Here's a good one.
My situation is that I got the IRU error when trying to buy at an Apple Store on Friday morning. So, after many calls to AT&T to try to get my account fixed and many failed attempts to upgrade, I finally punted and just signed up a brand new AT&T account and brand new numbers (two numbers because I bought two phones - one for me, one for my wife) with the intention to work it all out later. I did activate the phones when I got home because I wanted to play with them, even though they were under new phone numbers which I would ultimately not want to keep. Well, I've since got the extraneous account cancelled with no fees (or so they say - we shall see), and today I obtained two new SIMs at an AT&T store. These were supposed to get me up and running with my iPhones on my original account with my original phone numbers. Great.
But no. Naturally when I put the new SIMs in I got "No Service" message at the top of the phone. No problem I thought - they just need to be activated. Well, I just tried to plug one of the phones in and reactivate but could not do so. iTunes simply saw the phone just as before - in the same state it was in as when it had been activated with the old number. In other words, it was already registered and activated. At first, I thought I just needed to reinstall the OS and start from scratch. I tried that. But no go. It did wipe the phone, but upon trying to reactivate it just immediately jumped back to the iPhone sync screen, came up looking like an activated phone, and actually did not appear to attempt to communicate with Apple at all. But still "No Service". Damn.
I saw the link to the page at TUAW in this thread and thought, hmm, its worth a try I suppose. So I pulled the SIM out of my old phone (and BTW, this is an ancient SIM, it says "Cingular" on it) and put it in the iPhone. And... BAM - Service! No need to do the double-activation as suggested by TUAW, and in fact, no need to activate at all! The ph**cker just up and worked. Immediately. How bout that? I made a test call with the wife's old phone and it connected just fine. And what's more amazing - the thing is getting a 3G signal. A 3G signal with a two-and-half year old Cingular SIM. How is that even possible?
So I've got a pile of four 3G SIMs that I dont' need. And a brand new iPhone with an ancient SIM in it. But now, now I am even more curious... Maybe, just maybe, this phone is somehow unlocked? I mean the thing just took a SIM and worked. Now I really wish I had a Verizon SIM to throw in the thing and test with.
