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iOS 7 betas expire as some folks forget to update, here’s how to get your iPhone back

Developers who didn’t upgrade their iOS devices from beta 6 to the public release of iOS 7 are finding their iOS devices temporarily bricked this morning after the beta expired, reports Gizmodo.

Around midnight UK time, my iPhone 5, along with thousands of other iOS 7-running devices which hadn’t updated from their dev betas, randomly crashed. An error message of “could not activate iPhone” appeared, and prompted users to sign in with their iCloud details. Unfortunately this did not solve the issue, with Apple’s activation server being “temporarily unavailable.”

Fortunately, a fix is available – such as the one detailed at iPhoneHacks. The executive summary is to make sure you’re running iTunes 11.1, manually download the latest 7.0.2 version of iOS , connect the device to your Mac, click on the device in iTunes and then hold down the option key when clicking the Check for Update button to select the downloaded file. See the detailed instructions and links to the files for each device here.

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Comments

  1. krakowian - 11 years ago

    One comment…

    “Developers should know better!”

  2. abarba77 - 11 years ago

    Developers do know better… It’s the non-developers who begged their dev friends for the beta that don’t know better. As a developer, I have already fixed multiple phone by putting them in recovery mode and then restoring through iTunes. No need to go find and download the official version of ios7, let iTunes handle that. Otherwise you’re going to have people downloading the wrong version for their device.

    Recovery mode:

    Turn device on and wait for boot.
    Hold power and home button until the phone turns off AND the apple logo comes back on screen.
    Once you see the apple logo release the power/lock button and keep holding home button.
    Wait for iTunes logo.
    Plug in and restore.

  3. Oscar R Tijerina - 11 years ago

    For me it was just a simple mistake of having too many devices running the beta. I completely forgot one of my iPad minis was running it for testing. Went to check something this morning and realized it was locked up. I did try throwing it into recovery mode first but I couldn’t get it to take for some reason.

  4. John (@jrgibson1) - 11 years ago

    I love, love, love, looooooove how Gizmodo are writing an article on this and how terrible it is.
    Stiff shit fuckers.

  5. Sam (@horse_doeuvre) - 11 years ago

    Why not just download the latest 7.1 version? If you’re a developer?

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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