Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Some iPhone X Buyers Are Having Problems Activating Their Phones (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the great-start dept.

Apple has started to ship the iPhone X across the United States, but some new iPhone X owners say they aren't able to start using their new phones due to carrier activation issues and congestion. From a report: A number of iPhone X owners on Twitter have reported having issues activating their new phones. The issue seems to be affecting some AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint users in the last few hours as they try to get service on Apple's $1,000 phone. When users try to activate the device, a message pops up saying, "The activation server is temporarily unavailable."

3 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Terrible by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Some morons aren't able to activate their $1000 phones. Oh the humanity!

    1. Re:Terrible by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      It sounds like a problem with the carrier servers not the phone.
      But what the heck I’ll say Apple is Bad and people who buy the product are idiots, to help reinforce your confirmation bias to make you feel good.
      Because a person choice in a phone that they will have on their person for the next few years, has to be based purely on price, removal battery and a headphone jack.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Terrible by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      It sounds like a problem with the carrier servers not the phone.
      But what the heck Iâ(TM)ll say Apple is Bad and people who buy the product are idiots, to help reinforce your confirmation bias to make you feel good.
      Because a person choice in a phone that they will have on their person for the next few years, has to be based purely on price, removal battery and a headphone jack.

      It's both, actually. Apple's servers have been known to overload on release days.

      The reason for activation is simple - every iPhone manufactured is identical in programming. The modems are unlocked and are free to accept any programming blob you give them. When Apple sells an iPhone, the serial numbers are recorded on Apple's internal database - who Apple sold the iPhone to and on what terms. The "who" can be an individual if you bought it from Apple direct, or it can be a carrier if you bought it through them, or subsidized through them. The terms are easy - either the phone was sold fully unlocked, or locked to a carrier (or realistically, lock-to-sim, which means the baseband will lock to whatever SIM is installed).

      If the phone was sold as a contract phone, then it's lock-to-sim or lock-to-carrier, which means the baseband will SIM-lock to whatever SIM is in there (regardless if it's the right carrier), or lock itself to a particular carrier. If it's unlocked, it will stay unlocked.

      This is done so Apple doesn't program the modem firmware at the factory - they make millions of them, and it lets them dynamically allocate it - if a carrier doesn't want them, it's trivial to reallocate a batch of iPhones to a new carrier by updating the serial number database.

      And if, like the thieves who stole a bunch of iPhones from UPS, the phones are marked as stolen, well, Apple can refuse to activate them at all, so the thieves have units they can sell to iFixit because it's only good for parts.

      The secondary purpose of activation is to finish the OS signing process to ensure you can't roll the OS back.

      As for removable battery and headphone jack, the last time I had a phone with removable battery, I hate it. Sure it needed it because every time you used the camera, you had to reboot the phone or the battery would be dead in 3 hours. So it was handy then, but then I had to carry 2 or 3 batteries all the time, because I'd forget to charge them up aferwards. You know, you have to charge them up, then unplug them, remove the battery, swap them, charge it up again, etc. Annoying to do especially in the middle of the night. How you can maintain a fleet of 2 of more batteries ready to go escapes me if you have to keep swapping the phone battery every few hours. (Perhaps that's why people charge in the office? They charge one battery overnight, then swap them at the office and charge their spare?)

      And I looked at the headphone jack on my iPhone 4s (the phone I'm replacing), it's full of pocket lint and fluff. Tells you how often I actually used it.