Q: Mysterious random total shut downs following 3.1 update

My iPhone 3G doesn't get the coma issue, but it does have the issue where it appears to have full 3G signal, yet no calls or data can be used. No internet, mail, messages, or calls will go through. The phone won't pick up any wifi networks either. The only solution is to turn off 3G and use EDGE. Replacing the phone isn't an option because the 3G comes loaded with 2.X out of the box. I'm still within my 30 days so I'm tempted to just get my money back and get another phone or something.

Downloading the 3.0.1 restore image now. Wish me luck.

This is ridiculous. Apple needs to fix what they broke.

I know this has been mentioned earlier in the thread but just want to reiterate to all that this is the only work around that I have found to work successfully:

Settings>General>Autolock>Never

This is a pain in the *** but it has worked for me since the people at Apple swapped out my phone a week ago. In full disclosure I brought in my last one because of the shutdowns/comas and they immediately swapped it out. I have been locked up in this current model about 4 or 5 times since having it replaced last Wednesday.

How to rollback to older OS?

Again, there is NO fix beyond downgrading. Your options are to downgrade following the instructions linked to on page 116 of this thread, or wait for Apple to update.

Removing MobileMe is not a fix and will only cause you more headaches in the long run. There are plenty of reports of users having this problem who do not have MobileMe. I am inclined to think that it does have something to do with the radio in the phone, so that's why people have more trouble when Push is on. But turning push off does not solve it; it may only reduce it.

I'm going to try figuring that out. First I'm going to try the "out of the box" solution, which is to Shift+Click "Check for Updates" in iTunes and select the 3.0.1 restore file (which you will need to download).

Hey Fed Up Customer,
Obviously you are not thinking before you type.
AT&T has nothing to do with this problem.
So, if your TV breaks down, you are not going to pay your cable bill because you cannot watch cable tv?! Come on!
If you are going to post, please think first.
thank you

i think it's been about 50 hours now, and i did get ONE total-lock out, but before going 'retrograde', i had an unusable phone all the time, regardless of the 2-3x/day it 'went coma'.

I still have only installed/removed/installed ONE program; it happens to use push so the notification panel came out of hiding in prefs while installed... thinking that maybe was the culprit i removed it... but than wanting to try to reproduce the crash WHILE logging, i put it back in shortly after, and still no problems to report.

even though i didn't put my full compliment of programs on... i typically have 4-5 working pages in safari, i have 1400 contacts syncing to m.me and have two push email (m.me and active-sync google apps) with maybe 20-30 folders between them, so there is a LOT of network activity.

I think the GPS is even working but not sure.. it used to make the little 'ping' wave around the dot; i think i may have to go outside and double-check soon.

I am a registered apple developer, there is a 'bug-report' forum where you do actually get feedback time to time from the sw engineers.

re: vista; yeah i never had any 'bad experience' myself, but just like this situation, those who did get it bad got it BAD. The difference there; you could 'go back to XP' and have a working computer immediately. (well a couple hrs).

michaelab wrote:
The "bugs" you mention in your post are not bugs, but feature requests, which Apple are at their liberty to ignore. Genuine bugs are not ignored. All the ones I've reported (all genuine bugs) have been fixed in subsequent firmware releases.

yes some bugs some feature request; i have a list going back to the first day i had the iPhone with actual bugs, not fixed, but just low enough priority.

Feature Request:
Why can't we assign a ring tone to a group on an iPhone?

Bug:
Why can't we SEE our RELATIVES? (i.e. son/spouse) on an iPhone!? (bug because it's a port of address book and somehow disappeared). it's not really different from not listing the PHONE number, which 100% would agree would be a bug.. and 'oversight to extreme' IMHO is a bug! It would NOT be acceptable to NOT show the address, somehow it is perfectly fine to erase your wife and son.

Bug:
why can't we route in a map to a lat/long? (bug because it WORKED in os 1!).. it worked in 2.2 and maybe even 3.0.. as long as the lat/long was close enough to a road that it could derive a calculated address.

Bug:
why does 'map' ADD ON 'united states' to any address even when it 'breaks' (bug because likewise; USED to work, stopped working, not sure how you define a bug).

most of my reports fall in the Usability Interface category, true, but the page is called 'bugreport'

thanks for the tip on the stack shot; i'm not sure how hard-coded that is, but if you can hard-reset with home+sleep, it makes perfect sense, so i'll do that any time before i reset in the future.

