Activation Required! Could not Activate iPhone? Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable? Can’t contact Apple servers! Try again later… Oops!
I just found out the hard way that even though I am running iOS 6, I am running a beta copy that was updated to the final version, therefore, it expired today… September 30, 2012.
Without warning, my phone displayed the “Could not Active iPhone” Screen, with zero functionality. A little Googling lead me to discover that my firmware had expired, and I would need to update to the release version of iOS 6. The only problem was, when you plug the phone into iTunes, it says it is already running the latest software.
I went over to Apple’s official site and downloaded the IPSW file. OS X Daily has a nice list of links. Scroll down to find iOS 6. If you aren’t sure which model of iPhone you have, cross check the model number on the back against Apple’s official list.
Once this download finished, it was merely a matter of holding SHIFT (Windows) or OPTION (OS X) while clicking the Restore button in iTunes. It will prompt you for this file you downloaded and restore you back to a factory default.
Hope you backed up recently!! Good luck.
I just had exactly the same happen to me, so distraught as i havent backedup for a month and ill be losing so much. Guess this will teach me a valuable lesson; Everything expires too soon.
Lost my contacts, messages and app data. 🙁
Doh! Sorry to hear… you don’t use iCloud backup? I’m lucky in that I did a backup last week.