Early iPhone 3G S adopters are reporting difficulty activating their iPhones, reports AppleInsider and MacRumors. In what is practically a carbon copy of last year’s iPhone 3G launch issues, it appears that Apple’s iPhone service activation servers were unprepared to deal with the influx of new registrations from today’s iPhone 3G S launch, leaving the zero-day adopters with a potential two day wait.
Would-be iPhone users are instead being confronted with the message, “Your activation requires additional time to complete. Due to the current activation volumes, it may take up to 48 hours to resolve your issue. We will send a confirmation to (email address) once your activation is complete.” Of course, the iPhone’s functions that don’t require 3G network access still work, so new users can begin to sync up their contacts, music, photos, and so on – they just might have to stick to a landline or a pay phone until their activation goes through. In this respect, they’re doing better than their counterparts from last year’s iPhone 3G release, where users reported that incomplete activations left them able to make calls but nothing else.
Photo: Heather Kelly, MacworldThankfully, it seems that those who were lucky enough to purchase them in the early morning hours – or dedicated enough to wait in line overnight, like one Macworld intern – have been able to activate their new iPhones without incident. Other users are experiencing initial activation hiccups that can be solved by restarting the phone or taking the SIM card out and putting it back in. (No word yet on whether blowing on the iPhone like an Nintendo game cartridge helps anything.) Everyone else may have to wait for the servers to process the backlog. Ironically, some AT&T customer service representatives have been able to help out with activations, but that doesn’t help those who were relying on their new iPhones for telephone service.
