Okay so first off, I have an iPhone 4 CDMA (Verizon), but haven't had cell service on it for two years. Not that that matters but thought I'd throw it in there, that it only works with wifi.
Now that that's out of the way, about a month ago I downloaded iOS 7 Beta 5 without a dev account (I know, but I couldn't help it). I had the same problem that I've seen other question here on, where people couldn't restore to iOS 6.1.3 in order to get the public release of iOS 7. So, I went to ipswdownloader and downloaded iOS 6.1.3 (CDMA), backed up my iPhone, and then restored it with the 6.1.3 software/firmware. My iPhone then restarted, and took me through the process of setting up a new iPhone. But, unlike anything I've seen before, it's asking to activate it as if it is brand new and under devices in iTunes, my iPhone's name is not there, it just says 'iPhone'. I figured I could just set it up and then restore backup but when I try to activate it through iTunes (because it can't find a server if I try from the phone) I get this error message:
We could not complete your iTunes store request.
The network connection was lost.
There was an error in the iTunes store. Please try again later.
I thought maybe because everyone in the world (literally) is downloading iOS 7 and maybe apple's servers were overflowing but I can connect to the iTunes store from iTunes, just not with my phone. The other thing is, even though I cancelled service on this phone almost 2 years ago, it still said Verizon as my service provider, now it says 'No Service'.
Obviously my phone completely reset. Please tell me there is something I can do to activate it and get all my apps, photos, etc back on it
Best Answer
The activation servers were overwhelmed presumably by the volume of activity on launch day. Now activation fails for a different reason - Apple is no longer signing iOS 6 software during the restore process.
Once you get your OS activated either through iTunes or over the air, you will be able to load your backup as you had planned.
Apple would surely make it easier on a segment of its customer base if the service status page were kept updated thusly….