Fix iMessage Waiting for Activation Error – How to

Apple has always been supporting text messaging and IMs with its iMessage app: it's just like sending a text message without any carrier charges, and using either a data connection or Wi-Fi - hint: whatsapp. This is actually a favorite way of communicating for many people owning iPhone. It keeps the message count low for those on limited text messaging plans, or the ones who don't text often enough. Setting up iMessage is pretty straightforward, however, there have been a lot of complaints about receiving a Waiting for Activation error from the iMessage.

In this tutorial, we will try to give you a few solutions which might help you getting rid of this pesky problem.

Disable and re-enable the iMessage:

• Open the Settings app on your iOS device and select Messages.
• Once in, toggle the switch next to iMessage to the OFF position - now wait for at least 24 hours.
• Follow these same steps to turn the iMessage back on. 

The method above dint help you out? Try next:

Restore iPhone from iTunes & the computer:

• Plug in your iPhone to the computer; it should automatically launch iTunes. 
• If not, make sure that iTunes are running in your computer.
• From the menu on the left, select iPhone and choose Summary tab > Restore iPhone. iTunes will then prompt you to make sure that restore is okay to perform.
• It will also warn you about data loss. Click Restore to continue.
• When done, repeat the initial step again to restore your iPhone. As long as your data was backed up on iCloud of the computer, restoring would be pretty straightforward with no loss of data.
• Restore will download the latest firmware and would resolve the problem of "waiting for activation".

This solution has worked for many. In case it did not, let's try a variation of restore.

iPhone restore - take 2:

• This is only a variation of above restore method. When you restore your iPhone, phone will ask you to log into iTunes.
• Instead of logging in, select the skip button. 
• It will then ask you to log into iCloud: click on skip button again.
• Verify that iMessage works: send an iMessage to someone owning an iPhone. If the message is successfully sent and you don't receive activation error, then:
  • Connect your phone to an iTunes account by choosing iTunes & App Stores from the Settings app.
  • Sign In and follow the instructions.
  • Now if you want to go ahead with setting iCloud too, perform the same procedure to sign in.

If none of these solution could fix iMessage waiting for activation error for you, check Apple's community discussion here for more details and solutions of this error.