Interesting thought about 3G off helping; at least 2-3x/year my 3G goes belly up.. i can't make or receive calls even with 4 bars... the ONLY way i can make a call is turning off 3G.. so i'm sure that in some instances that could help a crippled phone out.. it't no 'cure' for sure.

I wanted to mention in case i forgot; battery life is A-OK for me right now.. i can't say today since it's been plugged in to the computer full-time, but i may have had a record runtime the first session after the successful upgrade.

dcg13 wrote:
I can't stand those apple commercials anymore that say apples never crash, we're the best, no problems ever, and they try to kill microsoft saying they have all these problems but look at YOUR IPHONE! IT CRASHES AT LEAST 10x A DAY!

my vote for best quote on the whole thread!

i will personally vouch for the stability of os-x on a MAC... and actually.. i'm quite sure that if the iPhone wasn't such a locked-in architecture we would have no problem servicing this issue.. a full-re-install of the OS including low-level format of the drive would probably fix 95% of the phones with the coma bug.. it's the FACT that this ability doesn't exist which is the root of this problem.

because of the ∞ variations among any piece of so-called identical hardware, there will ALWAYS be some phones that won't 'take' an update for reasons that are so minute that it could be impossible to figure out.. this doesn't make the sw engineers any less amazing at their jobs; the software they churn out is unparalleled.

I ONLY have issue with the ONE thing that brought us ALL here: the no-restore policy. If we all could have retrograded to 3.0 2-3 days after 3.1 nuc'd our phones, this thread would have 4 pages right now. To add insult upon injury... considering how my phone is running right now (does seem to be coma-bug-free.. there may be some bugs (it did crash once in 50 hrs so far).. but it behaves, and the real 'key' to what i did was to install 3.0 and then 3.1 again... there is more than a small chance that had we all been able to just downgrade to 3.0 and right back to 3.1, a majority of us would have working 3.1 phones right now.

My phone had/has the 'magic bean' that brought out the comabug. my phone does not seem to have the coma bug any more. i did not mess with settings, i just didn't add programs yet.

with comabug; it locked up 20 seconds after boot the first time i re-installed 3.1 (which has happend more than a dozen, maybe 20 times on my poor phone).. it also used to take 3-5 minutes to boot.. now: 60 seconds to lit home screen; 70 'til i can operate it.

Since nobody has any clue how many of us there are, but logically with 2000 posts here, and about 300-500,000 page views in various copy-cat threads around the globe, i would estimate between 10,000 and 100,000 folk. I'm sure that people are affected to various degrees and 1000s of people just think that it runs a little slower in 3.1, when the reality is 3.1 is far faster from my experience than 3.01 (the main reason i upgraded). That said.. with a projected sales rate of over 20M/year and i think something like 35M active phones? (apple just claimed 50M ipod/iphones the same day of 3.1 release according to an article i just found)...

anyhow if you take 200,000 people and divide by 50,000,000 you get 0.4% yup that's right not EVEN 1 %.. it takes HALF A MILLION to reach ONE percent! that's still not a 'wide spread' problem and definitely not an epidemic.

Sure is here an sure is suck when you're on 'this end' of that 'bean counting stick' though.,

I am making a petition where people can log in to get a head-count. i'm not sure what the rules here say, i may not be allowed to promote or show the link (it's not done yet anyhow), but i will get it running and hopefully most with the comabug will sign it to get counted and we can finally have some idea of at least the 'net saavy iphone comabug users, rather than just no clue for real.

re: ipod 'treatment' for the coma.. the 'coma' as it's become known is from when it goes to sleep and you can't wake it up; it NEVER sleeps if playing iPod, that was a very smart solution as a workaround if you ONLY have coma problems.

MY phone was unresponsive while awake.. not sure what to call that? 'zombie' ? but also had coma; it was just unbearable; i only found out 6 days after several VERY URGENT voicemails were left, that those clients even called.. 'emergency monday morning exchange server down' kinda problem... not exactly the best time to find out your biggest client's enterprise server is down. (a WEEK later!).

