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Released September 20, Apple's largest and most expensive 2019 smartphone features a 6.5" OLED display, a triple-lens camera system, and greatly improved battery life. Successor to the iPhone XS Max.

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Stuck on “connect to mac or to a pc with itunes”

Brand new iphone 11 pro max. Customer received a swap device from apple. She went through the wizard and scanned her esim. After that the phone said it needed an update. After updating it keeps failing to activate and that I need to connect the iphone to itunes. When I do this, it succeeds goes to the home screen for less than 1 second and then it says activating again.

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Tried restoring using both recovery mode and dfu mode. Both times it will get stuck on the same screen. What strange is that her esim is still registered even after restoring with dfu mode. Is this a hardware malfunction?? Have not seen this before.

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Fellow repair shop here. What exactly is an esim? Or are you talking about the sim card in the phone?

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It’s an electronic simcard. Your card will be digital, so you don’t need to use a physical simcard.

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How did you resolve this? I’m having this issue and Apple has replaced my XS MAX twice.

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I’m also having the same issue on my iPhone 12 max pro. How did u resolve

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Still remains unresolved. Was yours a new phone or replacement “swap” device? I have a call scheduled for Wednesday with Apple engineering team. I will keep you updated but it seems like an operating system issue. We’ve tried setting up from backup and as new device on 3 replacement devices, 12 eSIM cards later, many hours at the Genius Bar, many hours on the phone with Apple and none of the work around shave worked. If you are able to bypass and set it up, please let me know. I’m going on 3 weeks of my business line not connected. Hopefully you have better luck!

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7 Answers

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Apple swapped the device. Same response as people commenting on this topic.

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connect to mac or toa PC with iTunes.?

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  • Check that you have the latest software on your Mac or Windows PC. If you're using iTunes, make sure you have the latest version.
  • If you see a Trust this Computer alert, unlock your device and tap Trust.
  • Unplug all USB accessories from your computer except for your device. Try each USB port to see if one works. Then try a different Apple USB cable.

Otherwise, reboot both the computer and your iPhone and try it again.

Also make sure check out the Apple official post via link below.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201407

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Tried a few different cables and multiple PC’s. Problem is not that the PC doesn’t recognize the iphone. Problem is that it doesn’t activate through wifi and it keeps popping up after activating connected to itunes.

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@d3novo Have you tried you lucky with a mental sim card and then activate it?

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Yeah I used my own simcard without PIN and it will show 2 connections but it doesn’t activate. Maybe it’s like some kind of region lock or a iPhone that has not been registered yet.

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@d3novo Did you purchase it from overseas? The best solution is to contact Apple for support.

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Did this get resolved KWH? How did you get it working. Having the same issue....

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i dont know how to unlock dis iphone 7+

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I have no idea why it freezes on that screen but if you set it up as a new ipad then head to restore in settings afterward you can restore through there

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This problem also happened on my iPhone 11 before. I force restarted the device and reconnect it, yet nothing worked. Later I was suggested to apply a software named Joyoshare UltFix to resolve it. Finally, this powerful program helped me and there was no data loss.

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Cool story bro, thanks that you made this account today just to tell me LMAO

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Having the same problem how did you get it solved please

N

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Had to get an entire new phone from apple

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connect to mac or to a pc with itunes

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KWH will be eternally grateful.
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