IPHONE6S ACTIVATION CODE ERROR

You probably cannot recover anything on the phone at this point, but we can try. Make sure you are connected to a good Wi-Fi signal and try to activate again. You can also try a forced restart (which won't make the problem worse, and may help) by holding the HOME and SLEEP buttons at the same time until an Apple logo appears. Then try again to activate it.

If that fails connect the phone to iTunes on your computer and choose Check for Update (do NOT choose Restore), and install the latest update. If there is still data on the phone it this should not erase it. Then try again to activate.

Unfortunately, the time to make backups is before you need them.

A SIM is required to activate the device. You have to install a SIM to get past this.

The only way you will be able to fix the problem is to do a restore of your iPhone from your backup if you have one.

What is the exact error message you're getting?

The SIM doesn't necessarily have to be active to activate the phone, but it does have to be present in the phone. If you don't have a SIM card in it at all, you will not be able to activate it.

As you have lots of important photos on your phone you of course used one or more of the 5 ways Apple provides for backing up and/or syncing your valuable photos. You will have to retrieve them from one of those backups. For example, if you enabled iCloud Photo Sync you can find them by logging into https://icloud.com

And you never synced them to iCloud, or backed them up to iTunes, or backed them up to iCloud, or enabled Photo Stream, or downloaded them to your computer using a USB cable, or never synced them to a 3rd party cloud service like Google Photos, Shutterfly, Nikon Images, Amazon photos, Drobox, Box.com, Microsoft Onedrive...? Are you sure? Most of those cloud services are real time, meaning that the photos and videos are safely store seconds after you take them.