Chosen Solution
- Hello IFIXIT Community,
- I recently purchased a broken iPhone 7 on eBay to give myself a challenge, as repair is my hobby. When I first received the device, I did a quick IMEI lookup from the SIM tray. I discovered that Find My iPhone had been enabled, however, the phone itself had not had a SIM card installed or had been connected to the internet before the phone had Find My iPhone first enabled. If I kept the phone offline and then wiped the OS from Recovery Mode and reinstalled, would iCloud Activation Lock occur? I have never really dealt with a device where Find My iPhone has been enabled and don’t want to waste the money on repair if it will just boot up to the iCloud Lock screen, so any advice helps!
- ) Thanks, Caleb T.
FMI is set on Apple server side, device side does not matter. As long as FMI is turned on at Apple side, activation is blocked from Apple side until the owner releases it from the Apple ID. Whether the device shows FMI or not does not matter.
You will not know for sure until you try and activate it but if it is still activated on the previous owners iCloud account there is nothing you can do besides contacting them or ask for a refund. Sometimes those sites used for checking IMEI show cached information.
