Wind Mobile Activate iMessage / Facetime

7.1.1, new iPhone 5C, been on Wind a few months now but never got around to trying to activate after learning of the issues and now it seems I missed the July 27th "magic date" issue.

I tweeted to Wind Cares on twitter with more or less "Why is the this issue not fixed, we don't buy the "we are not aware of any issues" claims anymore". I don't expect much of a response, but I find it really hard to believe someone isn't aware of the issue.

Good morning,

I am writing to ask if someone could please help me with the imessage activation of my daughter's phone. We bought for her an iphone 4 with a Speakout Wireless simcard, which also doesn't support shortcodes. The phone is jailbroken and I tried editing the carrier bundle without success. I am not familiar with developer's tools and also don't have an old phone to connect to my computer and send the sms to her iphone. Could someone please help me in anyway? I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

Absolutely they're aware. The responses I got from @WIND_Cares re activating iMessage...

Hi Peter, we don't currently support that application. Some customers are being able to use their email address to activate. ~MA

Talk, Text and Data do work on the sytem. We don't guarantee any apps for any manufacturer. ~MA

And they justify their position by quoting this from their help pages...

"Although the iPhone is not supported by WIND’s technical support team..."

Does anyone here have any family overseas? Does texting them work both ways?

If regular texting (non iMessage activation related) isn't working either for overseas customers, someone would have a leg to stand on so far as creating a huge fuss with Wind on this issue...which, who knows, could prompt them to address it.

SMS works just fine, domestically or internationally.

So does MMS (but you need to configure it under Settings->Cellular->Cellular Data Network. WIND has the instructions on their web site, Google it.)

It's just iMessage to/from your actual phone number that is the problem.

You can of course still iMessage to/from any email address associated with your AppleID after you login with it under Settings->Messages.

So I updated to iOS 8 and thought I'd give this another try. To my surprise, I actually did get a response in my baseband log:

73.289 sms: GSM SMS Point to Point PDU (as hex str): 440c9144...ae08

73.289 sms: MT SMS Message details:

73.289 sms: Message ID: 0

73.289 sms: Sender: +447786205094

73.289 sms: MC Timestamp: Y:2014 M:09 D:17 @ 21:35:14 (Offset:-240, DST:no)

73.289 sms: MC Timestamp: 1410989714

73.289 sms: Source Port: 0

73.289 sms: Dest Port: 5497

73.289 sms: Msg Encoding: 4 (Binary)

73.289 sms: Body Length: 88

73.290 sms: Raw message was successfully parsed, and the message is valid

73.290 sms: Sending manual ack (pdu parsing succeeded)

73.290 sms: Acking messageID 0 with success and is temporary on mode GW

73.290 sms: ACKing an SMS on signaling

After pasting the hex string into the form it appears the silent activation SMS message was sent to the correct phone number: "Silent activation SMS has been generated and will be sent to 416*******. If all steps were performed correctly, iMessage will activate within a minute." It's been several minutes now though (15+) and iMessage never actually activated.

So close!

I have 3 iPhone 5's that I had activated way back when this worked.

Spoke with a store rep, and he showed me an internal memo, that stated that from Sept 19 - Sept 31, 2014 Wind mobile will provide free Nano Sim Cards to any new activations of iPhones on their network.. (Read into what you want, we both thought it looked as tho, Wind was starting to push for iPhone transfers)

Anyways, just to let you know. I've upgraded all the ios's to 8, and iMessage has activated without any need for this process..

This was either a fluke (3 times find it hard to believe...) or Wind is actually letting the silent text out and in.

I will say it took 2 of the iPhones about 35 minutes to activate, and the 3rd was almost instant.

Interesting. But it sounds like you had iMessage activated with your phone number before you upgraded? I'd be interested to hear from anyone trying new activations if it works directly without this process.

I activated iMessage by phone number using this method back when it was working too, but had to do a restore during the period when it wasn't working so I was never able to reactivate it. I just tried again, and it's been 45+ minutes and I'm still seeing "Waiting for activation..."

With much trepidation, I updated to iOS 8 today (after previously having activated iMessage using these steps), and to my surprise and relief, iMessage activated itself nearly instantly after installation. Took maybe 30 seconds. Still so glad to have found this thread and instructions. Hope everyone else is able to sort out their problems. 🙂

So can somebody that had no success getting iMessage to activate whatsoever indicate if they have had success now? I am going to update my wife's iPhone 5c tonight to iOS 8 and am hoping to have a successful iMessage activation afterwards – I will certainly report back if nobody does beforehand.

I'm happy to report that with Steve's help I was able to activate iMessage with my phone number on iOS 8 using his online form.

The instructions are the same but Apple appears to be sending a retry now, so if your phone receives the retry between the time you dump your log and enter the hex string into the form it won't work (the original message is invalidated.) Looking at my logs it appears the retry comes about 6 minutes later so if you wait the suggested 2 minutes you should be fine. In this case waiting longer is not better.

Happy dance!

Based on what I have seen, Wind has started delivering the corrupt activation SMS again, so you will need to dump your baseband logs and use my website to activate.

I'm also seeing mixed messages about activation just working, but I have no confirmation of it. I'm just downloading iOS 8, so I may have some more insight once it is installed.

I can confirm that I have successfully done the same just now.

I tried pretty hard a few months back after the tool stopped working but never got past the HEX string (was never able to get a HEX string to submit).

I did it as Peter described, waited the 2 mins and it worked perfectly.

Thanks again to smcclay for his noble work.

To clarify, mine just activated on its own, no extra steps required on my part. I originally used your steps and website back in May to activate when I ported from Telus to Wind. No need for that today after updating to iOS 8, it just happened on its own, after about 30 seconds.

Okay, I could be wrong, but what I'm discerning from the conversation so far is that people who had successfully done the hactivation previously are now getting native reactivations after the ios8 update, and people who had never successfully activated previously are now able to get themselves activated via the baseband dump method Again.

Looking hopeful!