Importing Contacts from Sim not working

[Bennyj75]

Hi all,

This weekend I had the 'black screen of death' on my iPhone 11 - I've had a replacement delivered today (iPhone 15) and it's caused nothing but issues. Aside from needing an iCloud password reset (the usual 72 hour wait) I've installed the sim to find out I have NO contacts.....I've gone to Settings to 'Import from Sim' and that doesn't seem to be doing the trick either. Have I lost my contacts for good? Or am I doing something wrong?

Any help gratefully received before I launch this damn phone out of a window.....

[Chris_B · Accepted solution]

@Bennyj75  If you are not saving your contacts via your apple account ( iCloud ) then they are stored on the device and not the SIM card.       

Setting>Click your name at the top>iCloud>click SHOW ALL>and make sure Contacts is enabled.  

this is enabled on by default, so if you’ve ever switched it off on your previous device you don’t have any contacts on your iCloud account.  

and if I’m not mistaken, the iPhone has only ever allowed you to import contacts from the Sim card. It’s never saved contacts to a SIM card and that’s when you had to back up your device to a PC/Mac before cloud storage was even a thing. 

[Bennyj75]

Thanks Chris, I guess I'll have to wait to access my iCloud