Is it possible to activate a ‘locked’iphone?

[EleanorLavish]

I smashed the screen on mine. We have a business and DH found an old one at work from a few years ago. It would have been a work one of someone who has moved on, nonidea who. But we don’t know the Apple ID and password.
Have phoned Apple who have said they can’t do anything.
Is this phone really only good for the bin?! Seems madness. Is there really noting we can do?

You can try this, but you'll need itunes installed on a computer;

support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306

Can't you have the screen replaced on your phone? There are services here in the US that will do it all over - by post, drop off, etc.

Thanks Miss that doesn’t work.
I can get my phone screen replaced, just seems such a shame that a perfectly good mint condition iPhone has to be thrown out!
Talk about waste.

As a last resort, bring it to an Apple store if there's one near you and ask at the genius bar. They may have more "flexibility" than the support techs on the phone.

I think there are places that can unlock
Them for you. It makes them lose their
Warranty- which sounds irrelevant anyway. Tends to be simple Phone-repair shops near me that do it

Sell the phone on mazuma. You don’t need it to be unlocked.

I don’t think you can ‘unlick’ It as such (wasn’t there a big fuss about Apple refusing to hand over their encryption technology to the US law enforcement agencies a while back?). However you should be able to do a hard reset back to factory settings. It will erase all the data on the phone and you’ll just then need to set it up as if it were a brand new phone.
Google factory reset for that model of iphone.

If you are in the UK, Timpsons will replace broken phone screens.

Plenty of places will change the screen for a reasonable price and a lot cheaper than Apple! As for getting round the activation, they won't let you do that unless you have proof that you own the phone. My dad locked himself out of his iPad a while back and I took it in to the Genius Bar. Without proof it was his they couldn't do anything which is fair enough as the whole point of it is that you can't activate a stolen phone. It's frustrating but understandable.

Take it to one of those dodgy booths with a "Phone unlocking" sign. If it can be unlocked, they will do it.