I’m kinda bummed because the SIM tray came from iFixit (I still have the packaging in case I need to return this) and I don’t know if I’m installing wrong or these trays are generally troublesome.
I also searched high and low for a solution but couldn’t find anything. Then I noticed that if I pushed the tray harder, I could get it to sit flush with the top of the phone, but it would just spring back to the almost-flush position. I figured that the insertion of the tray was not fully reseting the ejection mechanism. This may have been the result of a screen replacement just prior to the issues with the tray seating? Somehow the ejector is a little tighter than it used to be?
So I cut up my Walgreens rewards card to make a tool that could push the bottom of the ejector to its seated position. After push that to the bottom of the SIM slot, I found that the tray would fully seat, the top being flush with the top of the phone.
I think is still tighter than it should be. I removed and reinstalled the SIM tray and the little rebound issue was still present. I used the Walgreens tool again and everything went flush when I reinstalled the tray. Fortunately I don’t remove it too often and now that I know what to do, it’s a pretty simple fix. Hope this works for you!
You have three options one try rotating the tray to see if you are putting the sim tray in wrong. Second you file or sand down the tray to match then clean the tray. Finally you could return it and buy a different model for a different seller.
The SIM trays are incompatible between models. For instance, you can’t insert a SIM tray from a Galaxy S9 into a Galaxy S8, and vice versa. This solved my problem :)
There is a problem with the ejector button on these phones. Once it’s pressed in too hard or incorrectly it will not spring back up like it should. I’m having the same issue with an S7 Edge. It’s likely a faulty or weak design. Hence why putting a stiff item like a cut down credit card springs the ejector button temporarily into place. My advice since the stiffer material springs it. Is to not take the card out any more than needed after getting it sprung back into place. Eventually it won’t spring back no matter what you do.
Hey everyone, I was actually one of the original people to post a question about issues with the SIM tray not seating properly and whilst I did end up finding out why, I thought I would share my experience and include it with the mix of all the excellent responses that have already been posted. It was hard finding a lot of info online about it initially for some reason and what I experienced also needs to be considered. I repair phones, computers etc and despite checking the inside of the SIM tray a dozen times, I could not find any reason why the sim tray would not slide into the SIM slot. Even with a decent magnifier I couldn’t see any obstructions and it wasn’t until I removed the metal sheath of the SIM reader which also holds the eject mechanism and sim to the motherboard, that I found the tiniest of shrapnel or what looked like small bits of a broken plastic SIM adaptor. Looks like someone has used a broken SIM tray or perhaps at one point, tried to put a SIM into it without using a tray, breaking it whilst taking it out. Unfortunately in my situation the pins that read the SIM were also damaged so I had to remove and replace the SIM reader entirely on the motherboard to get my problem fixed. (I was lucky I have some soldering skills but I would only recommend experienced repairers try this). Removing the metal sheath can also be tricky and if not careful, you can damage the SIM reader as well. Hope this helps
I had the same problem. Tried the credit card fix - no luck. I took it to a local mobile phone repair store and he looked into the slot using his microscope like thingy, and found a piece of something plastic, that was causing the problem. 10 minutes later he had managed to extract it and all was well. Thankfully, no damage to the slot - and both SIM card and SD work.
