is this talking about the new 3g iphones? because what im trying to do is activate it.

Just activated my iphone without using the store. I got one of my friends first gen non upgraded iphone. Took his still active sim and put it in my 3g. Started it up, got bars, made a call, and then swapped the new 3g sim back into the 3g phone. It worked first time. I even got a nice activation message from at&t

All seems well with this proposed recovery method except the "wait an hour" idea. Try 30 seconds. Then two minutes if that doesn't work. No need to wait overly long. Mine came back to (pre) life in the 30 second range.

Now let's see if it CAN be restored...

Just activated my iphone without using the store. I got one of my friends first gen non upgraded iphone. Took his still active sim and put it in my 3g. Started it up, got bars, made a call, and then swapped the new 3g sim back into the 3g phone. It worked first time. I even got a nice activation message from at&t

This sounds like a 2.5G iPhone issue not the trying to activate a new 3G iPhone.

"I didn't go the whole way and restore it as I want to keep the v2 software till the problem is sorted. However, it may be that someone has a bricked phone and wants to at least make it useable again."

Please clarify.

SO this a.m. I decided to sync my 9-mo. old iPhone because I had recently purchased some new music I wanted to transfer. For the first time ever it wasn't able to sync because of disc-related error issues on the phone. My only recourse being to hit the restore button to hopefully fix it, I proceeded.

I didn't look at today's date first, nor did I realize the last step of this process would be a necessity to connect to the iTunes store. So now I am stuck getting the constant -4 response from the store and essentially having a bricked phone.

I've attempted dozens of times to no avail to connect. I don't understand the relevance of detaching the phone from the computer for an hour and trying again... can someone explain if this is really relevant to me, and why it would help?

mine's working again, 17 mins out of the loop, must be back up and running

Seems to be back working now. I wonder if they just got buried with activations. Mine's restoring now.

Yea!

Mine is up and working, except I only waited about one minute between shut down and plug in comp. Although I had to do it five times, but now working like a champ with 2.0 installed!!!! Thanks Andy Space

Can someone answer a question for me please?

When the servers are back up and I can finally download the update for iPod Touch, will the update erase everything on my iPod?

And if so, how do I do a back up of all my media. When I right-click on my iPod in iTunes, I see a "back up" option. But what does that do?

Activation just worked for me without this trick. Finally. :)

so I waited till this afternoon to attempt the upgrade to 2.o.....but iTunes is saying that 1.4 is the current version.....wtf mate?

Hey guys... just so you know:

Taken from the MacOS's dictionary:
authorization |ˌôθərəˈzā sh ən|
noun
the action or fact of authorizing or being authorized : the raising of revenue and the authorization of spending | power stations will have to obtain authorizations to continue their operations.
• a document giving permission or authority.

Check your spelling ;)
Greetings from Venezuela and keep up the excellent work!

iTunes finally authorized my old iphone after 100 attempts or so. The backup process finally worked after a few glitches and I found out what was causing the mysterious "disc" errors. It wasn't the disc at all but my dock. After removing the dock and plugging directly into the cable all worked well.

So if you ever have any issues with syncing your iphone, try removing the dock or using a different cable. It might solve the issue.