iphone 3gs waiting for activation

[zaidar61s]

hello people, got and iphone 3gs 32gb for my birthday all brand new and since, i have had nothing but problems, i ahve enjoyed only a few moments out of the 32gb whereas my 16gb works fine, i was thinking of keeping this gift and giving the 16gb to my brother.

the iphone 3gs worked perfectly for about a week until i installed a game from appstore where after few minutes of playing the phone got really hot and froze, i restarted the iphone, i then got that message picture thing where it says to connect to itunes.

after plugging into itunes i got a message saying iphone is in recovery mode and that i have to restore it, after restoring and setting it up as a new iphone i put the sim inside and it recieved reception every now and then but mostly saidno service, when i got reception i can make calls very rarely and recieve calls rarely, but when it said no service it was impossible to make/recieve calls. i would even get the 02 logo at the top with reception but it would change to no service.

i did a hard reset thinking it might solve the problem but infact it has gone worse, now it wont activate ive been waiting for around 4 hours now and it just says "waiting for activation this may take some time". and i have no reception at the top just 5 dots and the 02 logo. i have not checked if it gets hot within the fewminutes playing a game, but at the moment that is the least of my concern.


what do you guys think, i really do not know much, but have tried everything i could find on the internet. my last option is to call apple and arrange a collection for it to be repaired.

what do you think the problem is?
your help would be extremely appreciated

 

[pcs are junk]

well see originally, the iphone was only allowed on at&t, they started selling them in other countries because it wouldnt be fair if only america got them. some other countries require every phone sold to be unlocked, so apple did that. so the iphone wasnt targeted to be on o2 as much as it was at&t. so that could be part of the problem. i suggest taking it to apple or o2. i would take it to apple since they made the device. and o2 would be like, oh let me take a screw driver and poke around in there, lol jk idk what o2 would do but id go with apple.

 

[zaidar61s]

well see originally, the iphone was only allowed on at&t, they started selling them in other countries because it wouldnt be fair if only america got them. some other countries require every phone sold to be unlocked, so apple did that. so the iphone wasnt targeted to be on o2 as much as it was at&t. so that could be part of the problem. i suggest taking it to apple or o2. i would take it to apple since they made the device. and o2 would be like, oh let me take a screw driver and poke around in there, lol jk idk what o2 would do but id go with apple.

thanks for your response, ive called apple and booked a collection for repairs as it will be impossible for me to go to the apple store due to work.

hope it gets sorted

thanks

 

[Penguissimo]

well see originally, the iphone was only allowed on at&t, they started selling them in other countries because it wouldnt be fair if only america got them. some other countries require every phone sold to be unlocked, so apple did that. so the iphone wasnt targeted to be on o2 as much as it was at&t. so that could be part of the problem.

This is really, really wrong. Do you really think Apple had never intended to expand into overseas markets, but when they changed their minds, they then did lousy job of adapting the iPhone? Come on. That's the kind of thing a junky PC would do

The iPhone was released in the UK and Germany only about three months after it was released in the US. France followed soon after. That's awfully fast to go from "We don't care about overseas markets" (which is a REALLY un-Apple like business model to begin with) to "full rolling launch in several other countries".

If they had never intended the iPhone to be sold overseas, it's unlikely that they would have A) included support for so many languages (and date/time/address/phone number formats) or B) included compatibility with a wide variety of GSM bands (yes, Europe uses GSM, but most of their carriers operate at a different frequency than AT&T).

In fact, if they had been planning the iPhone to be a US-only release, it's a toss-up as to whether they would have even chosen GSM over CDMA, although Verizon's desire to control the software on their phones could have turned Apple off back at the beginning.

Conclusion: the problem isn't that Apple just did a lousy, last-minute, rushed job of clunkily adapting the iPhone to overseas networks. PLEASE stop spreading this kind of inaccurate garbage.

It is likely, however...

i suggest taking it to apple or o2. i would take it to apple since they made the device. and o2 would be like, oh let me take a screw driver and poke around in there, lol jk idk what o2 would do but id go with apple.

...that you ARE right that it's a hardware issue. Most electronics, if they're going to fail, are going to fail pretty early on, which it sounds like this device did. And Apple IS much more likely to have a solution than O2.

OP, as likely as not, they'll just replace your phone with a refurb model.

 

[pcs are junk]

apple focused the iphone on at&t, not to be on o2. i can buy an factory unlocked iphone from ebay and use it on tmobile, and do i get 3g? no, because its a different frequency. same thing with o2, different carriers can have different problems. theres less problems with at&t and the iphone because it was designed specifically to be on at&t. unlocked iphones can be used on any gsm carrier. do u see where i'm going here? it wasnt specifically designed to be on o2, so therefore there could be some problems. and stop saying my information is garbage because yours is complete junk.

 

[Penguissimo]

apple focused the iphone on at&t, not to be on o2. i can buy an factory unlocked iphone from ebay and use it on tmobile, and do i get 3g? no, because its a different frequency. same thing with o2, different carriers can have different problems. theres less problems with at&t and the iphone because it was designed specifically to be on at&t. unlocked iphones can be used on any gsm carrier. do u see where i'm going here? it wasnt specifically designed to be on o2, so therefore there could be some problems. and stop saying my information is garbage because yours is complete junk.

OK, sure, if you say so.

 

[Insilin1i]

I used my canadian iphone in portugal and just bought a prepaid card with 3g and everything worked like normal... you should really stop giving false information. If what you say was true we would see a lot more people complaining and a very weak market for jailbroken phones.

Sending it back in is the best choice.

