Q: Mysterious random total shut downs following 3.1 update

restore did nothing for me.

I have since turned off my 3G after repeated issues and it seems to resolve it for now. My phone even seems to run a bit faster as well.

Same here. Turned 3G off and no shutdowns so far.

Maybe this is the source of the bug. Can survive without 3G (for now) rather than random shutdowns.

Hope there's an update soon.

ATP11,

I understood your point, I was just countering that MS does admit most faults they find. Sometimes though, the fault is impossible to find (like yours). You have some options at your disposal to possibly fix the problem.

With Apple, and this issue, they keep their mouths shut, and prevent solutions, which of course they have to do, cause if they allow solutions, it's admitting there is a problem. Microsoft offers a more open, public environment. This is great, but causes problems with hardware/software compatibilities. They have to be public with their issues/fixes.

With apple, they are a closed environment. They have limited proprietary hardware and software. There compatibility lists are short in comparison to MS's. Apple has far less of a reason to not get it right. Apple can't blame anybody but themselves. MS can always blame HP, HP can always blame Adobe....blah blah blah.

So I believe MS is good at admitting mistakes when appropriate. You will never see that kind of openness with Apple. Doing so would be too much of an image issue.

Add my name to the list of people whose iPhone likes to randomly brick itself.

This also seems related to the battery drain.

There is either a memory leak or some background process that goes haywire and clogs the CPU which results in both the bricking and the dead battery. I soemtimes find my iPhone warm as if I had left Google Earth on and spinning.

Just to fan the flames:

Is Apple falling off its game? Are they starting to feel M$oft's pain when it comes to supporting infinite hardware combinations?

You have a different definition of infinite than I do. Apple has three models of iPhone, if you count the original version. They make the hardware, the OS and approve all third-party apps. They could easily have avoided this situation with widespread beta testing, but then they wouldn't have been able to bring the tech world to a halt during Steve's presentation.

Dear FredOx,

Your ignorance is refreshing. I never expected such a thing on the Apple forums.

The iPhone is hardly the only thing running OS X software. I also highly doubt that the hardware is exactly the same. Products are frequently refreshed and sometimes that's as simple as a memory supplier.

The iPhone might be a relatively simple platform but there's also a massive performance gap from the original iPhone to the 3GS. Also, you neglect the iTouch iPods and anything else they have up their sleeves for the future.

I wonder if this, and other wide-spread issues, was introduced by their constant need to thwart jail-breakers. It seems they might have more pressing concerns than people who want to run their own software on a device in their possession.

I'm sure Apple can afford testing but nothing replicates 40 million devices in the wild on a plethora of networks in innumerable situations that affect cell signal and other variables.

I'm totally OK with this software glitch, it comes with the territory. Maybe 10 years of gaming on Windows makes me used to flubs, glitches, and minor hangups.

The battery thing is annoying but I've learned to keep my charger handy.

(Edit: That said it would be nice to have the battery life from the previous firmware and not receiving calls, e-mails, and texts when in coma-mode does make it difficult to find oneself out in the cuts and not receiving urgent text messages. "Why didn't you pick up some milk?!?!".)

Message was edited by: JimmyKerrigan

Time to pile on. My phone is suffering the same problem. I have the most recent version of the OS, and I've restored it several times. I'll turn off 3G to see if that works.

Its been 4 weeks since Apple released 3.1 I certainly think it is about time for 3.1.1. Maybe they have no idea what the problem is.

NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING has worked for me except playing audio 24/7 with the volume all the way down. Currently, I'm playing a Neal Stephenson book on repeat. I have not experienced a coma since last Friday. I was getting 12 a day and I went to zero with this method. I tried turning it off and got three comas in three hours.

For now, I'm sticking with the audio method.

Dear Nick Farwell,

Some people reported success with turning 3G off. Has this worked for you? I've not had the chance to try it.

Add me to the list I am struggling with this as I have brought my phone in and they have looked it over and swapped it out for me which I really wasnt looking for....Ive had to hard reset several times. I have gone to leaving it "on" and having it set to "Never" shutdown. Although when I do this my phone has locked up a few times when I go to make calls. I will try out turning 3G off and hope that it works.

No. 3G being off still resulted in comas. Wifi being off resulted in comas. MobileMe sync being off, notifications off, everything short of rolling back to 3.0.1 resulted in comas.

This is, so far, a pretty innocuous method to keep my expensive tool alive.

lol, yeah. It is a bit funny though to leave something running with the audio off. I really do now wonder just what is causing the coma...