Looks like iOS 6.1 breaks iMessage

Question

Updated to iOS 6.1 recently & iMessage now only shows my email address with phone number greyed out, not even a tick next to it. As you can see from the screenshot.
From this you can also see that it uses my Apple ID for starting new convos, not the @me one (though thats not the issue)
Nice one Apple, now that i've updated to your new iOS its messed up my iMessage, and a lot of others from the looks of it
I shoulda just stayed on 5.1.1
oh and btw, its been left overnight to see if that helps. SIM card taken out and put back in again, imessage turned off and on again, region set properly, phone number set properly, Rebooted numerous times, Restored as backup twice, restored as NEW iPhone 3 times.
They really need to sort this out.

Answer 1

I installed the iOS 6.1 update last week on both an iPad and iPhone, and only just discovered today that messages people were trying to send me since last week, which normally only went to my iPhone, were going to the ipad instead. During the update, I did confirm the new message settings on both devices (telling iOS my phone # and other email addresses associated with myself), but had no idea it would cause the first device to take control of all messages (the iPad). This is not at all the behavior I would have expected. At the very least, the iPad should have asked "do you want this device to be your primary iMessage device?" - which I would have clearly understood, and answered with a big no.
Apple, for the past year, every time you've tried to integrate messaging and communications like this across all our devices, and your own business partners, it's gone wrong. My Contacts are still filled with Facebook email addresses, instead of the actualy email addresses I had originally listed for my Contacts - only because they never heard they needed to update their Facebook settings before everyone updated their iOS devices. And now, this messaging snafu which caused me to miss communications on my phone, while the other device sitting in my living room took over without my express permission.
Anyway, now iMessage is completely turned off on my ipad. And it'll stay off until I can figure out how to perminently make a particular device the primary one, and keep others from taking over.