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Erased Content on iPhone...now I have to activate?

uiop.

uiop.

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jul 22, 2008
2,104
241
Michigan, USA
I got an iPhone 3G recently which left my old iPhone just sitting on the desk. So today I figured that I didn't need all the texts, contacts, media, etc on it in case I wanted to give it to someone else. I went to the "Reset" section of the settings menu and erased all content and settings- not a smart move. When it was done, it wanted me to activate the phone. :mad: So am I now left with a brick until I give it to someone else?

Thanks in advance.
 
uiop. said:
I got an iPhone 3G recently which left my old iPhone just sitting on the desk. So today I figured that I didn't need all the texts, contacts, media, etc on it in case I wanted to give it to someone else. I went to the "Reset" section of the settings menu and erased all content and settings- not a smart move. When it was done, it wanted me to activate the phone. :mad: So am I now left with a brick until I give it to someone else?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

I'm willing to bet that if you went ahead and reactivated it (your old phone) with your current number both would still work. As with any GSM carrier, the SIM is what carries the service, not the phone. There's no limit to the number of iPhones you can have activated, right?

An example of what i mean is this: take a friend's at&t sim and put it in your iphone. text and voice will work under his sim... data might work too if he has a data plan. the same principle applies to your old phone. furthermore, i got my iphone on launch day and wasn't required to activate it. it literally started working as soon as my SIM from my blackberry was put in. (later in the day i activated it, but it worked regardless)

the only thing you have to be careful with is syncing. itunes might get a f'd up if you tried to sync contacts across two iphones on one line.
 
protekt0r said:
I'm willing to bet that if you went ahead and reactivated it (your old phone) with your current number both would still work. As with any GSM carrier, the SIM is what carries the service, not the phone. There's no limit to the number of iPhones you can have activated, right?

An example of what i mean is this: take a friend's at&t sim and put it in your iphone. text and voice will work under his sim... data might work too if he has a data plan. the same principle applies to your old phone. furthermore, i got my iphone on launch day and wasn't required to activate it. it literally started working as soon as my SIM from my blackberry was put in. (later in the day i activated it, but it worked regardless)

the only thing you have to be careful with is syncing. itunes might get a f'd up if you tried to sync contacts across two iphones on one line.
Click to expand...

One problem with your idea is that I'm pretty sure the SIM card in the original iPhone became useless once your ported your number over to the 3G. So you'd have to get a new SIM card (which AT&T will typically give out with no problems).

I honestly have no idea about the rest so won't speculate. :p
 
DeaconGraves said:
One problem with your idea is that I'm pretty sure the SIM card in the original iPhone became useless once your ported your number over to the 3G. So you'd have to get a new SIM card (which AT&T will typically give out with no problems).

I honestly have no idea about the rest so won't speculate. :p
Click to expand...

Of course his old sim won't work. I'm saying take his currently active sim out and put it in the old iphone, activate it in iTunes (if you have to) and it won't be bricked. make sense?

(note: i don't know if it'll work or not, but it's worth a try and won't do any harm)
 
protekt0r said:
Of course his old sim won't work. I'm saying take his currently active sim out and put it in the old iphone, activate it in iTunes (if you have to) and it won't be bricked. make sense?

(note: i don't know if it'll work or not, but it's worth a try and won't do any harm)
Click to expand...


Ahh.. my apologies. It's late in the day and I'm not thinking straight. :)

I know the 3G SIM worked in already activated iPhones, so this possibly could work as well.
 
Thanks for the help thus far. ;)

I was thinking about doing that (activating it with my iPhone 3G SIM), so I'll give it a try.
 
after recieving my 3G, I did the same to both my busted up 4GB and old 8GB phone...

Used my 3G sim and all phones are working...
 
You should have updated to 2.0 first since that allows you to use your phone as an iPod touch.
 
Update: It's all good now. ;)
I reactivated with my iPhone 3G SIM. Once I did that, I just took it out and put it back into the iPhone 3G. So my iPhone 2G is now a data-free iPod Touch.

ivtecDOu said:
i thought you were going to sell it and wanted the information deleted from it???
Click to expand...

Nah. I am thinking about giving it to someone, but in the meantime I just wanna mess around with it.

alphaod said:
You should have updated to 2.0 first since that allows you to use your phone as an iPod touch.
Click to expand...

It was, thanks. That's why I wanted it to be un-bricked.
 
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