This one drive me crazy. We are on iOS 26.1 and did an eSIM swap from Lightspeed (T-mobile) to Warp (Verizon)
We did this because last month when we went to Kenya, t-mobile support 5GB of free roaming. But they actually killed that mid trip although you can get a 1GB data sim for free.
Switching was easy but it leaves a dead eSIM on Lightspeed which didn’t matter previously. Anyway I ended up with two identical phone numbers in messages.
So I just deleted the dead eSIM.
BIG MISTAKE!
Now iMessage refused to keep the activation and deleted both of the phones numbers. And when I tried to activate it gave the dreaded “activation error try again. Later.
There’s the usual voodoo which I’m pretty sure does nothing.
- Turn on and off iMessage in setting /apps / messages
- Do a settings/about/erase or reset iPhone and the reset network connections.
- Turn on and off the esims
- Power cycle the phone. Force reset the phone.
- Got to Apple.com and issue a support request.
In the end just wait
I think the two identical phone numbers confused the data base up in Apple land. But 14 hours later it just magically activates. Woohoo. And a bit mystified.
I’m betting the double entry the database was bad and some daemon process cleaned it up
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