Activating unlocked international phones

[rtammekivi]

Hi

Recently we've been having issues with phones that seem to be completely unlocked. When attempted to activate over iTunes, iTunes will notify to select carrier on the phone. It does not matter which carrier is chosen, the activation still passes. Also it seems like Apple Configurator can activate these phones but I am not sure about that.

However, ideviceactivation fails to activate these phones. Is there any way to detect these type of phones? Right now, Apple server returns 302 error.

activation_fail_send_request.log

[nikias]

Hi, can you try if it works with this patch? It should redirect automatically to the return location then:

diff --git a/src/activation.c b/src/activation.c
index 6105071..f96e8b7 100644
--- a/src/activation.c
+++ b/src/activation.c
@@ -1273,6 +1273,7 @@ IDEVICE_ACTIVATION_API idevice_activation_error_t idevice_activation_send_reques
 	curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_HEADERFUNCTION, &idevice_activation_header_callback);
 	curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_URL, request->url);
 	curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_FORBID_REUSE, 1);
+	curl_easy_setopt(handle, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1L);
 
 	// enable communication debugging
 	if (debug_level > 0) {

[nikias]

ping @Blefish

[rtammekivi]

Hi

Unfortunately I haven't come across more of these devices. From what I understand though, is that these are phones that are returned from service centers and the carrier lock configuration is missing. Hence phone shows it to user and if you select it, it will be locked to that carrier. It is a single-time operation and afterwards it's possible to activate the phone. Could be it's nothing to do with libimobiledevice at all, but I don't know if it's possible to log this from the phone.

[rtammekivi]

Ok I encountered it again and added the follow redirect. It seems to just show the "Your request couldn't be processed page".

Is there a way to see the encrypted traffic passed and act as a middle-man? It would be interesting to see what data is sent on phones that fail.

log.txt

[nikias]

@Blefish ok the FOLLOWLOCATION option is required in any case here. However I don't really know what would be wrong here. It's like Apple doesn't want the device to be activated. Does iTunes activate the device?

[rtammekivi]

iTunes does not auto activate it, instead it prompts to select carrier on the phone screen. This is what I was told as I haven't physically touched any of these devices. Question is, how does iTunes detect that? Or is it a fallback case when it couldn't activate it by itself?