iphoneitunesrestore
I have an iPhone 3gs that my friend pulled the cable out of it during a restore. It is now "Bricked",as it will not restore. I have tried restoring it myself, but now I keep getting error 37.
My iTunes version is 11.1.3. Any ideas?
Edit: The SIM card was not in the phone… could this contribute to the fact that the restore is not working? I do believe it is not unlocked.
This is, unfortunately, expected behavior. Whenever you activate an iPhone (which you do as part of an OS install) it talks to Apple's servers and does various things like exchange crypto certs for APNS, etc. It also checks the IMEI of the phone to see what carrier Apple sold it to, and validates the SIM is valid for that carrier (if you buy an unlocked iPhone in a country where you can buy either locked or unlocked phones the vendor will actually copy down the IMEI number of a normal locked phone, and then enter in their system where it gets pushed to Apple's servers as an unlocked phone, there is no physical or configuration difference on the phones).
The easiest way to get it activated is (as you surmised) to use an AT&T SIM. You mentioned you have an iPhone 4, you can activate it with that SIM. There are plenty of companies that sell microSIM to SIM adapters, but if you want to do it right now you can just place the micro SIM directly in the iPhones 3GS's SIM try with tape. I would not recommend doing this on a device you intend to keep the SIM in for a an extended period because the SIM is likely to come loose (and jam the SIM tray), but if you are just inserting it, activating it, and removing it you should be fine so long as you are pretty careful with how you apply the tape and not shaking the phone too much.
here is the thing most of the answers work for those who have shsh blobs saved before but the thing is what if one has accidentally upgraded his/her iphone to the newer version and unable to activate it. in my country it doesn't work but he easiest way to activate your phone even without sim card is to call an emergency number like 911 or 112 and before you hear any voice press the power button and then on the notification bar area click again on the phone icon and hangup and you will see your home screen and well the rest is the rest.for video help search something like " Activating iphone with out sim card" on youtube. hope i contribue something and sadly i couldn't get mine to work.
Best Answer
That is Apple's solution, maybe it helps.