I'm in Bangkok with a US 3G, jailbroken and unlocked, and was using it here with True. It crashed and was unable to boot, hanging indefinitely, showing the Apple logo. I moved the True SIM to an old phone, to at least have voice service.
Stupidly, I had failed to copy a backup from my desktop PC at home. As the data on the phone was unimportant, I just downloaded stock 3.1.2 firmware and attempted a clean restore. Next stupid mistake, used iTunes 9. Strangely, the restore seemed ok and the phone now boots. but asked for a SIM to "activate". I inserted the at&t SIM, but the phone shows emergency calls only. (I am guessing that it's failing to activate because it needs to register with at&t server. Before leaving, I had downgraded to GoPhone to park the US number and am not set up for international roaming. However, don't know whether having roaming would help in this case.)
What is the best way to recover? I have Windows and Linux available, and could probably use a friend's Mac if needed. Thanks in advance for helping me avoid another stupid mistake.
Are you familiar with Windows or Linux terminal commands?
If so, run a traceroute to "albert.apple.com." If you return an IP address range other than 17.149.240.65/28 or so, then consider using a VPN or proxy based in the US to get your AT&T SIM to activate.
(Then again, I only see one A record for the FQDN of albert.apple.com.akadns.net, and I know there are at least two IPs for it, so YMMV).
Your AT&T SIM ICCID (the number printed on the face of the SIM) starts 8901 410... right?
Thanks for the idea, but I need a little more guidance. From the emergency call screen, I can't get to the home screen or to Setup, so I can't set a VPN on the phone. If I could get the phone to somehow connect via Wi-Fi, I could share (via ICS), a VPN onnection on the laptop to its Wi-Fi interface. However, I don't know how to make the phone connect to an AP, either, and I seriously doubt, especially in emergency mode, that it would default to connecting to any open Wi-Fi
I was referring to putting the PC you're using iTunes on to activate the iPhone onto that VPN or proxy--not the phone. Sorry for the ambiguity (If you could get an unactivated phone onto a VPN I'd be very impressed)!
You could always restore to a pre-activated custom firmware, and then use redsn0w to deactivate + SAM to fake a legitimate activation--except you'd need Apple to recognize your spoofed AT&T SIM. Since it isn't recognizing the legitimate one in your phone, that may be a dead end.
If the proxy thing isn't cutting it, I got nothing. Most unusual problem. Sorry!
Many thanks, you are awesome! I brought up the VPN and connected the iPhone. I got an error message about "iPhone cannot be used because the Apple Mobile Device service is not started." Well, the Services applet said it was started, but I told it to restart and then restarted iTunes. This time, it offered to restore the phone from an old (pre-jailbreak) backup. After doing that, the phone still gave "waiting for activation" but the springboard was now accessible. Ran blackra1n with no trouble and executed it (with Wi-Fi of course, as phone was still locked). After a reboot, the device registered to True and the message "iPhone activated" magically appeared.
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Restore 3G overseas?
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