IOS 8.2 update caused my iMessage to stop working

Hi,

On Iphone 6 - IOS 8.2 - Location India.

Facing the same issue since I upgraded to 8.2, this is what I have done for troubleshooting so far:

a) Switched off imessage reset network settings and restarted and turned imessage back on - does not work

b) Followed all suggestions related to time zone / locations settings - does not work

c) Downgraded IOS to 8.1.3 but then it did not take my 8.2 backup - so could not work with that (so never tried it)

d) Read somewhere to retype my phone number in General -> Phone -> My Number - did not make imessage work

e) Checked if 3G plan is active - it is - so that is not the issue - activating over wifi is not working either

f) Changed sim cards - no luck

g) Changed passcode - not working

h) Finally restored my iphone - fresh download of 8.2 - not working still

i) Disabled Continuity from IOS devices and imac. (thanks Noblecat for this one)

j) Waited 24 hours and tried all this again - no change

Also noticed:

- I can log into my icloud ID and use imessage with the caller ID as my email ID but the phone number does not show up - a temporary fix for those of you who cant do without imessage and are ok with using the email ID as your caller ID

- My other apple iphone 5S after s also not working BUT it was never upgraded to ios 8.2 - makes me believe this is an imessage activation server issue and not an IOS 8.2 issue.

- I made a few other friends (whose imessage was working fine) turn off and turn on their imessage - it reactivated fine and is working - makes me believe the server issue is not universal but affecting a few of us

Finally:

There was a system downtime of 12-15 hours where iCloud services went down on the 12th / 13th of March - I suspect the iMessage activation issue is connected to that. Called Apple support - they made me go through the entire troubleshooting and finally said that they are getting a lot of these complaints and it seems to be a server issue from their side. The Apple system status page does not show any issue though https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/ so this is definitely a subset of users problem and not affecting everyone. So they asked me to hang in there and wait until they resolve the issue - have a case ID from them will follow up and post if something new comes up.

Quite infuriating and an unproductive waste of time trying to get this to work.

Did u turn it off for a while?

Firstly I would like to thank you for the detailed description of your situation.

I would also suspect the servers being down, when the iWatch was launched have something to do with our issue.

I have also changed my password at one point suspecting that might be some sort of issue with my Apple account.

Got the call back today from California... they will call me again on Monday. Hopefully the issue will go finally to an engineer!

I hope by now every one that has this issue has reported it to Apple.

I think the issue is more related to iCloud than iMessage... and why do I think Apple should reset something not us? 🙂

Why? Did that worked for you?

Yep, my plan exactly. I'm going to just wait a few days for this issue to sort itself out and then I'll revisit the issue. iMessage works wonderfully on my Macbook Pro for the few contacts that I can't message on my iPhone. Luckily 90% of my contacts don't have an iPhone so I don't need to worry about iMessage working, and half of the iPhone people oddly seem to be able to iMessage me just fine as long as they initiate the first message (or so it seems).

Luxembourg Maverick wrote:

I had updated my iPhone 6 with IOS 8.2 and observed that both iMessage & Facetime stopped working.

When I turn on iMessage & Facetime, it only shows waiting for activation . . .

Apple SHOULD FOCUS on PROPER TESTING of updates BEFORE GOING LIVE as Apple users had to face the problem till Apple provides a fix.

Why should EXISTING USERS PAY THE PRICE or FACE ISSUES just because Apple wants to go for an UNSTABLE UPDATE along with the LAUNCH OF A NEW PRODUCT

This x 1000!!

iMessage is either not coming up or when it does, it turns off at will. Sometimes, when I do a hard reboot (home and power button at the same time), it solves the problem for a few hours. Then Facetime will shut off at will. This is really annoying, and Apple needs to fix this. Too many people are complaining, so it has to be on their end.

Also, I have no idea how to downgrade the OS.

Hello everyone. I spent about 2 hours with Apple yesterday and they had me send diagnostics to them. They told me that my update file had been corrupted. They told me to do a back up, and then restore the iphone - not from the back up, but setting it up as a new iphone. This is a huge pain in the but, I lost my voicemail history as well as my message and text history. Plus I had to manually redownload all of my apps and organize them. However, this did correct the messaging issue. The battery still seems to be draining rather quickly, but at least the messaging issue has been resolved.

Hi Lane,

That sounds odd, cause iMessage & Facetime on the iPhone that I have not updated at all does not work either. So it can't definitely be the the corrupt 8.2 but a new restore solving the problem makes me wonder if it has something to do with the icloud going down on 12/13 march and causing some issue which gets resolved when you set up as a new phone.

Amit

I tried what you did, but did not work for me. I still see "Waiting for activation ..." when I turn on iMessage. Same applies to Facetime as well.

The only thing I did not try is restoring iPhone in DFU mode, which I am a bit reluctant to do. I am now wondering if even a DFU restore will help as it seems to be an issue on Apple's end.

I really hope someone from Apple reads this thread and escalates the issue.

I have the exact same issue. I update my iphone 5 yesterday and it seemed to go through OK . But when I open an existing message from a contact it takes over 20 secs to open, when it does it has no history shown ( only the last message received from each contact) , once the actual contact sends me a new message I can then see the history of previous messages ( only last 2-3 days however and limited to the contact). This is affecting both iMessage and SMS messages. I dont have any trouble sending messages myself. I have tried all the advisce shown in previous threads including reset settings etc, facetime and iMessage (on and off ) reboot numerous times blah blah, But it is still not working. My iMessage and Facetime are shown as activated. I have an Ipad which is on the same account as my Iphone. The Ipad however has NOT been updated to 8.2 and continues to work fine, with a full history of messages.

This is clearly an issue with the 8.2 update and should be addressed by Apple quickly as it’s not just a nuisance - being able to review previous messages is an essential part of owning a mobile phone. . Extremely poor show, and in my view caused by an attempt to gain market share on a new watch release you have successfully managed to screw up a lot of your existing customers. Coupled with the severe lack of feedback from apple in regards to these issues is alarming.

Extremely annoyed!!!

Tried the restore and set up as a new phone on an iPhone which was 8.1.3 and now after upgrade 8.2 - did not sign into Apple ID or Icloud and tried to activate iMessaging - still does not work.

So this is clearly not a issue specific to "an" iPhone - it has something to do with either 8.2 or activation server in general.

Ok so tried something,which I think has worked (fingers crossed) - made my iCloud ID and apple store ID the same (was different earlier - apple ID was a US store and iCloud was India - I am located in India) - changed both to the India ID and tried iMessage again and voila - it worked. Can someone try this and tell me if it works.

I'm not sure what did the trick, but after a weekend with no un-registering, I believe my woes have been solved. On Friday evening 3/13 I performed a backup and restore on my phone. While this seemed to work for a bit, my iMessage account (phone number) did unregister once. But after that time, I was able to successfully register the my number again, and it has stayed registered since.

Since I was having problems with only my phone number on iMessage, and all the tricks would not work, and it kept unregistering across all of my devices, I suspect the issue was on Apple's side. I saw in other posts mention of "activation server" issues on 3/12-3/13, so maybe whatever was going on has been resolved.

Mine were the same ( iCloud ID and apple store ID ) before and after the update. I had the exact same problem as Dundee_DD above. Finally decided to downgrade back to 8.1.3 and restored backup from Nov 2014 which is what iTunes said was my most recent before the 8.2 upgrade which was ********. Everything works perfect with no problems except the lost text chains between Nov and the other day plus lost about 100 levels of Candy Crush! That *****!!!