Q: Mysterious random total shut downs following 3.1 update

I don't know about you but I did not signup to be a beta tester for firmware 3.1. Restore does not work. I need a working phone!!! Please make available firmware 3.0. I can not run my business this way with the phone locking up every hour. I am missing calls and losing business!!!!!!

Add me in to one of the broken phones. I upgraded my phone last thurs to 3.1. Since then I have had to hard restart my phone at least 3 times a day, (Mon I had to around 10 times) because my phone will go to sleep and will not wake up. When it does this, I don't receive any calls or text messages until I restart the phone. I am very upset because my phone was perfect until this update came out. I've been reading how apple is just replacing phones. This makes me upset for two reasons. 1) My warranty is expired so there is no hope for me getting a new phone, 2) My phone is in perfect condition and still is except the software. I have been very careful to not drop my phone or let anything happen to it and it was working perfect with 3.0.1, except for some minor bugs that everyone was having. The point is, my phone was able to receive calls and texts with 3.0.1. Now I have to check my phone every so often to make sure it isn't shut down! I am very disappointed in Apple because I know they have the potential to fix this. At least send out a patch where it will let us downgrade back to 3.0.1! This will get all us off of Apple's backs while a fix is figured out!

+"It's called the "iPhone Flu""+

I'd still call it Swine Flu cause my phone is a pig right now.

I was having the problem when this topic first start but never posted, reason for posting now is yesterday aside from the normal coma 6 times a day the last one was odd.

What happen is it went into the normal coma, and I didn't immediately do a hard reset, about 5 minutes later I went to do the reset it had gone into the screen capture mode, meaning it was taking snapshots of my black screen (all were saved) and then the screen came back on however every button was taking screen shoots, including the volume side buttons. After about 20 pictures it finally quite and my phone was out of its coma... first time that ones happened to me.

Stage,maybe they're close to fixing the problem and thought you wanted photo memories of the event!

A few days ago, I posted on this forum that I would go to the iphone CS centre in Hong Kong to check out this problem.
And I did. The CS told me that they managed to find a drop of water under the display and they would have to take my phone back to the factory to check. I told them all I asked for is a roll back of the OS to 3.0. Obviously, that was not possible. The thing was, to them, there was no issue with the OS 3.1. IF there was anything wrong, it was my iphone or the possible water that caused the problem. And if that was the case, I was told, that no warranty was to be honoured.

Three days later, I was notified today I was given a new phone. I really can't tell whether it is a refurbished of a new one. The CS cannot tell either. She said she did not know because it was shipped straight from the factory.

To tell you the truth, I have mixed feelings about this. It is a responsible thing on one hand for Apple to replace a new phone to me. But on the other hand, by not admitting the obvious problem with the OS 3.1 is equally irresponsible. All I asked for is a software fix. I really did not need a replacement.

Therefore, before I accepted the replacement, I did check what version it was. To my relief, it is 3.0.1 all right.

The replacement, however, does give me major headache. iTunes does not allow me to restore my personal data which I backup using OS3.1 to my replacement which runs OS 3.0.1. It says it will not restore the data to a phone of older version. That means I will loose all my phone book, emails, SMS and photos and I don't know what.....

Anyone can help?

Count me in as well. I upgraded to 3.1 the very same day it was available and only yesterday started getting the symptoms. It first started the day before with the phone not being able to find my service provider's 3G network for the most of Tuesday morning, then the battery indicator remained at full charge levels until the phone went dead on me because the battery had been completely drained.

The icing on the cake happened last night when the dreaded black screen came on and no button combo seemed to work to bring the phone back to life. Right before I was about to setup an appointment at the Apple store, I decided to go online looking for answers. Found the Power/Standby button combo and it seemed to solve the problem, for now. However, today the battery is running again at full charge even though the last time I charged the phone was last night.

Hopefully Apple will address this problem soon rather than later.

Same here.

Right after upgrading to 3.1 the phone is misbehaving horribly.

Every two hours or so it freezes right after locking (either manually by pressing the power button or by the screen blanking due to time).

