Many hand-carried iPhones in Vietnam are turned into 'bricks'

After resetting or restoring data, the iPhone that was working normally suddenly got locked, the SIM card was invalid and could not be activated.

This phenomenon has been widely reported in the iPhone user community for about a week now. Many people call this an activation error because the iPhone that is being used normally suddenly becomes a locked version and cannot be activated or used with the old SIM anymore.

Many users reported that the international iPhone version suddenly became locked after "reset" or "restore".

Nhat Huy, the owner of an iPhone store in District 10 (HCMC), confirmed that many iPhones are experiencing the above phenomenon, but the cause and specific solution are unknown. A large retail system in Hanoi and HCMC has even sent a notice to each customer, advising them not to "Reset" or "Restore" their iPhones and iPads. They believe that Apple is having a server error, causing problems with activating iOS devices.

According to iPhone repairmen, this is not a hardware error but a software one.

However, a representative of an official iPhone distributor in Vietnam said that the above phenomenon has not been seen in genuine products. This person believes that the error may not be due to Apple's server, but lies in the fact that locked iPhone models, of unclear origin in the hand-carried market, when arriving in Vietnam, have been unlocked to become international versions. After a while, Apple may review and re-lock.

Buying a used, cheap iPhone on the carry-on market can run the risk of it being a locked product.

Most of the iPhones with the above error are versions for the US market (LL code) or Japanese products. In fact, these products are network-locked versions but have been converted into international versions by purchasing an unlock code, so they can be used without a sim card.

The unlock code market is also quite complicated. The "genuine" type provided by network operators is often expensive, even the cost is equal to buying an international version. But besides that, there are also cheap unlock codes, not bought from network operators but from wholesalers. This type costs less but has the potential risk of being re-locked after a short time, or at any time.

Previously, activation errors occasionally appeared on unlocked international network phones, but recently they have "blossomed" with a large number of locked phones because used iPhones are too popular and flooding the carry-on market.

To temporarily fix and be able to use again, users are forced to use a sim card to activate and have signal.

According to VNE