I live in China and I recently bought a refurbished iPhone 3GS from the US. It was jailbroken when I bought it and I personally prefer it un-jailbroken. Well, I contacted AT&T to see if I could get it unlocked and they agreed and told me to restore it. I restored it from a copy of the current iOS (unaltered) that I have saved to my computer. Well, I can't get it to activate because it says there is no SIM card installed or that the Activation Servers are down. I've previously unlocked an iPhone this way for a friend and had no problems. So, my question is do I need to restore and download a new copy of the iOS (I didn't think I needed to as I thought the activation server would take care of the unlock) or is there some other problem that I have overlooked?
iPhone 3GS won't activate
- Thread starter LeRajah
- Start date
You can't activate it without a SIM legitimately. You'll need to jailbreak the device to bypass it.
However, I'm not entirely sure on iOS 6 since I'm not updating my 4S to find out, but you can try using iExplorer to connect to your device, go to the root folder, click on Applications then delete the Setup.app folder and reboot your device. Jailbreaking your device reveals your entire root of your iPhone. Not jailbreaking it will only let you see some or most of the root directories, so just give it a try. All it does is that it just completely dumps out the setup process of activating your iPhone. I know for a fact that the 4 does require you to jailbreak before you can hacktivate.
However, I'm not entirely sure on iOS 6 since I'm not updating my 4S to find out, but you can try using iExplorer to connect to your device, go to the root folder, click on Applications then delete the Setup.app folder and reboot your device. Jailbreaking your device reveals your entire root of your iPhone. Not jailbreaking it will only let you see some or most of the root directories, so just give it a try. All it does is that it just completely dumps out the setup process of activating your iPhone. I know for a fact that the 4 does require you to jailbreak before you can hacktivate.
- Thread Starter
- #3
Well, I have a SIM but it's not recognizing it--I haven't had this problem before with an unlocked phone. I'm not trying to jailbreak it since AT&T has unlocked it for me; I'm just trying to get it to activate and it won't.
It might be because of your location. Either ways, try the iExplorer bypass without jailbreaking. The tool is free to download online. Connect your device, click on Root Directories -> Applications. If you see Settings.app, then the method will work. Otherwise, you'd most likely need to have access to AT&T service/signals to be able to get it activated
- Thread Starter
- #5
It might be, but it's weird because I've done the same thing with another AT&T iPhone (it is/was successfully activated here in China) and it worked fine...still does. I'll give the iExplorer a try and see how that works. Many thanks!
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