Q: Mysterious random total shut downs following 3.1 update

It happened twice more today. I had locked it after using the camera on both occasions, but it has crashed before in situations after which I was not using the camera.

Boo.

same thing here. screen goes and stays completely black after it sleeps or after i lock it. then it wont respond to any input or display anything. home button does nothing. sometimes a hard reboot fixes it, and sometimes that does nothing as well and i just have to wait; then after a few minutes it mysteriously starts responding again.

this problem appeared after 3.1 upgrade, but wasn't the first problem an upgrade caused. the upgrade to 3.0 from the previous OS sent my phone into recovery mode **** from which i had a doozy of a time returning.

how many nearly identical complaints will finally move apple to action???

FRUSTRATING!!!

I have exactly the same problem except that it has happened 10 times, yes, 10x, since the 3.1 update.

same thing here. screen goes and stays completely black after it sleeps or after i lock it. then it wont respond to any input or display anything. home button does nothing. sometimes a hard reboot fixes it, and sometimes that does nothing as well and i just have to wait; then after a few minutes it mysteriously starts responding again.

this problem appeared after 3.1 upgrade, but wasn't the first problem an upgrade caused. the upgrade to 3.0 from the previous OS sent my phone into recovery mode **** from which i had a doozy of a time returning.

how many nearly identical complaints will finally move apple to action???

FRUSTRATING!!!

There is nothing mysterious about it but it is very disappointing.

With each 3.x update my 3G iPhone is getting slower and slower. I get odd behaviours: battery draining fast, soemtimes mail, safari, or what not will open but the screen will remain blank, once, the screen was blacked out as in sleep mode and I had to recycle power.

I believe that they are not testing and I believe one or more key programmers have been lured away; because in general, companies don't want to acknowlege the true value of good programmers to the bottom line. They want to pay them as if anyone off the street could do that type work. It also appears Apple has been outsourcing key work to India because these bugs are exactly the kinds of things you'd miss if someone with only superficial knowlege of your product were running tests based on some scripted playbook they or someone else had conceived.

Finally, even with the testing being insufficient it is clear that the worst of these bugs did not go undetected but were knowingly swept under the rug.

The iPhone is quickly morphing into something of the quality of Windows Mobile OS. Apple had best cleanup their act or the iPhone will be dropped like a hot potato.

#

I phone 3g 16gig. same problem as everyone else. have to do hard reset 10+ times a day. went to apple store. tech said he has heard of the problem before, then proceeds to tell me i have water damage and that’s why it keeps shutting down. he said he has heard of the problem before and “don’t believe the posts on the internet, that’s why its called the UNOFFICIAL webblog.” i proceeded to ask for manager. manager says its water damage and she never heard of anyone having same problem. tech now says he never said he heard of the same problem. i asked them to at least acknowledge there is a problem. they wouldn’t and proceeded to throw me out of the store!!! APPLE READ THIS!!! YOUR LOSING CUSTOMERS AND YOUR NOT HOLDING UP TO YOUR REPUTATION OF BUILDING THE RIGHT PRODUCT THE FIRST TIME AROUND!! I guess it doesn’t matter that I have spent over $4,000 in apple products. VERY DISSATISFIED!! I use this phone for the “portfolio live” app, which assists in my day trading. I need this!! Please fix!!
# Frank C Says:
October 4th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

…by the way, i treat my iphone like a small child…no water damage…I called them liars and the tech couldn’t even admit he told me earlier about the problem with other people too. Apparently Apple has even told their managers not to acknowledge the issue. CRAZY!!

Second Trip to the Apple Store did not solve the problem. I didn't expect it to, but at least they acknowledged the problem this time, and a file was opened unlike the last time.

A different Apple Genius even offered to replace the phone if I understood that I shouldn't update the OS until a fix was announced. This of course would have left it without the new features like MMS. The warning to leave the replacement phone at the earlier OS confirms they know they have a widespread problem. I wonder if all the refurbished iPhone are coming through with the earlier version? If they are is this shut down bug the reason?

As it was my daughter's phone I let her decide. She kept her phone and chose to wait for the fix. If it were me I'd had gone with a replacement phone that was stable.

I do feel a little better about the way this was handled by the Apple Store the second time around. But of course the issue is still there and I may very well be back to the Apple Store, and this thread should this issue continue without a solution.

skygoat wrote:

I believe that they are not testing and I believe one or more key programmers have been lured away; because in general, companies don't want to acknowlege the true value of good programmers to the bottom line. They want to pay them as if anyone off the street could do that type work. It also appears Apple has been outsourcing key work to India because these bugs are exactly the kinds of things you'd miss if someone with only superficial knowlege of your product were running tests based on some scripted playbook they or someone else had conceived.

The iPhone is quickly morphing into something of the quality of Windows Mobile OS. Apple had best cleanup their act or the iPhone will be dropped like a hot potato.

Some sweeping statements here with little evidence to back them up. I would welcome some facts on these as you make some interesting comments? Software development is a large and complex beast that never delivers 100% (even in apples case) quality releases. I would agree in this case a critical defect appears to have escaped and would assume that at this very moment a fix is being developed. Outsourcing to India or anywhere outside the US does not imply poor/insufficient work practices, almost all of the large tech companies use overseas development/test resources to drive costs down. There are good and bad developers/QA teams everywhere!