 

[pcs are junk]

I used my canadian iphone in portugal and just bought a prepaid card with 3g and everything worked like normal... you should really stop giving false information. If what you say was true we would see a lot more people complaining and a very weak market for jailbroken phones.

Sending it back in is the best choice.

what are you talking about? you're a newbie.

 

[Penguissimo]

what are you talking about?

He's saying that he has personal experience with using the iPhone on several different carriers. And reinforcing the point that the iPhone would probably not be selling well in any country but the US if it had systemic problems with every non-AT&T carrier. His post was, like, three sentences long. Not that hard to decipher.

you're a newbie.

Yeah. The guy who's used the iPhone in several countries is a newbie. Sure, he made a minor mistake in confusing jailbreaking with unlocking, but that's really much less of a problem than asserting that, because the iPhone can't get 3G service with T-Mobile in the US, it must have intrinsic problems with every overseas carrier with whom Apple has a business relationship. Do you really think it's just an accident that the iPhone works in European countries, and that European iPhone users have the same kinds of problems on their official carriers that US residents have when using unlocked (and often hacktivated) iPhones on T-Mobile?

 

[pcs are junk]

you just agreed with me right there. european countries and us residents that use iphones on networks other than at&t have problems. you just said exactly what i said. the iphone was mainly focused to be on at&t. and do you know how iphones get factory unlocked? from what ive read, you get an iphone, you go to o2, orange, etc. you tell them you have an iphone. they send ur number into apple requesting an unlock. then next time u sync ur phone with itunes it says theres a carrier update. and then it says ur phone is unlocked.

 

[thelatinist]

pcs_are_junk: you are very wrong. The iPhone is a GSM phone compatible with GSM networks worldwide as long as they use standard frequencies. It was originally released in six countries (US, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, and Austria). The phone was designed for world-wide compatibility, just like all other GSM handsets.

 

[Penguissimo]

you just agreed with me right there. european countries and us residents that use iphones on networks other than at&t have problems. you just said exactly what i said. the iphone was mainly focused to be on at&t.

How you managed to turn my question into a statement agreeing with you is completely beyond me.

But it appears that you truly DO believe that Apple designed the iPhone with no intention of ever selling it overseas, only to later change their mind but find that there were unavoidable technological hurdles that make the phone "have problems" on every network on the planet except AT&T. If that were true, then they would have never put a GSM radio that is compatible with European networks into the American iPhone.

and do you know how iphones get factory unlocked? from what ive read, you get an iphone, you go to o2, orange, etc. you tell them you have an iphone. they send ur number into apple requesting an unlock. then next time u sync ur phone with itunes it says theres a carrier update. and then it says ur phone is unlocked.

This is the root of your confusion. Either what you've read about how the iPhone works overseas is wrong, or you've misinterpreted it. While the iPhone is available unlocked in some countries, (at a much higher price), and it is much easier to get the carrier to unlock the phone at the end of your contract than it is here, iPhones in many countries (including the UK, where the OP is from) are still sold locked to a specific carrier, just like in the US. The only difference is that the carrier for each country is different (O2 in the UK, T-Mobile in Germany, etc). They don't just ship pallets of factory-unlocked iPhones to Europe and then let everyone figure things out for themselves.

And the European networks all use the same technology, so people using unlocked iPhones with different carriers than the "official" ones don't have the same problems that American iPhone users have with T-Mobile.

The problems that US iPhone users have with T-Mobile are a function of the technology behind the T-Mobile network:

Can I use T-Mobile 3G devices on another carrier’s 3G networks?

You will not be able to roam with your T-Mobile 3G device on another carrier's 3G network. T-Mobile devices use the 1700Mhz/2100Mhz frequency band (for 3G) and it is specific to T-Mobile. You can however roam on another carrier's 1900Mhz frequency band using GSM. Likewise, another carrier’s 3G devices will not be able to roam on our 3G network.

T-Mobile's 3G network uses two different frequencies: one for uploading and one for downloading. The iPhone does not support the 1700 MHz band. That's why you can't get 3G on an iPhone with T-Mobile in the US.

Meanwhile, take a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Deployed_UMTS_networks#Europe

See how every carrier in the EU uses the 2100 MHz band? That's why the iPhone works equally well on any of them. And for the few that use 900/2100, well, hey, the iPhone supports the 900 MHz band too!


To recap:

Each European country has an "official" iPhone carrier, just like AT&T in the US. It differs from country to country. To claim that the iPhone works poorly (by design) on any of these official carriers is absurd.

The iPhone is not generally unlocked by default in Europe. It is widely available unlocked, and it is often easier to get your carrier to unlock it for you, but a good chunk of UK iPhones are locked to a specific carrier just like in the US. This situation differs from country to country and is in a constant state of change (Vodafone wants to start selling the iPhone in the UK).

Even so, the iPhone does not have systemic problems with "unofficial" carriers in Europe the way it does with T-Mobile in the US.

This is because, unlike the European carriers, who all run on the same frequency bands, AT&T and T-Mobile use different frequency bands. And the iPhone does not support T-Mobile's 3G network standard in the US.

Also, it is fair to speculate that the fact that most US residents with unlocked iPhones had to use third-party hacks to achieve their unlock could be contributing to any problems. This is less of an issue in Europe, where it is easier to get a carrier to officially unlock your phone.


Are we finally done now?


Edit: This carrier frequency issue is also why the iPad won't work at all with T-Mobile (or WIND in Canada), since it has the same 3G hardware as the iPhone, but no hardware to support the older EDGE communications standard.