Will Restore go all the way back to "As bought"?

[dawgfan]

I installed iOS 5 and now my iPhone 4 will not use the appleid I set up years ago. This original appleid account has a credit card associated and has always been the default account for iTunes on my MacBook.

The iPhone 4 did not allow me to use this id because it was not an email address. Since I had another appleid used only for "Find my iPhone" via MobileMe (which was free), I used it to complete the setup of iOS 5.

Now the phone wants another credit card to be associated with the second appleid account. There must be some way to consolidate, edit or otherwise work around this issue.

I compared my experience with a friend who successfully updated his iPhone 4, iPad 2 and iPad, but 'bricked' his other iPhone 4 during the update to iOS 5. His definition of bricked was the phone required reactivation with his carrier and complete initial setup - just like mine.

Would I be best suited to restore the phone back to it's original state? If so, does the Restore button on iTunes really take it back to original, as-shipped state?

 

[zorinlynx]

Go into settings -> reset and erase all content and settings. This will reset the phone to a factory state, provided you haven't jailbroken it.

Unless the phone is jailbroken there's no reason to restore; erase all content and settings is enough. It turns it into a new phone.

 

[dawgfan]

The reason to restore, based on the issues above, would be to try installing iOs 5 again and have it work like most everyone else's did.

 

[tardman91]

I had to restore mine because my first iOS 5 installation attempt bricked my phone, and it restored it with iOS 5. I think it restores it with the newest software available.

 

[dawgfan]

I had to restore mine because my first iOS 5 installation attempt bricked my phone, and it restored it with iOS 5. I think it restores it with the newest software available.

...and you restored it from within iTunes, right?

Did your second attempt work? As it was explained to me, the iOS 5 update should have been virtually invisible to the user as it should not have effected activation or appleid associations.

 

[tardman91]

...and you restored it from within iTunes, right?

Did your second attempt work? As it was explained to me, the iOS 5 update should have been virtually invisible to the user as it should not have effected activation or appleid associations.

Yeah I restored it in iTunes. The second time around worked fine. I didn't have any trouble with activation or apple ID stuff. It just bricked the phone first time around because Apple's servers were so overloaded I think it lost contact or something.

 

[dawgfan]

Thanks. Just wanted a little clarification/reassurance before I tried.

 

[dawgfan]

Well I restored the phone and gained nothing.

I still have 2 apple id's and no way to consolidate them that I am aware of. I don't want to delete my original id as it is used by 2 other family members. It seems iOS 5 requires an email type apple id for icloud and find my iphone. If I do not use either of those, perhaps I could delete the 2nd apple id , which was created for find my iphone. I'd be missing out on icloud, but then I'd be back to one id as well.

Whaddaya think?

 

[dccorona]

Well I restored the phone and gained nothing.

I still have 2 apple id's and no way to consolidate them that I am aware of. I don't want to delete my original id as it is used by 2 other family members. It seems iOS 5 requires an email type apple id for icloud and find my iphone. If I do not use either of those, perhaps I could delete the 2nd apple id , which was created for find my iphone. I'd be missing out on icloud, but then I'd be back to one id as well.

Whaddaya think?

There is unfortunately no way to consolidate 2 apple ids

However, you can go to apple.com and login to your apple id (for example from within the store section from the website, probably other ways to get to it as well). From there you can edit your apple id (first by clicking edit email and payment information, and from that page clicking "edit at my apple id"). There will actually be a portion of that page suggesting you change your apple id to an email address. You can either tell it to do so for you, or manually change it to any email address you want that is not being used with another apple id already.

After you do this the original apple id you talked about will work for both the store and iCloud...however, you mentioned that 2 others in your family also use that id for purchases, so my recommendation would be to use that only for the store on your iPhone, and make a new account for iCloud. That way, everyone who uses that id for purchases can continue to do so, but you won't get all of your contacts, caledars, photo streams, etc mixed up.