topic Re: New Phone says Emergency Calls Only! in SIM cards & Porting

New Phone says Emergency Calls Only!

McSkirmish — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 22:14:06 GMT

Good evening to all you experts,

I bought a Google Pixel 9a, last week, it took me ages to get things
across from my old phone, a Pixel 3a, I had to contact Google, to get
my contacts across.

Anyway, every time I picked up my phone, it has a scrolling message
across the top of the screen, with the headline message, so I tried
to fix it, to no avail, for about an hour, in settings, it showed 2 SIMS,
the first one had the emergency only sign on it, but, but, but I only
have one SIM, there is only one slot for a SIM, after much concern,
I got a new instruction to remove SIM 1, which I did and the phone
works properly, without any sim, but there is one listed, I always got
to make calls before, even with the emergency only sign.

I had heard about E, SIMS, and I was offered to set the phone up to
be E SIM, but I didn't go there in case I did something wrong, but it
seems that the handset decided, that it wanted to be one.

In case I am wrong in my supposition, I will go to an EE shop tomorrow
to see what they think of this mystery.

Have any of you had similar, happening to you, or anybody that you know.

Thank you for reading this and I hope that it might help you in the future.

Merry Christmas when it gets here.

Mike.

Re: New Phone says Emergency Calls Only!

bristolian — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 22:25:48 GMT

No phone will connect to a network without an active SIM.

You need that connection to make & receive calls, send & receive text messages, or use mobile data.

Re: New Phone says Emergency Calls Only!

Rach_H — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 11:33:36 GMT

Hi @McSkirmish,

Welcome to the Community!

It's great to hear you've been able to get your phone sorted, but I can understand your confusion about it seeming to have moved to eSIM. Let us know how you get on in store, and what they advise.

Rach

Re: New Phone says Emergency Calls Only!

McSkirmish — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 15:09:28 GMT

Thank you both for the replies

Nobody really understood why, until one noticed 5G, then
that was decided to be the culprit, still works though.

Mike.

Re: New Phone says Emergency Calls Only!

Rach_H — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 15:57:54 GMT

Fantastic news. Thanks for letting us know @McSkirmish!

Have a lovely Christmas 🎄

Rach