It was surprising that after downgrading to 3.01 all of a sudden visual voicemail came to life. It did seem awfully peaceful for those days though!

re: the whole apple treating us 'vocal minority' like, em well a 'vocal minority'; it does suck but they do have to figure out the best to do for everybody including: 1) the 95-98% of users not affected, the stockholders, etc. etc. running a multibillion $ company that is one of the ONLY ones to stay afloat through the recession; last i checked, the stock was just about the peak, recovering all losses of the recession.

my opinion is there is some 'hedging' going on; if they say too much too soon, that's not going to help... letting a few hundred or a few 1000s stew in anger, they may be just throwing the dice that a few of us will forgive when they come out with the double-size iPod touch ;-D (especially if they keep track of who went through coma **** and give us a discount

anyhow; to me.. apple is like that bossy annoying cousin that you still hang out with 'cause he's got the cool toys, and though he is gruff and pushes you in the dirt for fun when you were little, there is some family tie and i think that the majority of us would bleed a bit in six colors.

If i had another comatose phone i would try to replicate what happened on my phone. (of course.. it may go belly up in an hour but 30,000 hrs experience on a computer has me betting that i'm cured of the coma.. i think there is likely other small memory leaks etc that will cause a crash once in a while, but this phone is not the same phone i had 10 days ago when i was forced to downgrade).

my phone started behaving perfectly when this happened:

during upgrade from 3.01 to 3.1 (accident; was not happy about that.. iTunes did NOT stop/pause to show me the EULA.. i'm a moron; rather than google the EULA i tried to reproduce it by plugging my phone into iTunes and waiting for the screen; it never showed and started putting on 3.1).

anyhow; iPhone crashed DURING the install; sometime after the data was sent and started installing/unpacking etc.

it was very difficult to get out of 'recovery' and back to DFU since i had no feedback at all other than insisting on showing me the recovery screen, but i did get DFU and restored a second time from a brand-new DLD in a NEW user on the mac... and i could INSTANTLY tell a difference; all the interaction was instantaneous.. and that 50-60 hours later is the same. I had one coma, and it was within 10 minutes of setting it down.. i could handle a crash every 30-60 hours 'til 3.2 comes out if i have to.

techcommdood wrote:
OK, so what are ALL OF US doing wrong then? Me, I put it down or put it in my pocket, go to use it, and brick.

I'm all too familiar with QA. Something this widespread really should have been caught. Shame on Apple for releasing such a crappy update. And if this is related to AT&T/3G, shame on both AT&T and Apple for such horrible infrastructure support.

if you took a poll of those HERE.. 80-90+% have the problem; feels pretty wide-spread.World-wide.. i'd bet less than 3%.. maybe more like 1-2%; that is not a surprising number at all for 'install complications'..

When i would do a 'batch upgrade' of a dozen or so PCs in an office.. i would make a master hard drive.. format EACH computer's drive and clone the master to the computer... inevitably of 10-12 IDENTICAL computers.. ala iMac or such with no hardware differences save the possibility that some had slightly different RAM... some computers would actually NOT EVEN BOOT.

these were all working computers, running say os6 getting identical upgrade full format of the drive style, and yet some computers failed. i've seen it enough in the 100s of computers ive overhauled this way to know the odds are closer to 2-3% than less than 1%, so should it be of ANY surprise that maybe 1/2 of a % of iPhone users have a install complication?

re: m.me account causing the problem; i have m.me pushing about 10 calendars, from 2 accounts and 1400 contacts with plenty having iPhone size pictures so it's 15MB.. the FIRST thing i did after the last and apparently (for now) functional copy of 3.1 was turn on my push m.me account, and i'm on wifi for about 5hrs/day every day (bat) and the other 19hrs /day plugged in. (well there might be 1-2 hrs i'm on 3G when running errands). So.. like people have mentioned before.. all these annecdotal solutions are band-aids that are helping and for whatever unknown reason one works on one phone vs the other.. any change could have an effect like this, but NONE of these, not even the 'crash during install' which is what seemed to help me has any high probability of helping.. now in the case of just 'never shut off'... well if it is only the coma problem than that should be pretty durn effective! but in my case the 'dumbasapost' issue was my problem .

i just had to laugh a bit... i do have my iPhone plugged in at least 3/4 of the time.. that could be influencing the current state of stability (not having a desire to deep-sleep since has external power). hmmm. just a thought.

