Got my son a phone and it wont activate *Help*

[LeeHamo]

Hi all,


I have had a 3gs given to me to see if I can sort it out, basically my dad has got a new phone (iphone 4) and he was going to give my son this iphone 3gs, before he was gonna give him it he decided it best to factory reset it in itunes so it had nothing on it, he has done this and now it wont activate, we have connected it to wifi and it still fails, we have no sim card in it, we do not know what carrier it was originally on because he bought it off ebay as an unlocked 3gs.


Any help would be brilliant, thanks a lot,


Lee.

 

[willerz2]

You have to have a SIM in the device before you can activate it. Your alternative option is to jailbreak and hacktivate it to gain access to the device.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 

 

[LeeHamo]

Thanks for the reply willerz, does the sim have to be one from the network it was originally locked to? We have no idea what this was, also the phone was unlocked before the old man hooked it up to iTunes and restored it, did that get rid of the unlock?

Thanks again,

Lee.

 

[LeeHamo]

Just FYI I have tried a t mobile and virgin sim cards and both said the same, unable to activate.

 

[willerz2]

Yes it has to be the original SIM. If you can find the country of original for the device, most likely you can narrow down. Or you'll have to use an IMEI "finder/detailing" service to find out.

Alternatively, if you choose to jailbreak your device for unlocking, then you can completely ignore the whole search for finding the original carrier and just use whatever carrier you would like. Or you can purchase a permanent unlock (termed IMEI or carrier unlock) for the 3GS so that you won't have to worry about "re-unlocking" it every time you restore/upgrade your phone.

 

[LeeHamo]

Great well I think I'll opt for the jail breaking to unlock, is there a guide to do this? I've never done it before but am quite tech savvy so should be able to do it fine, does the jailbreak options depend on my iOS etc as I have no clue what baseband or iOS etc is on the phone, all I know is its a 3gs which was bought off ebay as an unlocked phone, it worked on any sim too, until the old man did what he did.

Thanks very much,

Lee.

 

[LeeHamo]

If it is easier to do an imei unlock then I'll do that because the phone is for a 9 yr old and he doesn't need it jail breaking, how do you go about this method,

Thanks again.

 

[miles]

I will just add to this thread since I'm having the same issue. A friend of mine handed me a 3GS for software upgrade this morning. I plugged it to iTune two hours ago and I was prompted for software upgrade to 6.12 (not 6.1). It was originally at 4.1. It upgraded the software. After it rebooted, it asked for language, country, WiFi and activation process.

The activation process took some minutes then I was prompted- Could not activate iPhone. Your iphone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. Try activating through itunes to activate it or try again in a couple of minutes.

If problem persist, contact Apple support at apple.com/support.

The iphone was working fine with its SIM card. Therefore, it's not a SIM card issue. If it's a server issue, then how come the activation server have been down since noon (based on the thread starter)? Is this activation server from Apple or from the wireless service provider?

Anyone out there have the same issue after upgrading their iphone 3GS?

I found a similar thread:

http://www.iphoneforums.net/forum/i...te-jailbroken-3gs-after-updating-6-1-a-53692/

 

[LeeHamo]

Hi miles Its a nightmare isn't it, anyone new to this or coming into with a problem its like stepping into a minefield, I'm still no further with the phone but I am learning little things.

Basically if we want to fix this we need to either jailbreak our phones then unlock them for free, or do an imei unlock on one of the many pay sites and hope for the best, but it costs a fair whack of cash.

Can anyone tell me a good site to do the imei unlock or can someone please give me a step by step guide to jailbreak and unlock this phone and I'll try that.

All I can say is I don't know what iOS or baseband the phone has, all I know is it was restored recently using iTunes and now it won't activate.

Thanks a lot,

Miles please keep in touch with your findings.

That link you posted the guys last post makes it sound like his phone is in a bad way after jailbreak, not keen on following any steps in that unless I have to just give it a go and hope for the best ugh!

 

[miles]

Hi LeeHamo. Yes, this is a pain. The 3GS phone that I have is not even mine and I was just upgrading it for a buddy. Now, the phone is stucked in the activation part. This phone is IMEI unlocked and could be used in any carrier. The SIM card in this phone is the original carrier so it's not an issue of incorrect carrier why the phone is not activating.

I have an iphone 4 and iphone 5 that were upgraded and jailbroken at 6.1 without any problem. I've thought of bringing this to an Apple Store that offers service for fixing their products (Genius Bar) for free. I hope they have a solution on this one. I'll look around in the net if other solutions are available. I'll keep you posted.

 

[miles]

After doing some searching on the net, I found different suggestions to fix the issue. The one that worked for me:

1. If you have baseband 06.15 and ios 6.X the phone without sim show searching
2. Open Redsn0w
3. Go to Extra
4. Select frimware 6.0
5. Go back and press jailbreak
6. Uncheck the ~install cydia~ and select only Downgrade BaseBand
7. After that do a normal restore with itunes. Insert accepted sim inside and u are done.
8. Jailbreak it using evasion 1.5

Now, I got a 3GS at iOS 6.12 jailbroken.

 

[LeeHamo]

Hi miles, wow I have had a total nightmare trying to get this sorted.

I have managed to get past activation but cant get a sim to work.can you clarify your steps.

I did everything up to step 6 in your tut, then you say you plug it into iTunes and restore it to factory? weird?

then its unlocked and working? why then do you jailbrake it?
my baseband was exactly as you stated above but now I got to step 6 it has changed it.

thanks a lot, Lee.

 

[willerz2]

@LeeHamo, if your SIM does not match that of the original carrier, you'll need to unlock your device first before you can use it. If you restore after downgrading the baseband, you'll have the latest baseband, which voids step 6.

 

[miles]

@ Lee

When you say that you can't get SIM to work. Do you mean:

1. Your phone showed invalid SIM or
2. No Service ?

The phone I worked with used the correct SIM. If your phone is locked to a specific provider, and you inserted a SIM from a different provider, it will not work until you unlocked your phone.

Jailbreak got nothing to do with unlocking a phone. Jailbreak is just to add another source of applications (Cydia) to the iphone so you are not limited to Apple official applications. Unlocking the phone is to remove the software lock on the phone to stick on one service provider. Once the phone is unlocked, you could put a SIM card of any provider and it would work.

 

[LeeHamo]

Hi miles and willers,

Originally it was an activation issue, jail breaking has fixed that issue, now it's a no service issue on the sim card, so I'm halfway there, I have a glorified iPod now instead of a useless slab, i just can't get the sim to work.

Any ideas?