Blank "iPhone" screen in iTunes?

Question

Blank "iPhone" screen in iTunes?

I "restored" my wife's iPhone (the original one, running 3.1.3 IOS) after she accidentally set (and forgot) the password that controls access to app store and other functionality (kind of parental controls). Restore process went smoothly but after that I am stuck with a phone that shows "connect-me-to-iTunes" screen and when I connect it to the computer, iTunes (10.5.0.142 Windows 64bit) recognizes it under the generic name "iPhone" on the left bar, but the main phone page is empty (except for the huge word "iPhone" in the middle).

At first, there were signs of some problems with Apple servers - when the iPhone appeared in iTunes, the message "Accessing iTunes Store" was displayed for a while, ending with a timeout error message. However, after a coupe of hours, this problem seems to go away - now "Asseccing iTunes Store" stays on the screen very briefly and disappears. The phone page is still empty.

What is interesting, the phone is still connected to AT&T network, I still can switch to"emergency dialing" mode and call whatever nuber I want, and I call my iPhone from another phone and the call goes through.

After spending some time googling, I tried the following remedies:

1. Just letting the phone sit connected to iTunes for about an hour hoping that it will contact whatever activation or other servers it needs to contact to proceed.

2. Switching the phone to "debugging" mode - in this case iTunes suggest to restore the firmware, which does not help.

3. Logging into iTunes with a different iTunes account

4. Deleting local copy of firmware, re-downloading it from Apple, and reinstalling

5. Uninstalling and reinstalling iTunes.

Nothing helped. I would really appreciate any suggestions and ideas.

I will try visiting local AT&T and Apple stores, but from my previous experience, the people there are not very competent - they will simply try to sell me a newer iPhone.

iOS 3.1.3

Posted on Nov 6, 2011 11:18 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Nov 10, 2011 5:46 PM in response to Community User

Spent a couple of hours running between AT&T store and Apple store.

Apple store says that my SIM card is not original, and this is why Apple systems would not authorize this iPhone. I had this phone for years and maybe at some point the SIM card was broken and needed to be replaced. Anyway, this phone was on AT&T plan for years working fine. Thier only advice was to go to AT&T store and beg them to install an old non-3G SIM card into this phone and associate it with my account.

AT&T, of course, has no such cards anymore, so were not able to help.

Overall I am extremely disappointed with how Apple handled this issue. If Apple knows that this is a limitation of their products, they should have fixed their registration servers or whatever to accept iPhones with newer cards (have they designed it in an assumption that SIM cards last forever?!) Alternatively, iTunes should either disable "Restore" button when it sees that the user has the old iPhone with a non-native card or at least show a huge warning message.

I ended up jailbreaking the phone and now it does not require Apple servers to "bless" its existence.

I have been loyal iPhone customer since the original iPhone and I feel betrayed - Apple effectively "switched off" my perfectly working phone and their only suggestion is - "you are welcome to buy a new model". My next phone will be Android.

Reply

Answer 2

Nov 10, 2011 9:38 PM in response to Community User

I'm wondering about this. I am having the same problem on my first gen iphone. I know i have the original simcard though because it wouldn't fit in my new iphone 4, so it just got left in my 1st gen. Weird that it says "3g" on the sim card though. Even other 1st gen's sim cards i have seen say 3g on the cards from att, atleast online. It has to be the original one.

Reply

Answer 3

Nov 10, 2011 9:50 PM in response to Community User

I also had an impression that the sim card I have in my phone was the original one, but the "genius" in the Apple store used the fact that my card has 3G logo on it as a proof that it is not the original one (his words literally were "The card says '3G' your phone is pre-3G, therefore the card is not original". Maybe the kid was not aware that 3G technology existed before Apple released iPhone 3G.

Anyway,I suspect that they simply don't want to spend any resources on supporting the older iPhones - there are not that many of them left and Apple does not make any money off them. For them it makes more sense to pump more resourcing into building a new phone. This approach punishes old time Apple customers like you and me.

Reply

Answer 4

Nov 11, 2011 9:55 AM in response to Community User

Got mine working again. follow this post. Senior Advisor had to activate it. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3354333?start=15&tstart=0

Reply