ios5 upgrade 'could not activate iphone'

Lawrence,

I have a 3GS which was in fact unlocked with unauthorized means, specifically the iPad baseband. However, I have purchased a carrier unlock from Rogers (carrier in Canada) but am still facing the same problem, "Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable...' Am I screwed?

Thank you.

Peter...

As of right now there's no solution other than an unauthorized one (I'm careful of my lannguage because using certain words gets posts removed). If your phone has the iPad baseband, even if it is officially unlocked, the baseband is corrupted by the update. You can try doing a DFU restore, which should replace the baseband with a good one. I'm assuming you know how to do a DFU restore (which restores the phone using low level firmware rather than iOS and should replace everything). If not someone (or me) will respond and describe it.

me too, so whats the solution?

so how did they fix it? me too same issues with 3GS. thnx

thnx for great advice...

What accectly are you saying? I have to update or change my baseband of my iPhone 3GS? Could you explain me the solution?

I can't say exactly or the post will be removed. If your phone has ever been unlocked by unauthorized means (such as replacing the baseband) you will have to repeat that process. And if you do it still may not work.

If the phone has been unlocked officially by the carrier you should try a DFU restore. Which is still not guaranteed to work if the phone has been hacked in the past, but it might work.

Your best bet is to search for solutions on the internet if the phone has been hacked.

Ok, i am back to 4.3.3 but I cant restore from a backup because thats of iOS 5.0. Is there a way to update to iOS 5.0 from 4.3.3?

Assuming you have the iPad baseband installed you are kind of stuck right now. I have heard that if you update to 5.0, then reinstall the iPad baseband it will work, but I haven't had a need to do that myself. And, of course, the details of how to do that cannot be posted in an Apple-hosted forum. But Google is your friend. There are some tools on the Internet that will do this for you, but if I name them this post will disappear.

If you do not have the iPad baseband installed it should upgrade without problems.

And finally, if your iPhone is officially unlocked by the carrier you can do a DFU restore and I am told it will work.

I know how to reinstall the iPad baseband but is it possible to update to ios 5.0 and not to ios 5.0.1?

I haven't tried; if you can find a copy of the .ipsw I would think you could do it the same way you went back to 4.3.3. I would expect that you can update to 5.0.1 and still install the iPad baseband.

It does not work the way I have done to go back to iOS 4.3.3. I have trie to reinstall the iPas baseband on 5.0.1 but my iPhone stuck at the startup screen.

I think I found a way to safely update to iOS 5.0.1! That would be so nice!

Hey guys.

First of all, thanks so much for the help, Finch. I'll try to outline my situation.

My brother bought an used iPhone 3GS 32GB. He asked me to set it up for him. It had iOS 4.1, and I have no idea if any unauthorized actions had been taken on the phone. It had a lot of crap installed, so my first step was to restore/update it. I downloaded iOS 4.3.3 (since I've read that iOS 5 has performance issues on anything below iPhone 4), connected it on iTunes and did a restore. I got an error saying my iTunes version was incorrect.

I then downloaded 4.1 (which is the SAME version as what was previously on the phone) and did a restore. I got error 1015 and the phone got stuck in restore mode/endless boot loop. Tried to restore again. Same problem. I found on Google a possible solution: restore again using the latest iOS version. So, screw it, I went for iOS 5.0.1. It DID complete the restore, but when I was going to activate the phone it kept saying "could not connect to the apple server", while my iTunes screen said "no SIM card". I assume one leads to the other: phone not activated means SIM card won't be recognized.

So I followed with an DFU restore, reinstalling the iOS5. After that, during activation, it said "could not scan for wireless networks", prompting me to connect via iTunes. Now, I don't want to use my own iTunes account, and I don't know if my brother has one, but the impression I'm getting is that Apple servers are trying to lock me out of my own iPhone...

Just serach following string on google and watch the very first result carefully.

How to: Fix 5.0 "Searching" or "No Service" 6.15.00 baseband after update! STEP BY STEP

I was also stuck on "could not activate iphone" problem but solved it using mehod shown in respective google result and now i'm having smooth running ios 5.0.1 🙂