I am attempting to activate an old iPhone 3 as an iPod touch with a deactivated Verizon SIM card. iTunes says that there is no SIM card in the phone. Any advice? Does the SIM need to be active?
Verizon SIMs are 4G LTE only. Verizon didn't start carrying the iPhone until a specially made CDMA iPhone 4 and Verizon iPhones didn't require Verizon SIMs until the iPhone 5. You need a SIM from the carrier to which the phone is locked (or, if the phone is unlocked, from a GSM carrier such as TMobile or AT&T) which could not have been Verizon. But no, it doesn't have to be active.
Verizon SIMs are 4G LTE only. Verizon didn't start carrying the iPhone until a specially made CDMA iPhone 4 and Verizon iPhones didn't require Verizon SIMs until the iPhone 5. You need a SIM from the carrier to which the phone is locked (or, if the phone is unlocked, from a GSM carrier such as TMobile or AT&T) which could not have been Verizon. But no, it doesn't have to be active.
Thanks Meg. I managed to borrow an AT&T sim card and tried to use it to do this. I got the same errors. iTunes says "There is no SIM card installed in the IPhone you are attempting to activate."
The IPhone says "Your IPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. Try connecting your iPhone to iTunes to activate it, or try again in a couple of minutes."
I looked around on another thread and it said to rename the iPhone to "iPod"- I did that on another old one and it worked great. But it was a 4 and had 16 GB storage, this one is a 3 and has 32GB. Then another thread said I needed to restore the iPhone to original settings and it would then be able to set it up new from scratch-which I did and still no luck.
Yet another thread said that my iTunes or Mac would have to be fully updated, and I haven't updated to Mavericks yet, I am running Lion, and iTunes is fully up to date.
Any ideas?
Sorry, no. I've never tried to do what you're doing.
The message that the activation server is temporarily unavailable can mean that your antivirus is blocking access to gs.apple.com, or your phone was jailbroken, or the computer you are using to activate it was used at some time in the past to hack or jailbreak some iOS device and its network database is corrupted.
I'm pretty sure the phone hasn't' been, I know my computer hasn't been, and I don't have an outside party AV- thanks for the help, I'll keep trying. Thanks!
I am attempting to activate an old iPhone 3 as an iPod touch with a deactivated Verizon SIM card.
