My unmodded iPhone was bricked by 1.1.1

Maybe we should not be taking this so personally. When I phoned the apple customer support phone number, they asked me also and as soon as I said "No it has not been changed", they moved on (end of story) and helped resolve my issue.

I'm unclear why we are all being so sensitive about them asking -- I'm sure it is what they have been told to ask when someone calls in on the customer support phone number.

I also had trouble updating. I ended up logging out other users (who had iTunes open), then quiting and restarting iTunes, then reinserting my iPhone, then the upgrade worked. Sort of voodoo, but it eventually worked.

my wifes phone wasn't modded. **** we barely even know how to work a computer let alone hack a phone. When we got the invalid sim card error we drove to the apple store with our at&t bill and they said they couldn't do anything.

The update process went fine but what the update brought was not too nice to my iPhone. The battery lasts much less and I am having problems with my wifi, it doesn't switch to a wifi from EDGE right away, it takes a long time...

I think it's reasonable to assume that some folks who have not modified their phones are having problems with the update - there are a number of reasons why this may be happening. Although I have an unmodded phone, I'm still running 1.0.2 for a while until this shakes out.

Additionally, my iPhone has not always behaved flawlessly and continued to misbehave even after a fresh restore. This indicates to me that there may be a state based flaw during updating that Apple hasn't detected yet. The only thing that corrected the flaw (the flaw was that my iPhone would not let me add cities in the world clock function) was to reset all settings in the Settings->General area on the iPhone. Then the iPhone worked correctly but the Apple tech was as baffled as I was as to why the problem persisted after a full restore which should reset the settings as well.

Anyway, my advice to those who have yet to upgrade is to reset the iPhone settings before the upgrade to make sure the phone is in a "good" state (obviously, you will lose your settings if you do this though). I also recommend that you remove your iPhone backup and resync to create a new one if the existing backup is old (using iTunes).

Message was edited by: John Harkins to fix typo

My most recent post was deleted, LMFAO, censorship rules! Apple 1 : consumer 0. This post is likely to be deleted too, and pretty soon possibly my account.

Message was edited by: Evelation

It is reasonable to expect that contacting Apple to ask for assistance with an iPhone which has become nonfunctional as a result of applying the 1.1.1 update would result in the question of whether the iPhone had been modified being asked. It should be enough for the user to be able to calmly respond in the negative, as you have done, and have the issue progress to an attempt to resurrect the device. If that happens, all well and good, however, on the face of it in some cases that may not be happening, and if the Apple staffer doesn't ask but simply accuses instead, that isn't acceptable since it's clear that some iPhones will fail (and have failed) whether directly as a result of the update or not not being clear - and being impossible to determine if the device is non-functional.

However, this shouldn't be rocket-science to resolve. Firstly, hacking an iPhone to include 3rd-party
apps should not be causing the iPhone to fail. Restore and thus loss of the apps, yes, but not to fail. The issue is almost inevitably going to be those devices which have been hacked to unlock them and then been bricked by the update. Thus if the user has not done such a hack and is unfairly accused of it, presenting Apple with a copy of an AT&T bill for most recent service, or something along those lines should prove ample evidence that the iPhone was in fact legitimately operating on the AT&T network.

I suspect as the days pass, the Apple reps dealing with such issues will become less sensitive themselves and more likely to ask and then continue to try and provide assistance to users with this problem.

It's interesting that many other posts have not been deleted. Even critical ones. If that's censorship it's a pretty poor go at it.

On the other hand, it's not hard to guess that perhaps your removed contribution was just a little over the top, and was removed not so much because you had something critical to say, but in the manner in which you chose to say it.

And it is always worth remembering that Apple own or pay for this resource, so they have the right to make the rules. You wouldn't visit someone's home and ignore their expectation of reasonable behavior, and just do as you please, would you? But you think you should have the right to do so here?

We've all had posts removed from time to time, either because we broke the terms of use or posted in a thread where someone else did. It's not censorship, it's the moderators doing the job they are paid for.

Apple is acccusing people of having modded thier iphones. Simply ridicoulous. If you did thats one thing. But, if you didnt and they accuse you of doing so then thats just mean.

But since mind reading isn't reliable & lie detectors are intrusive, Apple really has no way of knowing if you are being honest, or maybe just a bit clueless. I've already seen people insisting that adding apps is not a mod, mostly on the dubious logic that anything they can add to the phone must be something it supports, or arguments to that effect.

