Q: iOS 7 iMessage won't activate

I updated yesterday. Of course, there are bound to be glitches in any wifi related update. everyone needs to take it easy... and go with it. Yes, it's frustrating and annoying, but if you deal with tech on any scale, you are bound to have a few problems now and then... apple or not.

After helping a friend to back up/download and install ios7 this morning, I noticed that her imessage immediately begain working, and yesterday I updated my iphone 5 first, then ipad. ipad connected to imessage and facetime immediately out of the gate... iphone did not. I'm not sure if there's a correlation between others who have had the same experience, in relation to iphone not activating, but ipad working fine.

This morning, still had not activated, nor was signing in working. I kept getting all the same messages saying "failed, check your network connection"... so, after trying everything from resetting network settings, to forgetting the icloud acct. and signing back in, to deactivating wifi, etc. etc. etc. ... (I tried everything...) I decided to do a restore. First I tried resetting all settings...(doesn't remove personal data/apps, but delets stuff like wifi passwords, email passwords and any other customizations) when that didn't work I decided to try a full "erase everything and start over" restore.  I did that, and once prompted, chose the feature that said "restore from latest icloud backup."  There's also a prompt to enter icloud id, as well as imessage and facetime apple id.

IT WORKED!

yes, it's a pain that I had to go through all that... but... less than 24 hours ago, I was just installing it for the first time... which took approx. 2.5 hours for both ipad and iphone.

So... back up first either to icloud or computer and the reset using the restore from back up selection and you should be good to go.

I've known others who have worked for software development before, and all have said that sometimes when updating via wifi, traces of the previous software can be left in your system and cause glitches.

The total restore took me about 20 minutes from the time I pressed reset, to the time it took for all my apps to finish downloading...

worth the 20 minutes to have everything working properly!

This will not fix itself. I also tried again and again- Finally restarting the phone connected imessage immediately. Seems silly, but if you haven't tried it still then give it a shot. It's worth a min of your time and worked for all my devices...

Mle2:

YOU ARE CORRECT!

I did the complete erace everything, AFTER DOING A FRESH BACKUP TO MY COMPUTER.

It took about 20 minutes to erase and restore, and it's now installing all my photos, music, movies and Apps. Early in the Restore process, it requested a new 4 digit code (twice), and also my AppleID password.  I've already opened up iMessage and FaceTime and they are FULLY FUNCTIONAL.

So, we just need to suck it up and do the backup, full erase and restore.

Onward!  And, thanks to all who contributed.

Point is shouldn't have to erase my crap and waist time restoring they should test the product better b4 releasing it. **** poor excuses

Agree 110%.  This whole restoring and following all of these steps is unacceptable and shouldn't be a solution.  How can this many folks have the problem and it not have been caught in the testing.

Go into your Settings. Change your date/time because the update threw it off. This happens a lot with Apple products.

Doesn't matter that you don't want to take the time to update... fact is... you'll probably have to do it if you want everything to work the way it should.

In my opinion 20 minutes is well worth the time spent... and takes away the aggravation of constantly checking the settings>imessage> signing in to be told it failed and network is unavailable.   

spend the 20 minutes and be done with it. If this turns out to be the ONLY problem with iOS 7 release... I think, given past experience that's pretty darn good.

how can you downgrade?

I have tried everything. I updated yesterday and my iMessage would not activate. I was still able to send and receive but not from my phone number and that is annoying because no one I know uses their email for iMessage.

I restored my phone multiple times both from my phone and from iTunes. I selected different backups. I reset all settings. Removed sim card and put it back in. I even set it up as a new phone so I legitametly tried everything and it didn't work.

Finally I stopped messing with my phone etc bc the problem lies completely on apple's side. I kept toggling on and off iMessage and eventually it activated and registered with my phone number without me having to restore or toggle wifi or any other of these methods people are posting.

I am pretty convinced that their phones working after doing that stuff was mere coincidence and the only solution is to sit there and keep trying.

My iMessage now works thankfully, now on to activating Facetime...

great way to downgrade...

go with android...?

Been there, done that MAAAANNNNYYY times

and this imessage activation problem is a drop in the bucket compared to the constant headache of Android OS.

The only repair that worked for me was the back up, erase all content and settings, then restore.  Everything else failed for me.  Once the restore was done imessage and facetime activated on their own.

I tried all the tips that has been said on this thread aside from a toal restore and nothing worked, finally just decided to reset and restore from a previous backup and all iMessage/Facetime issues have been resolved. Glad the simple tricks worked for some, but for me, the full reset/restore was the only way to fix this issue.

Now onto fixing the issue of iTunes Radio not playing the next track and just endlessly flying through songs without playing them!

Good luck out there!

Same issue here. I've reset network settings, full restore, sim swaps, and pretty much everything else that has been suggested to no avail... I'm going to give Apple and O2 another day to see if they sort this out.

The only other thing I haven't seen mentioned on the thread, is that every time the phone tries to activate imessage/facetime, I receive a text message from a weird O2 number with a bunch of code...

Sadly, we should not have to do all this crap for our simple iphone functions to work but I did what Mle2 said do and it did take a solid 20 min to complete. It was the one and only remedy that worked for me man.

Tried almost all suggestions and nothing worked except the full backup, erase all content and settings and restore. That fixed the iMessage issue and Facetime issue.

Good luck!