My iphone 3gs can not be activated! It says that the iphone could not activate because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. What can I do to activate it?

EXACTLY SAME PROBLEM HERE!!!!!! 😠 , I have an apointment with an apple genius at the apple retail store on saturday and i hope they get it fix

Well,... this is from an older post from a knowledgeable user..

"BTW, the most common cause of being unable to activate an iDevice is because it was hacked, unlocked or jailbroken, or the computer you are using was used to hack, unlock or jailbreak ANY iDevice (not just the one with the immediate problem)."

This does seem extreme, but it doesn't hurt to ask... was the phone jailbroken or hacked?

Im not sure if my iphone is jailbroken but my laptop was never used on an iphone up till now which i have never used to hack or unlock or jailbreak. Is there anyway i can get it activated ?

Is this a new, not yet activiated iphone, or has it been used in the past? If totally new, didn't ATT included an instruction sheet for activating it?

How can i find out if my iphone is jailbroken but im sure my laptop isnt the problem in this because i bought my laptop brand new and i am 100% sure that i have never used it to unlock, hack or jailbreak anything

The laptop has nothing to do with this. It's the iphone.... where did you get it? New? Bought from ebay? Hand-me-down?

It has been bought second-hand and i have used it before

It was bought from an second hand shop, called cash conventors, which you give your old electricals in and you get money for it, then they put those electricals for sale and i bought this iphone that way

It was working fine before but i couldnt call people as it said "call failed" and then there was a call back option which leads you to the home screen !

I have restored my iphone and now it says :

the iphone could not activate because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. Please connect to itunes to activate it or try again in a few minutes.

iTunes says: There is no sim card installed in the iPhone you are trying to activate. Please disconnect and insert a sim card in the iPhone.

There already is a valid simcard in the iPhone though!!!!!!!!!!!! 😠

⚠

I am having the EXACT same problem. Bought a seller refurbished, unlocked 3gs from ebay that arrived this morning. When plugged into the computer it advised me to update to the new iOS and now I'm having all the same messages as you. Is this something wrong with Apple, or is it due to it being a jailbroken phone, and how do I fix it?

i think it is to do with it being jailbroken because i bought an iphone 3gs from ebay as well and it was jailbroken and im having the exact same problem

Same here after purchasing a used 3gs 32gb for a pretty penny. Connected to iTunes for a restore/update (aka get rid of the naughty jailbreak), and now this. Anyone figure this out? I've been told it means I can't use the stock iOS5, and I HAVE TO RE-JAILBREAK IT AND USE AN UNAUTHORIZED OS?? Is that what we're being forced to do, when none of us intended to use a jailbroken phone?

I have this problem too, and my iphone is second hand and unlocked. I have used it before with a different sim, but the sim I have now has worked in it fine before. My phone isnt jailbroken. Its so annoying!

I had a problem like this a while back with my newly bought unlocked 3gs too

(well when it came out ... so quite a while)

In my case it was the computers fault... or to be precise my firewall was denying acces to apples server, and that's what caused the message.

So you might want to try and check your firewalls logs to see if anything was blocked coming from iTunes.

if so, manually set these urls to the whitelist and try again

(i cannot remember the urls afair there are two but I can't tell for sure..sorry)

'sid