Of course, that does not in any way excuse a store manager or other Apple employee from making a summary judgement that you modded the phone just because it doesn't work post update. You have a right to a working phone if you have stayed within the licensing & warranty terms. If you can't get any traction with that, I suggest you write Apple, not Applecare but the office of the CEO or head of marketing or such, & complain about the employee's unwillingness to verify that the phone has been used properly.

You might also consider writing a letter to your local newspaper or contacting a consumer activist reporter at a local TV station. Just make sure you stick to the facts & avoid ranting like some conspiracy theory extremist. Your goal is getting the service you personally are entitled to, not changing the world.

Yes, I apologize, I am just bitter paying for a $400 brick that I paid for with my hard-earned money. And I have been out of reach from family and friends because well, my phone is dead.

I read your earlier post in this thread and it was largely the (justified) frustration you expressed that I was addressing in my prior contributions here also. As I said in those posts, it seems unjustifiable to me to accuse a user of hacking merely because that may be the most obvious cause of the symptom being described and not providing an opportunity for the person to state they are not guilty of such an action and even provide evidence of legitimate use to support that fact.

Thus, I'm entirely on your side and as the owner of an unmodified iPhone myself, I would be as disheartened at such treatment if it happened to my phone instead of yours.

However, I can't help but wonder if, now the fuss has died down somewhat, somewhat better information and understanding has begun to permeate to staff and in the less volatile environment now, contacting Apple again might not get you rather more helpful response than before. As much as the initial 'answer' was wrong, I've never known Apple not make things right in the end. It won't get you those days of iPhone use back while it's been out of service, but at least you may get a working iPhone back in service rather than a dead and unusable one in a desk drawer.

Hi Miguel,

I had the edge over wifi problem since day one (June)
so I can say it is not a new thing,
wifi should have priority over ... mobile land line
uh I mean edge, best wishes to all .x.

Message was edited by: Mike .x.

Yeah. I had some trouble too. Midway through the update, my iPhone said "PLEASE CONNECT TO iTUNES." Whatevs, I fixed it. The problem now is that my iPhone is 1. burning hot and 2. the battery is draining so fast I had to turn it off like 2 hours after unplugging it from my computer. Grr....

Firstly, hacking an iPhone to include 3rd-party apps should not be causing the iPhone to fail. Restore and thus loss of the apps, yes, but not to fail.

Not to disagree with the overall sentiment that the store people are out of line if they assume a priori that all dead phones died because they were modified, but I must take exception to the idea that hacking the phone to accept 3rd party apps could not cause the phone to fail.

Two reasons for this:

1. The mod that enables installing those apps modifies system level files, using root level privileges. This is never all that safe, but on a Mac you can just boot up from another disk & reinstall everything, so no damage done. The iPhone is not a Mac. Clobber the OS badly enough for it not to know it can't write to the restore partition & you have a big problem.

2. Apple's software is well protected against tampering, not just while at Apple but also at every step of the way from Apple to the point it resides on a user drive. (Remember kids, if you don't use OS X's Software Update app, you should do your homework & compute your SHA checksums.) You cannot say the same for the third party stuff (both OS modifier & apps) because we really don't know much about where it comes from or how good their security is.

Not to belabor the issue, but all mods are at this point a risk. If you haven't done any of them, stick to your guns & demand that your warranty be honored. If you have, you are, as Scarlet said, relying on the kindness of strangers.

No, you missed the point, I suspect because I made it incorrectly.

Firstly, I didn't say 'could not', I said, 'should not', and I was not referring to anything related to the danger of the installation but the consequence of it.

In each case, iPhones modded to run 3rd-party apps were indeed compromised as you have indicated and for the reasons you have given. However, what appeared to be happening was that iPhones so modded were being put into forced restore by the update and having those mods removed, then the update applied - thus what I intended to make clear was that Apple appeared to have a strategy for safely updating iPhones that had been hacked to add 3rd-party apps, thus such a phone should not be rendered unusable as a result of the update. That therefore the only iPhones genuinely rendered non-functional should be those which had been unlocked, and which the statement made on September 24th seemed to directly address. Given that to be the case, customers who had not unlocked their phones should be able to prove they did not because they would have active AT&T accounts to demonstrate the fact, and those with 3rd-party app hacks should not have ended up with nonfunctioning iPhones in the first place because that appeared not to be the strategy used in the update.

Leaving only those who did hack to unlock as the victims and unable to get support from Apple as a result.