Can you use an iPhone 18 Pro Max without a SIM card? Yes, you can. You can turn on and set up your new iPhone with an internet connection.
If you’d like your child to be able to use a spare phone without a SIM card – just accessing data via Wi-Fi – or you simply haven’t got a spare card available, you’ll be glad to know there are various ways to activate and use an iPhone without a SIM. In this article we walk you through the best approaches.
Note: iPhone 18 Pro Max models sold in the United States use advanced eSIM technology and are not compatible with physical SIM cards.
On a related note, you may also be looking for a way to activate the iPhone without needing to be connected to a Wi-Fi network. We have a method that will allow you to do this too.
Expect this process to be more challenging if your iPhone is locked to a certain carrier. For the purposes of this tutorial we will assume you’ve got an unlocked iPhone.
Activate your iPhone using your computer
This method’s effectiveness appears to depend on whether the phone is locked to a particular network.
The principal reason to use the computer method is if you have no Wi-Fi access.
What you’ll need:
- An unlocked iPhone
- A computer
And here’s how to activate your iPhone using this method:
- If you’re using a PC, use the latest version of the Apple Devices app or iTunes.
- Using the charging cable for your iPhone, connect iPhone to the USB port on your computer.
- Assuming the phone isn’t locked to a carrier you will see an onscreen prompt in the Finder or in the Apple Devices app explaining what you need to do and the details you need to fill in to activate your iPhone.
- Once activated, you’ll be able to use your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max on a Wi-Fi network.
Activate your iPhone using the emergency call feature
You may have seen reports suggesting that you can activate an iPhone without a SIM card by calling the emergency services.
Not only do we want to dissuade you from calling the emergency services unnecessarily, we would also warn you that when we tried this method out it didn’t work at all. We believe that the software flaw this method exploited has been patched.
