Six million iBricks… and growing
- July 11th, 2008
- 33 Comments
Well this is a fine kettle of fish. iPhone activations have essentially gone down and everyone - from folks updating their old phones to new 3G activators - are stuck with bricks until traffic dies off. Reader Brent reports:
Hey Just a heads up…my iPhone, and looking at their forums, everyone else’s iPhones are bricks because the last step of their update process is to connect to the App store which can’t handle the traffic of people updating…looks like everyone is just in a holding pattern with bricked phones until the traffic goes down…wonder how many users are effected…their are a lot of pissed people, including me and apple says, do not disconnect or try to reboot the phone and keep trying until it works…this means everyone with an iPhone is either out of a phone today or has to sit home and keep trying to connect…fun stuff
What is happening is that users are trying to upgrade to the 2.0 firmware and then when the system tries to activate their phones they go into a reboot or restore more, thereby disabling the phone and forcing another update and, with the current traffic, causing the system to fail again.
Our own Peter’s Ha’s 2G is bricked right now as well. Do not update.
Update: A possible fix.
Scott writes:
Hey, I’m sure you know that a lot of people are having problems with the 2.0 update. I have a solution for what seems to be the most common…the “accessing iTunes” problem.
DO NOT disconnect your phone. Instead, when you get the message saying it timed out, click ok. Then click on any other heading, Music for example, in your itunes. Then go back and click on your iPhone icon.
Keep doing this repeatedly to keep your place in line.
Update 2: A temporary fix.
Ankit writes:
If someone sends you a text message, you can get past the emergency call
screen. It will let you make/receive calls, view the app store, etc. however
you still can’t sync. It’s not an entire fix, but better than nothing.
Jameson (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Yet another reason why I’m waiting a few weeks to get the new one.
Shawn Farner (Who am I?)
4 months ago
This is the price you pay for a stupid activation process.
dizil (Who am I?)
4 months ago
i’ve been trying to update since 1100 doing that stupid moving back and forth crap.
Steve Jabs (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Hah! Glad I updated last night. However my mail is completely broken. So double good thing I haven’t tried to restore at all today.
kane (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Great.. make us wait three months
and crashes on the first day
go figure
pos (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Why Apple, why. Now, you have to pull that commercial where you make fun of Microsoft for crashing. I’m so pissed. About to meet with people at the airport and I have no phone!
Isaac (Who am I?)
4 months ago
I followed the tips (not disconnecting and just clicking back on the iPhone again) and I was FINALLY able to get it to activate. Took me about 3 hours total. Whoever is responsible for this (lookin’ at you, Jobs!) needs some serious flak.
Mike (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Wouldn’t clicking back and forth cause repeated requests to the server and cause even worse traffic problems?
gi joe (Who am I?)
4 months ago
all together now:
“we don’t need no education….”
Rob (Who am I?)
4 months ago
That would be double negation. It seems like you do.
pRven (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Uh … that would be a quote from Pink Floyd.
http://www.tnellen.com/ted/brick.html
Jonathan (Who am I?)
4 months ago
I’m glad Gizmodo gave me the info on where to download the 2.0 firmware and itunes 7.7 yesterday. I have a fully functioning first gen iphone 2.0 and it’s wonderful.
btizzy (Who am I?)
4 months ago
well I’m glad I was the first in line. I got mines working right now as I type this comment!!!
Veronica Portas (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Yay am I six million and 1??!? So freaking pissed, wtf apple?! WHY ON A FRIDAY!? Guess I wont be going out tonight cause I CANT MAKE PLANS ON my IPHONE! :(
Steve Jabs (Who am I?)
4 months ago
I really hope that you are being sarcastic.
nobosh (Who am I?)
4 months ago
You call that a fix? http://nobosh.com
jorgasm (Who am I?)
4 months ago
ya mine bricked up right before I had to be at the airport flying standby.. Not cool
But it took about 20 min for it to boot back up (after reinstalling iTunes and rebooting 3x)
Chris (Who am I?)
4 months ago
They should have made the 2.0 update available to 1st gen owners days ago. then we wouldn’t have been dealing with this and would have made the buzz even louder. Brilliant marketing idiots. been 4 1/2 hours. just a little testy
Mark (Who am I?)
4 months ago
If you can get someone to send you a text, that seems to force activation even if the connecting to iTunes bit isn’t working.
chrluc (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Totally Agree I have been trying to get it to activate for several hours with the hole switching thing and no luck have someone call you or send a text an it will activate!
Steve Jabs (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Has the jailbreak/activate/unlock tool been released yet for 2.0? If so, wouldn’t that relieve almost all of these issues?
Robert (Who am I?)
4 months ago
My problem is in Itunes all I see is Iphone in the middle of the screen…none of the other tabs are even there! So, who the heck knows if/when mine will get right.
Sashi (Who am I?)
4 months ago
So Drew Barrymore breaks up with Justin Long. And now iTunes crashes and makes my iPhone 3G a brick. Cinsidence? I think not! Told you guys not piss MSFT! We shuda let’em have Yahoo! Geez.
Ellen (Who am I?)
4 months ago
thank you. i was at least able to reactivate my phone. can’t sync and get my sh&t back, but at least i can make and take calls. thank you thank you.
RayBo (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Send yourself a few txt messages from the computer or another phone. Then, call your iPhone and leave a few messages. This is total speculation, but I think the activation servers are ordering higher priority to phones with activity. I have been doing the “switch back and forth” nonsense for 3 hours.
When I did what I just suggested, it almost immediately began the activation process. Might be coincidence, and even if not, why not fill up AT&T’s voicemail and txt msg servers as a bit of nonviolent punishment for causing us this pain?
Ellen (Who am I?)
4 months ago
yea! now i got the restore/sync. i owe you what little i have left of my sanity for this tip!!
Ankit (Who am I?)
4 months ago
HAVE SOMEONE SEND YOU A TEXT MESSAGE.
I had someone send me a text message and then I was able to use everything.
I still can’t sync or anything, but at least I can make and accept phone calls.
a user (Who am I?)
4 months ago
My activation just went through (upgrading old iPhone) after trying for over 2 hours with the back and forth. Didn’t do any of the SMS or Voice Mail tricks….
A Strange Web (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Glad I upgraded yesterday. Been amusing myself playing MonkeyBall and reading about all the screaming.
rooneydog (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Thank you Mark. I had been clicking back and forth for an hour when I read your suggestion to have someone text message me. I used my wife’s iPhone to do the text message, and the next time I clicked from the iTunes store to my phone in iTunes, the activation started right up. It makes no sense to me why this would work, but it really did.
Thanks again. You saved my day.
Ellen (Who am I?)
4 months ago
now synced up and everything is back in order and i’m playing monkeyball too. ;-)
i just did the back and forth a few times and first got the phone back in order and then a few more back and forths and i was able to restore from back-up and sync cool apps.
Donate iPhone (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Donate iPhone An Eco Friendly Initiative
You got a new shiny iPhone…That’s Great ! … But what about your old iPhone? Don’t worry, just DONATE at http://www.rubarudirect.com/iphone/
There are millions of people waiting for this… just do it…
Donate iPhone (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Donate iPhone An Eco Friendly Initiative
You got a new shiny iPhone…That’s Great ! … But what about your old iPhone? Don’t worry, just DONATE at http://www.rubarudirect.com/iphone/
There are millions of people waiting for this… just do it…