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

I just got an iPhone 5 yesterday and am getting the waiting for activation message for both iMessage and FaceTime. Also, my iMessages are still going through my old phone (an iPhone 4). I spent almost two hours on the phone with Apple last night and spoke with AT&T twice. Neither of them were able to fix the problem. I've gone through all the suggestions on the thread minus restoring my phone and setting up as a new device. Anyone else having these issues with an iPhone 5?

First, I assume you're using the iPhone 5 on an officially supported network? If not, the activation SMS message may not get through. Assuming that's true:

I suspect it sometimes takes Apple's iMessage servers a while to catch up after a deactivation or change in activation. Try deactivating iMessage on the old phone and the new phone and leaving them both deactivated overnight. For good measure, reboot both phones too. Then try activating the new one in the morning.

Same problem here. I have the iphone 5 and it will activate imessage and facetime if i treat it like a new device. If i try to lod a backup from itunes or icloud it wont activate imessage or facetime. Ive tried everything and i just wont work. I was upgrading from a iphone 4. I even updated the old phone ios then backed it up. Then tried to restore the new iphone from that backup and it didnt help

Pretty much have to just give up the data from my old phone. :(

Still having problems with my 4 and 4S, both with iOS 6. Both cannot activate the phone number, but the Apple ID works fine. They both had no problems before upgrading to 6.

It same as this is a large not big issue but apple still won't look into it. Weather or not persons are on the USA carrier you still have persons who have factory unlock phones that had this issue. Why not speak up to let the people know what is the cause so it can be rectified or if it can't, at least the people Dan live with it and move on.

I took my phone in to the Genius Bar yesterday and they still couldn't fix it. They said the only other thing to do was to restore back to factory settings, save as a new device, and sync everything I can from iCloud. Not looking forward to it...

I found the fix for the error. Took me a few different tries but I got it to work. You have to completely reset your phone and set it as a, "new phone". I advise you to copy all the information that you want/need onto iCloud first. After I did this my facetime and imessage worked perfectly! Hope this helps.

On a side note as well your contacts won't be erased either but save them on iCloud just in case.

did you find a way to transfer your old text messages via iCloud?

No those will be lost. This is the only way that I found it to work. When your phone was first set up imessage and facetime got messed up with one of the options that you or someone else chose so that's the only way to fix it.

Did you just go into the Settings tab and choose to Erase All Content and Settings from the Reset option and then connect to iTunes to save as a new device? I want to make sure I do this correctly and not screw up my phone even more....

Is anyone living out of the US that is having this issue because am in the Bahamas and having this issue but when I had the iPhone 4 I didn't have this issue. Also, if I jail break my device there is a way to work around this issue but this is the reason I paid for a unlocked device so I wouldn't have to jail break to have the stff I paid all the money for.

Apple say I need to be in the US to activate my iMessage and FaceTime. With a AT&T sim, which I know it is bogus cause other iPhones that are here in this country never went to the US and they are activated.

Go to settings-> general-> reset and select "Reset All Content and Settings" yes to both. Wait for it to reset it all then your phone should be like brand new and you can configure all the settings yourself. Make sure though you select "new phone" later on not back up from iCloud, you can do that at a later time.

Guys,
why dont you please try my solution to the exact same problem.
It will take only one minute.

- Deactivate imessage - facetime.
- Create a contact name "Test" and on ipnone number put your phone number (without your country code)

- Go to Settings - Mail, contacts, calendar - My info and select from contact list the "Test" contact.
(make sure it is saved by closing the "my info" and opening it again)
- Turn on Face time and iMassages and see your phone number in there.

I have done it many times on 4, 4s and now on my 5 and it worked

I have done same thing as you guys! I tried google, setting time and date, restore stuff, and so on. Miraculously, while I was waiting for the activation (which was a lot) i tried messaging my friend and it opened as iMessage!! When i went back to message, it was still waiting for activation... But my friend all replied that it was imessage since its blue. Even though its waiting, just try turning on you email address or Apple Id. Thats it. It works for me. Hope this helps!!