Softbank 3Gs activation failed in Philippines

I dont know what you mean by iPhone checker, as there is no Apple website where you can check which carrier a phone is locked to (and any other such web site cannot be trusted as they cannot possible have the actual data to tell you - they are like the IMEI sites, they are unreliable as they simply don't have access to the real or official data needed to make the check).

It sounds to me like your 3Gs was hacked to make it function as unlocked. When you upgraded iOS it also reverted back to its original carrier locked status. If you call Apple support they can tell you which carrier it was sold locked to. You can then contact that carrier and see if they can and will unlock it for you. Only the carrier it is locked to can process an unlock request Which will remain permanently in place.

Your phone was hacked originally to unlock it and it has now relocked. SoftBank does not offer unlocking, so it looks like you are stuck.

Those websites that like iphone checker are bogus or scams.

No.

You would have to do a Google search for that. We cannot help you with that here on this forum.

roimarco wrote:

so now i'm dead? ugh, what if i paid for an unlock for this?

To be accurate, you cannot pay a third party for an "unlock". You can pay for someone to hack it, but when or if you ever restore it again, it will go right back to being locked. The ONLY way to permanently unlock an iPhone is to have the carrier it is locked to process an unlock, which you then apply to the device via iTunes. ANY other method is a hack of some sort or another.

P.S. if you restored it and then updated as you originally said, then inserted the SoftBank SIM and got the error message that this was an unrecognized SIM, then that phone is NOT locked to SoftBank, no matter what you were told. That process, and the subsequent error is telling you it was originally locked to some other carrier, not SoftBank.