Why does my iPhone say Activation Required? It started doing this out of nowhere. I try to unlock it and it goes to Activation Lock. It says "This iPhone is linked to an Apple ID. Enter the Apple ID and password that were used to set up this iPhone."
In the "Activation Help" link it goes to a page:
A password is required to activate this device because its owner has used Find My iPhone to link it to their Apple ID.
I never used Find My iPhone. I also had 2 factor authentication.
Why would my iPhone suddenly brick itself? It doesn't make any sense that an iPhone can just lock itself and render the whole phone useless!
Best Answer
Activation issues relating to the carrier are covered here:
This is also a distinct situation than when the device knows full well the servers are not reachable:
That being said, the device activation can also fail or hang for four reasons that are ranked in rough order of likelihood:
The first can usually be remedied by trying another WiFi network or making sure the network you are on isn't blocking traffic to Apple's Servers with filtering or firewall. The second item can also happen when your network is overloaded or there is general internet connection or routing issues.