Some iPhone X Users Say They Can't Activate Their New Devices

EghtesadOnline: Some iPhone X customers said they couldn’t activate their new devices on Friday, a hiccup for Apple Inc.’s most important product launch in years.

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04 November 2017

One of the first steps in the activation process requires connecting the phone to customers’ chosen wireless carrier. Those connections didn’t work for some people, essentially making their devices unusable, according to multiple complaints on Twitter.

"Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable," a message displayed on those phones read. "Try connecting your iPhone to iTunes to activate it, or try again in a couple of minutes."

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment. Verizon Communications Inc. said models it sold direct to customers didn’t have problems, Bloomberg reported.

"Some of our customers experienced a delay activating their iPhone X," Eric Ryan, an AT&T Inc. spokesman, said. The issue was resolved, he added in a statement late Friday.

The glitches popped up on a banner day for Apple, with huge lines outside stores around the world as consumers rushed to buy the phone before supplies ran out during its first day on the market. The strong demand so far for the phone has led Apple to predict record revenue in the quarter ending in late December.

Some users on Twitter reported success by calling their carrier’s technical support hotline and having their device manually activated by the telecom company’s customer service representative. Others activated their new phones by swapping in their old SIM card.

"Been trying to activate my iPhone X for over an hour but keeps saying the activation server is unavailable," one wrote in a tweet to their carrier, AT&T. Another tweeted that they tried activating their phone 200 times with no luck. Complaints were from both AT&T and Verizon customers.

Activation issues affected the launch of early iPhone models, but have been rare since the first few generations of the device. The problems may stem from carrier activation servers being slammed by all the new iPhone X users, which could imply especially strong demand.