Reactivating first generation iPhone?

So I currently have a 3GS (had it since it first came out) so I know, it's time to buy a new one. But because I just can't afford it I've just kept using it, which was never a problem. That is, until I made the terrible decision to download iOS 5 on it. Now I can't receive any incoming texts, which is a huge problem. I still have my first generation iPhone so I thought maybe I could reactivate it just until I can afford to get a new phone in a couple of weeks. But whenever I try to activate it (after putting my current SIM card into it) the activation process never fully works. I was wondering if it's just not really possible to reactive a first generation iPhone or if something's just going wrong? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

I'm talking about your 3GS.
If you didn't lose "everything" by installing iOS 5 on your 3GS, you won't lose "everything" when restoring the 3GS with iTunes.
Where you do get you will lose everything on your iPhone when restoring it with iTunes?
All iTunes content on your iPhone - all music, movies, tv shows, podcasts, ringtones, audio and print books, and 3rd party apps should be in your iTunes library on your computer. All photos on your iPhone that were transferred from your computer should remain on your computer. Photos and videos in your iPhone's Camera Roll can and should be imported by your computer as with any other digital camera. Contacts, calendar events, and Safari bookmarks are designed to be synced with a supported app on your computer so all this data should be available on your computer as well. This leaves data such as iPHone settings, SMS/MMS, and 3rd party app settings and data created and stored by a 3rd party app which is included with your iPhone's backup.
If you switch to your original iPhone, you won't have all the data that is on your iPhone 3GS available on the original iPhone anyway.

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