iMessage stuck on verifying my phone number

Iphone 4s how to change "my number" in phone setting (no jailbreak)

Go to this site on Youtube. It is very simple and easy to follow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8oDS1l5VeU

Have tried absolutely every variation of remedies for this particular problem and nothing has fixed it. 2 restores, a visit to an Apple "Genius", and he told me its most probably an update pushed through by my carrier (Telstra, Aust.) no way to roll back these settings. So next step, call my carrier.

Ok. My iPhone has gremlins in it. Just went into settings and thought "I'll just try it one more time..." flicked iMessages ON and both phone number and email were verified almost instantly!

Don't know what was the issue but all is good now. :)

I discovered that the problem in my case is that my daughter is using a pay as you go carrier that does not support SMS short codes. It appears that—similar to the Facetime phone number registration—iMessage sends a hidden SMS to a short code to register the phone number. Since that SMS message never gets out, the phone number registration process can never complete. There was a short window when this provider was supporting short codes, and that must have been when we activated it the first time, but alas, no longer. So I'm just leaving iMessage off completely on her phone and sticking with good old SMS.

http://www.speakoutwireless.ca/speak/phone-features/imessage-and-ios-5/

I had the same issue on my wife's phone. It would lock and freeze too.

Finally tried this

At phone screen where it would say phone number unknown. Eject sim. Wait. Insert sim. I would find cell data.

It actually crash out of setting. So I reopen and verified it all was there and working.

Another option people can try if other solutions doesn't work.

Well, the following worked for me

Turn off iMessage

Leave settings app

Close settings app

Restart settings app

Turn on iMessage

Check number ok

Took just a few moments and it worked :-)

Only one thing that doesn't work is adding an email with xxx@yyy.name :(

I just downloaded the beta version for mac iMessage. I change my sim cards often as I travel frequently. Didn't realise that this needed to be re varified every time. It worked for iMessage and Face time. Thanks for the help.

Ok, so this morning I was playing in the Settings app and decided to try what will happen if I turn iMessage OFF, so I did, and then turned it back on and my phone number kept on saying "Verifying"... it took over 12 hours with no luck!!

Took ou the SIM card and nothing, quit app setting and nothing... so here's what I did and it worked

- Turn off iMessage

- Turn off FaceTime

- Make sure your "My Number" is set correctly (Mine was set as +962 "didn't work" so I decided to change it to 00 962 "which worked")

- Airplane mode, turn it ON

- Settings -> General -> Rest -> Rest Network settings

- wait for the phone to come back to life

- Turn On iMessage (and it will verify in seconds)

- Turn On FaceTime (and it will verify in seconds)

Quit all of your apps just in case and I am not sure how this thins of "Set date to Automatic" but mine was already set!

Good luck guys and Thank you everybody's sharing for their experience 😀

I am still stuck 😟. I completely reset the phone. I tried the turning off and turning on thing too. Nothing worked. I can use imessage with my apple ID (facetime too) but My old number is stuck in there and it keeps saying "verifying". Also, when I put both facetime and imessage on it says "waiting for activation" and NOTHING happens...I'm starting to regret the switch to apple...blackberry was waaaay easier...

I'll appreciate any help I can get on this.

I had the same problem, stuck on verifying for a few weeks, found this thread and now it works..

Turned iMessage off.

Exited the settings app completely

Restarted the phone

Turned iMessage on again

Didn't touch anything for the 5 seconds it took to verify the phone number.

Dude, this worked!!! I have spent over 6 hours on the phone with an apple iOS Sr. advisor and he told me that apple has no idea why this is happening and he couldn't tell me when it will be fixed. Apparently Apple can't / wont use a debug to fix issues. My only problem now is that once I connected to WIFI, the iPhone 4 re-sent my messages as test messages. I turned off send as SMS when iMessage is unavalable, but atleast I can send iMessages again. I will wait to hear from Apple...thanks man!

Stopped working after 45 mins, wifi or not. This trick below works to get it to verify, but I basically have to do this every half hour in order for the phone to send iMessages. Also, after 30-45 mins, the phone will start resending my sent iMessages as text messages. Very annoying for me and who I am messaging.

- Turn off iMessage

- Turn off FaceTime

- Airplane mode, turn it ON

- Settings -> General -> Rest -> Rest Network settings

- wait for the phone to come back to life

- Turn On iMessage (and it will verify in seconds)

- Turn On FaceTime (and it will verify in seconds)

Just go to settings> turn Restrictions on> turn FaceTime off and then on>check to see if facetime and imessage is fixed >turn restrictions off

No dice... same problem, stuck verifying.

I had the same issue. After resetting it multiple times (mainly turning the IMessage on and off a ton and only hitting 'Reset Networks' 3 times), it reactivated. It took about 30 minutes for me to fix but I’m glad to have it back. Apparently people would send me messages (from 2 different people on different providers) and it would say 'Delivered' on their phone even though I never received it. Not sure if it was an error with my carrier or the IPhone but by reading this, it seems to be an IPhone issue and also common. Although I love my IPhone, i wish i wouldn’t have to jump through hoops like this for it to work properly (I only owned it for 4 months and never had a major issue like this before).