5G Ultra || iOS 18 || 5G Standalone Greyed Out - Solved

[Redski]

After over an hour to 191 and no clear solution, fix or confidence in getting the ability to use the 5G Ultra on the plan if taken out two weeks ago, I resorted to , Chat GPT and solved the issue with 5G Ultra now enabled on my iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18 and wanted to share here incase it helps anyone that’s experiencing the same issue and save the pain of being on hold, triaged and asked to do a bunch of irrelevant actions that won’t fix you via 191.

Problem : Have a 5G Ultra plan and the 5G standalone option in iOS 18 is greyed out and so cannot be enabled. 

Fix : I was trying to run it on my existing, plastic physical SIM card which was the issue. So, I went into Settings > SIM and Convert to eSIM. I had to run it twice as it failed the first time. Second go was successful. Once I converted my physical, plastic SIM to an eSIM and rebooted my iPhone the 5G Standalone option was available and I could activate it.

Hooe it helps someone else the onerous and frustrating UX I had to go through !

Thanks

[andrewd71]

Thanks for the tip, worked first time for me (took about 2 minutes to activate) and now have 5g Standalone enabled.

[Redski]

Im pleased its been able to help someone else, thanks for letting me know !

[Gemma]

Thanks for sharing this @Redski - It's great that it's worked for you as well @andrewd71 😊

[anuraj]

Thank you for sharing.

Did you see any different in display showing e.g 5G+ or 5G u/w when you connected to standalone 5g ?

I am not sure mine connected to standalone or not. How do  we find out ?

[Redski]

Yes, you should see the 5+ / 5uw or 5uc icon when it’s on it.

You can dial *3001#12345#* from your handset to check as well + use the nPerf app to check your connection technology too.

edit : Just checked and nPerf app says I’m on SA / 5G+ now and the speed test reflects that but the icon on my phone is still just 5G !

Hope it helps !

[anuraj]

Thank you,

I will get nPerf app. So you won’t see any difference on iPhone display ?

also i am not getting stable standalone connection. Would you mind asking which phone do you use ?

[Redski]

You’re meant to see the 5G+ icon on screen but wasn’t showing for me when nPerf confirmed I was on 5G Ultra.

Im on a iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18

Hope it helps 

[anuraj]

Thank you

[catean]

There is no 5G+ icon, that is for some US carriers and their ultra wideband deployment. In UK and Europe NSA or SA you will only see the normal 5G icon on iPhone. The only way to know if you are connected to SA is via FieldTest or nPerf.