iPhone 4 "Requires Activation"?

All iPhone betas have expired, you have no choice but to install the public release of iOS 5.0 on your phone, if you want to activate it.

I was too lazy to update yet to the release from the latest iOS 5 beta on my iPhone 3GS (I'm a developer). Although it was slow as molasses, I knew from the update on my iPad2 that it could take many hours. And it worked, so why update? And I expected to get an iPhone 4S when they were available in my little grotto of the world, so why update?

Well, now I know why you should update vigorously with your beta products, or they do it themselves.

I awoke last night because of a bright light. My iPhone had decided it could wait no longer and updated itself. Or so it seemed. When I looked closer in the morning I saw that it needed to re-activate itself. I went through the motions, but lo and behold: it could not connect to Apple's Activation Server. It was temporarily unavailable. I tried again and again over the last several hours (07:30 - 10:30), but the server remains unavailable. Meanwhile, my phone is unusable.

Thanks Apple, for updating my phone without warning, and render it disabled!

So, what to do?

I downloaded the .ipsw image for iOS 5 for my device and restored in iTunes. Now it hangs at approximately 20% and refuses to install further.

Great, a bricked phone caused by an Apple update... 😟

Yeah I've tried everything, DFU, Restore, and no luck. Mine says expired too. I hope someone can help. Oh boy. . .my iPhone.

I'm not an iOS developer, so maybe things are different. But whenever a seeded release of OS X is closed, I get an email notice after the public release comes out warning that the seed project will be closing. That email makes it very clear that if you wish to update to the final public release you need to do so before the seed project shuts down (since once it does, the revisioner software needed will become unavailable which means your only way to run the final public release would be to start with a clean install of OS X and run the public combo updater).

Do iOS developers not get some kind of project closing email as well, warning them of anything they (may) need to do to avoid future issues running pre- public release versions of software?

Does Apple support evr provide actual support? My iPhone 4 and iPad 2 are both updated but cannot get activated because "the activation server is temporarily unavailable". It was like this since yesterday afternoon and I already tried using iTunes but to no avail. iTunes tells me it cannot synch because it cannot see or do something to my Apps. I keep "trying again" and keep getting the same message. How temporary is the absence of the activation server? I'm dead in the water and rely on both of these devices heavily! Is there an estimated timeframe? Is anyone working on it? Is there some type of notification we can look for anywhere in particular? Anyone? Anyone??

😟

My iphone 4 is having the same problem. I had the same thing a few months after installing beta1. It turned out that beta1 was not able to upgrade OTA. Fortunately, I had some backup available and used some third party approaches to extract phonebook data etc from that. Now facing the problem once again. This time I have been very careful on keeping the firmware up to date. Feeling a bit helpless. Although mails arrive (I can hear the beep) and wifi is active but the device is blocked. If only I could get my daughter's pics and newborn baby boy's pics out of it 😟. I cannot afford re-imaging the device and my phone line is disconnected. I cannot afford to keep a second device for developing. And that is my fault I guess 🙂

I did manage to get the pics off of mine. My wife had several pictures of our kids as well.

I used iFunBox downloaded from the internet. It only runs on Windows, so I set up a VM using Virtualbox to get the photos off. This is how important they were.

I called Apple and no one even cared. They basically told me to go pee up a rope.

If anyone knows how to get contacts and notes off before I restore, that would be great. I am going to try a few more things tonight. I will let you know if I am successful.

Got the contacts off using an app called '3herosoft Iphone to Computer Transfer'.

Still working on getting the notes.

Don't forget the text messages.

Last time I forgot to get pictures out of the iphone. This time, luckily, opened iPhoto and it synced the pics. New contacts had been synced with icloud beta, so easily recovered those. However, I cannot keep track of what to recover from a blocked iphone. Therefore, this time I did not recover the text messages (SMS), just because I had a brick in hand. Someone should write up a guide about this. a checklist or something, not to leave anything behind. In the same guide, one should provide with recommended settings for itunes sync, for full protection (as in activesync in the old days).

I have no notes either 🙂

Please someone should come up with a recovery guide for an 'expired' iphone...

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!

Has anyone found a solution yet??.....im with the carrier TELCEL in Mexico, and today I got the message ''activation required''......long story short: MY IPHONE IS A BRICK...i cant do anything, it only says: this device is not registered as part of the iphone developer program''

WHAT CAN I DO???? IS MY IPHONE 4S DEAD????.......Please help, I saved a lot of money to buy this device 😟

My experience with beta was very painful

1) I was at customer site 600 miles away from home and only relying on my iphone 4s which has ios5.1 GM

2) It got expired on 3rd day at sire and gave me freaking message same as above users had. I still has 3 days to go at new place...

3) 3 days of pain, hopelessness and agony as i was in different country, no network, no wireless nothing.

4) Somehow I came back safely and first thing - connect my phone to itunes on my mac

5) Installing new released iOS but wont install. Dont remember but keep giving stupid usesless messages. (Apple's paranoia of letting people know what exact error is)

6) 2 hours gone and i start to freaking out that i lost my phone and not just that warranty too

7) Somewhere on thread told me to use itunes on Windows

8) Used Windows Vista, installed itunes (same version as on my mac), downloaded ios5.1

9) Prayers to god and Apple <<=== You need those

10) Start updating ios.........

11) It finished successfully, and my phone is back alive.!!

Now on no stupid beta release on my working iphones.. Lesson learned. 🙂