how to activate iphone 5 without sim card

Matt and Meg, anyone who joins a forum just to post clearly bogus information is just a troll. Please ignore.

I was going with language gap, but, now that I have posted my factoid of the day, I'll ignore. 😉

Does it have to be a used SIM? Like what if you just get one of those $8 straight talk sim cards that work with AT&T type phones? Or does it have to be a SIM card with some type of previous data on it?

It can be any SIM

I just wanted to chime in and verify that this suggestion was helpful to me today.

I have been trying to activate a replacement phone I received while under warranty. I'm now living outside the US and am in the middle of the unlocking process, literally. I received my unlock approval from AT&T while my phone was still at Apple and now can't find that email anymore. AT&T has no record of this approval (of course), so I had to resubmit this morning. In the meantime, I want to set this phone up to use it as an iPod. I was having trouble getting it to recognize ANY of the 75 nano SIMs I have laying around from various European carriers, AS WELL AS my original (but now expired) AT&T SIM.

However, on a lark, I looked the subject up here and got your advice. I then reinstalled the expired AT&T SIM (since it's from the carrier the phone is still locked to) and restarted the phone. This worked.

Inserting the AT&T SIM (or any of the SIMs) without restarting the whole phone DID NOT work. That just got me into the loop of inserting SIMs, pressing the back button, then getting an error message that I needed to insert a SIM.

Conclusion: A SIM that will work in the phone is needed. For a locked phone, this would be the one from the carrier the phone is locked to. For an unlocked phone, it can probably be any SIM as others have stated. Not only is my AT&T SIM expired, I no longer have an account with AT&T for service. The SIM still worked for activating the phone.

Another note: I think it's worth commenting that activating the phone and activating SERVICE are two entirely different things.

I just wanted to chime in and verify that this suggestion was helpful to me today.

I have been trying to activate a replacement phone I received while under warranty. I'm now living outside the US and am in the middle of the unlocking process, literally. I received my unlock approval from AT&T while my phone was still at Apple and now can't find that email anymore. AT&T has no record of this approval (of course), so I had to resubmit this morning. In the meantime, I want to set this phone up to use it as an iPod. I was having trouble getting it to recognize ANY of the 75 nano SIMs I have laying around from various European carriers, AS WELL AS my original (but now expired) AT&T SIM.

However, on a lark, I looked the subject up here and got your advice. I then reinstalled the expired AT&T SIM (since it's from the carrier the phone is still locked to) and restarted the phone. This worked.

Inserting the AT&T SIM (or any of the SIMs) without restarting the whole phone DID NOT work. That just got me into the loop of inserting SIMs, pressing the back button, then getting an error message that I needed to insert a SIM.

Conclusion: A SIM that will work in the phone is needed. For a locked phone, this would be the one from the carrier the phone is locked to. For an unlocked phone, it can probably be any SIM as others have stated. Not only is my AT&T SIM expired, I no longer have an account with AT&T for service. The SIM still worked for activating the phone.

Another note: I think it's worth commenting that activating the phone and activating SERVICE are two entirely different things.

This last response has been extremely helpful to me. I am new to iPhone and just purchased an unlocked 5s that I plan to bring with me and use in shanghai for a short assignment. I don't yet have the sim I will use once I get to Shanghai, but I would like to activate the phone now and get as much set up as I can. Do I understand correctly then that I can use any old sim to activate now, and then later in Shanghai perform an additional step with the real sim to activate the actual carrier/phone service - WITHOUT - losing any of the setup I can do now?

what if i have a sim but its locked by a pin number , and there is no way to enter the pin to unlock it

Then you need to contact your carrier.

mr.blue2020 wrote:

what if i have a sim but its locked by a pin number , and there is no way to enter the pin to unlock it

You can get the PIN Unlock Key (PUK) from your carrier. If you have an account on their website it is usually there, or you can call them.

Hey, i have the same problem with the activation...I hve a sim card but it still does not work? any other suggestions

I doubt that you will get a response from someone who posted a link 2 years ago.

If you describe your actual problem (there are at least a dozen problems posted in the 65 posts in this thread) it will make it easier for someone to help you. Better yet, instead of tagging onto the end of a 2 year old thread whose last post was 8 months ago, post a brand new message in the forum; a lot more people will see it.

Ok so, if I want to use my old phone as an iPod. I do the following?

Assuming my old phone has been restored. I use the sim from my new phone to activate my old phone. Then I take out the sim from my old phone and then put back in my new phone.

My old phone is now able to be used as an iPod and my new phone can still be used as a phone?

Yes

any kind of sim???