My iMessage still says "Waiting for activation..."

try checking the time zone

The 'timezone solution' will work sometimes, but I've noticed that the symptoms are slightly different when the timezone is the problem. When the timezone is incorrect, you'll have to login with your AppleID time after time again. Whereas in my previous case I could login fine, but iMessage just wasn't activating. Or at least it was activating, but only on the emailaddress. When the timezone is incorrect, not even your AppleID emailaddress will be activated for iMessage.

Hey, and welcome to iMessage! If you don't have an Apple ID or aren't logged in to one, you can't do anything in iMessage. You should correct your timezone.

Brandon Sky wrote:

Hey, and welcome to iMessage! If you don't have an Apple ID or aren't logged in to one, you can't do anything in iMessage. You should correct your timezone.

Not true at all. You can use iMessage with a mobile number or with an Apple ID, and you can choose either as the "caller ID". You don't need an Apple ID to use iMessage with a mobile number.

I think my issue was a carrier issue. Others with that carrier and different phones were having problems that day. Problem resolved on its own. Thanks for everyone's help tho 🙂

"My number ends in 0000 as well and my phone will not activate the FaceTime nor iMessage. I have other iphones on the account and they are fine and I've had my phone swapped 3x and none will activate. It's very inconvenient for these features not to work when my number is SO Convienent lol.."

It's not a theory. I've got the same problem and it has been confirmed by apple engineers. 😟

I am using 2 different iphone 4s, and i am located within the Bahamas. I have tried every single thing from the first post to the last with none of the assistance being helpful. I have changed the number via itunes or appleid.apple.com, i have changed the DNS to 8.8.8.8, I have shut down and restarted to many times, Restored,

changed phone number from +1 to 1 to just the area code 242, made sure the text number was corredt by dailing the *#5005 ..... number. I just need a way to make this work. I want my phone number registered with the imessage and facetime account. Please can someone assit me, i think i am going crazy trying all these methods, also my phone somftware is fully up to date, with the latest baseband and IOS and is factory unlocked, so no need for jail breaking, nor gevey cause i wanted to get out of that because i wanted it to be a factory phone.

Use any email address for imessages and facetime.

If you already had it working and now it isnt , even though https://appleid.apple.com/ says you are verified with the green tick , don't believe it necessarily, on your email address in there add a number on the end of it or change it slightly so it is bogus then apply so it will send a verification email , then revert it back to your real one and apply and get it to send a verification email to yuor account , for real this time , verify and imessages should just work.

I have a touch and an iphone working just fine on the same gmail account BUT it was turned off and I could not re activate whatever I did including dns 8.8.8.8 , logging out of itunes , date check , network reset , etc etc etc. I then wondered if the green tick saying verified was still valid in my apple id so did the above and voila.

It was VERY annoying and there seemed to be a heck of a lot of people with the same issue with the incorrect apple id or password message which was not correct, even going to extremes like reset network or rebuilding.

Yours may not be or by now you are fixed but hopefully this will show up in peoples searches that are having issues re-activating imessages.

This process that you speak about, I would like to try if it isn't a waste of time, so what I want to know is, did this process assist you with getting your mobile number activated, or just ya unactivated email address. Cause my iMessage and face time is working with email, I need it set up with mobile number.

I have the same problem, at first i thought it was my jailbreak but it really has nothing to do with it. Just go to settings/store/(Apple ID)/ sign out. then go to settings/messages/ turn off imessage. restart your device. then log back and and turn imessage back on. It should work the first time. if it doesnt try again a few more times. Hopefully that works peace!

Problem solved by iOS6.

yes i was suprised when i say my contact number with the imessage set up information, i said to myself that i got it, thank God. But on completion of the set up and i went to the messages in settings it was gone. NO phone number there. I would really like to know what is blocking it and not allowing my contact to show as my caller ID for messages and facetime, and i made sure i did a restore and not an update along with a new iphone set up and not a back up.

Does your phone number by chance have 4 consecutive numbers in it. Example: 550-0002.

No it doesn't. It has 2. Like 376-3455 (this is not a real contact just an example). Also in phone number option my number is set up like this. +1-242-376-3455. Is this the way it should be set up.

I noticed this thread is still active, so I thought I would mention (in case I haven't already), that there is another good discussion on this here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3703008

Note in that thread my comments on Apple's use of SMS short codes for iMessage and Facetime activation. In many cases the inability to activate will be because your carrier is not passing on that special activation SMS message. For example, some discount pay-as-you-go services (e.g., Speakout in Canada) do not allow messages to short codes. This makes activating a phone number impossible.