I have MUCH worse battery life than I did before, and I seem to be dropping calls like mad.

I can't help but wonder if they tested this update AT ALL?

They make fun of Windows in their adds on TV, but in my humble opinion the software Apple releases is many many times worse. It just works? ********. If this doesnt get fixed, and soon, I'm dumping this stupid phone. It's been more trouble than its been worth.

What is the "Found the Power/Standby button combo and it seemed to solve the problem, for now." When mine goes into the coma I have tried holding down the power and home button and it will not reset. I have even held them down for several minutes. After an hour or so it will let me power it up.

Hi All,

My phone has't shut down for more than 24 hours after I update iTunes 9.0.1 and push the restore button in iTunes.

I am keeping close monitor for it.

Just thought I'd provide a little update to this even though I might be tempting fate.

It's been a week since I used the procedure below and I haven't had the problem reappear. I've seen a lot of folks doing the restore and not having the same luck. The only difference might be that I deleted the old software and made it download a fresh copy of 3.1. So far, so good. However, I am fully willing to acknowledge that your mileage may vary.

It would be nice, though, if Apple would officially acknowledge that there is an issue. Surely, folks at 1 Infinite Loop are having the same trouble.

Brian Bass wrote:
I, too, am having this problem with my iPhone 3G. Interestingly, my iPhone 2G hasn't been affected. The terrible thing is that I purchased my iPhone 3G on 9/12/08 and so it is currently out of warranty. Unfortunate. Since so many others are having the problem (this is the longest thread I think I've ever seen in the Apple Discussions), I'm fairly certain this is a software or firmware problem and not hardware. So I've decided to restore from a fresh version of the 3.1 software, set it up as a "new" phone, and see what happens. Here are the steps I took:

1. Delete the old 3.1 software. Do this by going to the following location in your home folder:

Library -> iTunes -> iPhone Software Updates

Once there, delete the file called "iPhone1,23.1_7C144Restore.ipsw."

2. Launch iTunes, plug in phone, and tell it to restore the phone. At this point it will download a fresh version of the 3.1 software and install it for you.

3. When it comes time to set up as new phone or restore from backup, tell iTunes to set it up as a new phone. It's not that painful and syncing contacts, calendars, etc. means that there is only a minimum of configuration that needs to be done.

So that's where I am at the moment. Hopefully, that will take care of things. I'll post back in a couple of days if I haven't seen the problem return. If it does return, I'll probably post back here sooner than that.

Cheers.

I'm having the same problem. iPhone 3G, Software Version 3.1
1. I'll hit the sleep/wake button and put my phone back in my pocket after sending a text.
2. 30 mins later, I'll take my phone back out, and the screen will be off, which is normal.
3. I hit the Home button. No response. Still a black screen.
4. I hit the Sleep/Wake button. No response.
5. I flip the vibrate switch, just to see if the phone responds. Nothing.
6. I hold the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons both down at the same time until the Apple logo comes up on the screen.
7. The phone turns back on and works fine, until I do step 1 again. Then the problems start all over.

I'm having all of these problems EXCEPT that my 3G phone is logging into wireless networks much easier with update 3.1 now and automatically... but the crashing is happening and I am getting weird screens that have part of the landscape and portrait view when I am in i-tunes.. Watching movies is crashing... and it is very sluggish...even when answering calls...b

Forgot to mention that some days the battery is dropping down to nothing by 2pm... Seems like an application must be running in the background or something... It doesn't make sense...but the i-phone is going to be a dangerous phone to have if we have a major disaster...it is the only thing I don't like about it... us i-phone users will have all the types of access in the world but no battery to power them.

I had the coma problem as typically described.

I called Applecare and told them what was happening. They acknowledged that it was a known issue with the 3.1 update and gave me a case number to go in to the apple store and get a new iphone.

The only problem was when I got the replacement phone, with 3.0.1 on it, I had to upgrade to 3.1 before itunes would let me restore my backup. This was on Monday... so far no problems with 3.1 on this phone (knock on wood).