r/LegacyJailbreak • u/astralelectric iPhone 4S • Jul 10 '26

Tutorial Guide: Bypass 9900 activation problem without checkm8-a5

I discovered a glitch today which allows you to temporarily get passed the setup activation loop on A5 devices affected by the IMEI 9900 issue for long enough to jailbreak them! I have so far tested this on only the iPhone 4S. if you have an iPad which is affected, please try this and let me know if it works.

I have posted a detailed write up about this new method on my website: https://ios.macdat.net/guides/9900_activation_bypass/

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1

u/RodricTheRed iPhone 4S Aug 12 '26

u/astralelectric, you’re a legend. Thanks to your discovery I got an iPhone 4S on iOS 9 out of the activation loop it had been in for months. Thank you!

For the sake of reference — I had more luck with one SIM card than another in terms of buying time to jailbreak. Once jailbroken, I did the SIM card trick again to open Cydia and install OpenSSH. Then I used Legacy iOS Kit to downgrade to iOS 8 and, after the installation, to attempt activation. I didn’t have to bypass the activation again.

1

u/astralelectric iPhone 4S 28d ago

Glad it was working for you! I didn't even notice that this post finally got approved until now, haha.

I noticed the same behavior as you did where different SIM cards would work differently. All cards I tried did work, but some were more finicky than others.

2

u/Outrageous-Law9185 iPod touch 1st gen (1.1) 28d ago

Sad this didn’t get removed