Hello Everyone,

I've recently bought an iPhone 3G from a friend for £50 who said it just needed activating. He had it on contract locked to O2, so i've put a PAYG O2 sim in and have been faced with either a 'searching' or 'no service' message at the top of the screen all day and haven't been able to activate my SIM?

I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to iphone's tbh, so have i missed something blaitently obvious here? also would upgrading the modem firmware and jailbreaking/unlocking the iphone possibly give me a signal?

Another idea i had was to ring apple and see if they could help, but as this is a second hand phone (and probably not under warranty) i assume i would run into problems straight away?

I believe the phone has been jailbreaked in the past so im not sure if this will effect things.

Modem Firmware: 05.15.04
Version: 4.2.1 (8C148)
Network: Not Avaliable
Serial Number: 87839P76Y7H
Carrier: 02 9.1

I hope i've been able to give enough information here, thankyou for any help/suggestions atall!

Matt

Hi, just so people know i upgraded the modem firmware and unlocked my phone, and now it works!

Most likely it is IMEI blacklisted

In the UK, I suggest that you always ask the seller to provide proof that the phone is not IMEI blacklisted before you purchase a second hand phone. It only costs the seller a few pounds to request an online certificate showing the IMEI status of the phone.

It's a real pity that the public in the UK aren't better educated about this, any legitimate hand used mobile phone reseller will be able to show you this kind of information in a few minutes. Scammers will just make excuses (and this should make you wary about buying from them).

It is *possible* that there is another reason for this, but the symptoms/price suggest otherwise. You could try borrowing a O2 sim card that has actually been used on an iPhone contract (but if you can get past the "slide for emergency" screen and use the iPhone for everything except making phone calls, then your problem is NOT activation)

You cannot update the firmware (except to the iPad baseband - and you don't want to do that). There is no way to bypass an IMEI blacklist, this is a feature that is put in place to stop resale of stolen/fraudulent phones (including phones reported as "lost" so as to claim a new phone on insurance, some carriers even blacklist phones where the owner has stopped paying the monthly contract)