Let’s say you have a 1st Gen / 2.5G (aka EDGE) iPhone, and you’ve upgraded to an iPhone 3G or iPhone 3G S, and you want to update your old (1st Gen) iPhone to iPhone OS 3.0. If you do, you’re old iPhone will need to be activated. It might not be obvious, but all you need to do is
- pop the SIM out of your activated iPhone 3G (S) and pop it into the old iPhone.
- Connect the old iPhone to a machine with iTunes, and it will activate.
- After that, you can take the SIM out of the old iPhone, and put it back into your current iPhone, and will is well. At least until the next iPhone OS update.
I have an original iPhone and have since “upgraded” to an iPhone 3GS. The 3GS came with it’s own SIM card. I wasn’t required to remove the one from the original iPhone. I guess I am lucky in that although the original iPhone has been deactivated in AT&T’s system it still has a SIM in it so I don’t have to go through the steps you do. Oh, by the way, I guess you can tell that I am a USA customer. Possibly other parts of the world handle upgrading from one handset to another different.
I upgraded at an AT&T store, and they removed my old SIM. I don’t think that Apple stores remove the old SIM.
When i’m looking for the latest apple tech news I check out your blog. It because of this info that I now own a MacBook Pro, iPod and now an iPad, thanks to you.