Can't restore, don't know carrier

[ggsmith]

Hi all, sorry to be one of those many people who joins just to get answers to a problem, then sods off never to be seen again, but I'm having problems with my iPhone 5.

I bought it second hand, without any information about which carrier it was on, and didn't realize this was going to be an issue until i tried to restore it. With my 3gs their was either nothing forcing you to have a sim in, or there was some workaround.

Anyway, I used this program called copytrans or something that told me I was on o2. After having an o2 simcard sent to the house, one of three things has happened, either A, I have terrible o2 service in my house (unlikely, i live in a city) B, the simcard is weird, and I have to use it in an already active phone, before putting it in my iPhone (sounds dumb but might be the case) or C, my iPhone is not on o2, which i think is the most likely. The program did come up with an error when it tried to get info about my phone, so it just defaulted to o2. It also said my phone is from ireland, and I live in England, so that might also be a problem.

So yeah, if anyone can shine any kind of light on this matter, i would be extremely greatfull, as at the moment all I have is a very aesthetically pleasing paperwieght

 

[Jstuts5797]

What EXACTLY happens when you power the phone on with the SIM card you received in it?

 

[rigormortis]

yes, please tell us more information

was this sim card a prepaid sim ? or a post paid sim?

the only incidental story i have about sim cards that might prevent you from activating iTunes is prepaid "DDA" sims. if you got a prepaid o2 sim, it might stop you from activating the iPhone.

I'm probably dead wrong about DDA sims and iPhone activation but its the only thing i can think of why the sim card wouldn't let you activate the iPhone with iTunes

i think i am 99 % dead wrong about DDA sims and iTunes activation, but i am throwing it against the wall to see if it sticks. i don't want to waste $15 on a AT&T go phone sim just to see what would happen if i tried to connect to iTunes with it for the first time


DDA sims are sold deactivated. they won't even talk talk to the towers or even give you signal strength unless you dial codes on the iPhone like
9501311,,1451333193324279*#123123#

im not even sure if they are called "dda sims" heh


a regular sim card ( a post paid sim ) that has never had service attached to it, will at least show signal bars in the upper left hand corner





any sim should of worked to activate the iPhone with iTunes as long as the iPhone was not locked

if the phone has not been activated with iTunes, you shouldn't be be using copy transfer manager to write anything to that iPhone until iTunes has activated ( de bricked ) the iPhone

reading you post i am assuming that the iPhone is on brick mode and needs a sim and iTunes and an internet connection to activate it

ibackbot , may give you the serial # or imei #, perhaps you can use them to check to see what carrier it is.

i was able to use i backup bot to probe the battery health on an iPhone that wasn't even activated with a sim

i don't see anything sim card related with that utility

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another thing i am throwing out and seeing if it sticks is gs.apple.com

you should check your hosts or router settings to make sure its not rerouting gs.apple.com to another address, that would stop iTunes from activating the iPhone with a sim installed

 

[rigormortis]

googling says that once you have determined what the imei and meid (if any) numbers are you can ask your neighborhood apple store to check their database and tell you for sure what carrier it is for

 

[ggsmith]

was this sim card a prepaid sim ? or a post paid sim?

Post paid, it was a payg simcard.

DDA sims are sold deactivated. they won't even talk talk to the towers or even give you signal strength unless you dial codes on the iPhone like
9501311,,1451333193324279*#123123#

im not even sure if they are called "dda sims" heh

a regular sim card ( a post paid sim ) that has never had service attached to it, will at least show signal bars in the upper left hand corner

that's what i thought was really odd about the whoel thing, I also had a giffgaff sim sent to the house, i wsn't sure what network it was on, so i figured it was worth a shot, and even though i got to the final stage of the authentication process, and it came up with the same "simcard not supported by carrier" or whatever notification, i was still getting giffgaff signal. I'd be really interested to see if it is just some weird o2 sim that needs me to call up to activate it, that's what i thought, but i couldn't find any numbers anywhere on the packaging of the sim that would indicate that was the case.

reading you post i am assuming that the iPhone is on brick mode and needs a sim and iTunes and an internet connection to activate it

not bricked per say, I already restored it so it's running the latest version of ios, i just need to go through all the faff of activating it, it's not stuck in DFU mode or anything.

ibackbot , may give you the serial # or imei #, perhaps you can use them to check to see what carrier it is.

I'll check that out in a few minutes and report back, see if that was any help, thanks!

another thing i am throwing out and seeing if it sticks is gs.apple.com

you should check your hosts or router settings to make sure its not rerouting gs.apple.com to another address, that would stop iTunes from activating the iPhone with a sim installed

I don't know why this would be the case, i haven't done anything with my router that would have made it do that, i've pretty much left it as is, although I will try connecting to the other signal from my router (there's one I use due to a computer a while back being pinickityabout connecting)

googling says that once you have determined what the imei and meid (if any) numbers are you can ask your neighborhood apple store to check their database and tell you for sure what carrier it is for

I'll probably end up doing that if I can't find the inormation online, I vaguely remember getting my IMEI, but some database said that it didn't exist, or something along those lines, I have a feeling that an apple shop will be able to help me better

 

[rigormortis]

yeah once you loaded iOS on it. then it should of taken any sim that it was designed for and activated

regardless if the sim card has a service plan or not

yeah its a puzzler. it should just work. best to give up and try the apple store