Message was edited by: musicvan

Frank Cal wrote:

I phone 3g 16gig. same problem as everyone else. have to do hard reset 10+ times a day. went to apple store. tech said he has heard of the problem before, then proceeds to tell me i have water damage and that’s why it keeps shutting down. he said he has heard of the problem before and “don’t believe the posts on the internet, that’s why its called the UNOFFICIAL webblog.” i proceeded to ask for manager. manager says its water damage and she never heard of anyone having same problem. tech now says he never said he heard of the same problem. i asked them to at least acknowledge there is a problem. they wouldn’t and proceeded to throw me out of the store!!! APPLE READ THIS!!! YOUR LOSING CUSTOMERS AND YOUR NOT HOLDING UP TO YOUR REPUTATION OF BUILDING THE RIGHT PRODUCT THE FIRST TIME AROUND!! I guess it doesn’t matter that I have spent over $4,000 in apple products. VERY DISSATISFIED!! I use this phone for the “portfolio live” app, which assists in my day trading. I need this!! Please fix!!
# Frank C Says:
October 4th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

…by the way, i treat my iphone like a small child…no water damage…I called them liars and the tech couldn’t even admit he told me earlier about the problem with other people too. Apparently Apple has even told their managers not to acknowledge the issue. CRAZY!!

Suspect that Apple Store people have no more knowledge of what is going on than most people here, they are not directly connected to Apple Devs. They work on what support information they currently have, which for this problem is what they see in the stores or what customers tell them. Until Apple fire out a support update with a root cause fix (a firmware update) then its a holding exercise. The only people who will know what the real problem is are Devs at Apple R&D. So expect no more than the usual swap or restore info.

ok, i was trying to figure out what the official 'fine print' says just before upgrading to 3.1 (because i never saw anything ever to warn me about the 'can't go back if the upgrade doesn't work' issue, and a 'not so funny' thing happened: I GOT NO WARNING OR EULA!

The update just 'started'. it did a backup of the phone, than extracted and stated installing 3.1 ouch.

So after half a dozen hoops since the install barfed with 1601 and 1610 errors.. I did this:

Make a new user on the mac
DFU the phone
follow the steps to upgrade to 3.1
reboot the phone
update MMS carrier settings.
reboot the phone again.

there is a positive sign: when i did a DFU update to 3.1 in the past; the hiccups happened within 20 seconds. I have not had a hang yet after about an hour, and so far everything i did was quite responsive.

I'm going to try to detail any settings i changed as i go to see if there is a possible way to 'clean install' and get the problem to go away.

(and if not, i'll have to figure out a tutorial that works for non-intel macs 'cause the iRecovery software is apparently intel only and i have PPC.)

The things i've done so far:

1) i did NOT restore from any backup or install any program.
2) i set up two email accts; both with push: using active sync to google apps and mobile me.
3) m.me account was set to sync everything. (it's awesome because i don't have to sync or restore to the mac and all my contacts + calendars will be on the phone).
4) set time to 24hr; (which in an older version of the OS would cause programs to crash)
5) logged onto my wifi network
6) auto-lock set to 3 min vs 1
7) re-create my 'favorites' since i'm not going to do a restore from backup


normally i install the russian and indonesian keyboards but leaving them off. I set the keyboard to NOT click and i did NOT install auto pin lock.

i left all the other stuff on (safari anti phish etc; all at defaults unless i mentioned.

i'll be back to post if it keep working. about to have the wife call n leave a voicemail.

-awr

iPhone 3G 16GB.... random lock ups 4-5 or more times a day... hard resetting like everyone else. This has been the most disappointing software release on any Apple platform to date, stability wise, and I have been an Apple customer since 1998.

Seriously NOT impressed.

I have experienced the same problem. My iPhone has shut down at random times after upgrading to 3.1.

Same thing for me. My phone will go to sleep mode and will not be usable until several minutes pass or after resetting the phone. This is apparently a software problem after the 3.1 update. After 3 visits to the genius bar, about 6 "restores" to the original settings (including removal of all apps, contacts, emails, photos) AND a new iphone, it is still occurring. Apple assures me that people are working "around the clock" to fix this but I have exhausted all other ways to correct this. I asked if my phone could be changed back to 3.0 or if I brought my desktop in that they could fix this and the answer was no. I think I am left with missing calls, text messages, until 3.2 comes out....

Same here with my 3G. Random shutdown and poor battery life!

musicvan wrote:

skygoat wrote:

I believe that they are not testing and I believe one or more key programmers have been lured away; because in general, companies don't want to acknowlege the true value of good programmers to the bottom line. They want to pay them as if anyone off the street could do that type work. It also appears Apple has been outsourcing key work to India because these bugs are exactly the kinds of things you'd miss if someone with only superficial knowlege of your product were running tests based on some scripted playbook they or someone else had conceived.

The iPhone is quickly morphing into something of the quality of Windows Mobile OS. Apple had best cleanup their act or the iPhone will be dropped like a hot potato.

Some sweeping statements here with little evidence to back them up. I would welcome some facts on these as you make some interesting comments? Software development is a large and complex beast that never delivers 100% (even in apples case) quality releases. I would agree in this case a critical defect appears to have escaped and would assume that at this very moment a fix is being developed. Outsourcing to India or anywhere outside the US does not imply poor/insufficient work practices, almost all of the large tech companies use overseas development/test resources to drive costs down. There are good and bad developers/QA teams everywhere!

Message was edited by: musicvan

as mad as i am at apple for this ludicrous situation, i'm going to have to side with musicvan here; it is absoultely impossible to make a bug-free update, 100% impossible. That said, it's just plain moronic in my opinion to send out an update to 40,000,000 users that you can not un-do. Plenty of times in the past everybody has had a similar problem where a new update 'just didn't take' and the answer was to just 'undo'... didn't apple invent UNDO?

-awr