How to remove Activation Lock on an iPhone?

Question

Level 2

193 points

How to remove Activation Lock on an iPhone?

My parents have an iPhone 4s that worked just fine. Until one day, I turned it on and activation lock appeared. Trying to piece together the parts of the E-Mail that I could see, I came to the conclusion that it is either mine or by brother's. I tried to login with my Apple Account credentials and it rejected it. I asked my brother for his login credentials and to no avail, that failed to. I tried whatever I could find on the internet to remedy this issue, to no avail. So now the iPhone is nothing but a paperweight. Can someone please tell me what's going on?

[Re-Titled By Moderator]

Earlier iPhone models

Posted on Nov 8, 2024 7:59 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Mac Jim ID

Community+ 2026

Level 10

89,522 points

Nov 8, 2024 8:05 PM in response to jonasilver137

The phone is locked to the Apple ID that was used when it was set up and apparently you do not have the correct information. The only other option is to provide the original purchase receipt from Apple or Authorized Apple seller to remove the Activation Lock.

How to remove Activation Lock - Apple Support

Reply

Answer 2

Nov 8, 2024 8:22 PM in response to jonasilver137

I have not seen any issue reported here where you would not be able to remove the Activation Lock on older models. If the phone was locked to your Apple ID, you would see it when signing into your iCloud account.

Remove a device from Find Devices on iCloud.com - Apple Support

The portion of the email address that is shows is not the exact number of characters that was used, so it still may have been locked to a different email address.

Reply

Answer 3

jonasilver137 Author

Level 2

193 points

Nov 8, 2024 8:14 PM in response to Mac Jim ID

That's odd. Because, I remember linking my Apple Account to the iPhone. Is it just that Apple's activation servers won't accept an activation request from an older iPhone model?

Reply