ATTemp wrote:
I am having the same problem with my Iphone 3G , but i cannot get it to come on at all now ... even with all the hard resets. This is very frustrating as my warranty expired a few weeks ago and I have no phone to use at this point.

Apple needs to get on the ball and figure this whole thing out as I saw people in an AT&T store buying a new Iphone and boy are they going to be upset if they update to 3.1 and have the same problems. Wanna bet Apple will lose customers real quick if they don't get this 3.1 update off their servers?!

they have leeway on the 1yr cut-off; i've seen stories of leniency of a month.. print out a few pages of this thread and go in and say how the phone has worked perfect 'til 3.1

I think i may put all my apps/photos/tunes back on tonight and see if that will poke the gremlin inside.. i'm just so surprised to have my phone come on every time i hit the home button.. I do it just for fun now (of course poking every 10 minutes might be what's keeping it out of the coma :-D

solution: poke home button at least every 10 minutes, 24 hours/day

(obviously kidding)

ouch that was a freeking long post, my thumb actually hurts i have blister from the spacebar.

I had a couple days of no lock outs, then today its been very bad. I have had to hard reset 5-6 time, once during an actual call the phone screen locked up on black. I knew this because a text came in during the call, and when I looked at the screen it was blank. From this point forward the call quality was very poor and after the other line hung up, I had to hard reset to get back to normal. Starting to make me feel like this is a hardware failure, that unfortunately is occuring to most users who have older 3G phones. Makybe the accelerometer is dying, I don't know.

I am certain that my battery life has severly decreased in the past month, I think in conjunction with the 3.1 update.

I will be surprised at this point if Apple announces anything major in the way of a fix. Most out of warranty iphone users will just get new iphones.

ATTemp wrote:
Hey Fed Up Customer,
Obviously you are not thinking before you type.
AT&T has nothing to do with this problem.
So, if your TV breaks down, you are not going to pay your cable bill because you cannot watch cable tv?! Come on!
If you are going to post, please think first.
thank you

I never said this is AT&T's fault in the first place. But I really appreciate your suggestion.

This has really been a frustrating experience with the update to 3.1. I mean come on, Apple has had an attack campaign on Microsoft for releasing Vista, but then they release this POS that in my opinion is far beyond the troubles I had with Vista. At least with Vista I could add a ton of ram and could work day to day in production and non-production environments and at home, with some issues, but nothing like this. Windows 7 has been an absolute joy to work with compared to Vista, but still you attack MS for Vista and this software update for the iPhone has been disabling to my productivity, not too mention my personal life. I am constantly checking to see if my iPhone is even on, and today has been the absolute worst. I mean literally has gone into a coma about 40 times, compared to other days of either 3-5 or maybe upwards of 10 times. After this day I had to go past the usual iPhone forums I read (EIC) and come to the Apple discussion board. I am planning on going to the Apple store tomorrow and hopefully getting a refurb, but hopefully with 3.0 on it. I love my iphone, had one since the beginning, was planning instead of upgrading my 3G to the 3Gs, just waiting till the multi core next gen one comes out, but after this and the lack of response, well seeing what else is out there is seeming like more of an option. The iPhone is by far the most enjoyable phone I've ever had (used to train users on Blackberries), but this update has made me realize that maybe stability is what I should base my choice on, not just all the bells and whistles.....Apple I really hope this isn't Karma coming back to bite your @ss....please just fix your software instead of focussing on bashing everyone elses....just my 2 cents worth.

I restored my phone. I was getting the shutdowns around once a day. So far it's been two weeks since I restored and it's been ok. I don't know why this would fix it for me and not for others but I've got my fingers crossed. Let's see.

The downgrade instructions linked on Page 116 (Page 116!!!) have been taken down -- cue conspiracy theories here. Does anyone know of an alternate site with information on how to downgrade?

I just swung past the local Apple Store today and did a little experiment. I checked the firmware versions of the iPhones (3G and 3GS) that were on display. Not one of them had 3.1 installed on them. Most of them were at 3.0, a few on 3.0.1.

Seems to indicate to me that Apple knows there are issues with 3.1, otherwise you would have thought they would install it on all their display phones :P

I've been having problems since the update, and I finally decided to check here to see if anyone is getting similar probs. Only about 50 pages of posts on it, YIKES.

Mine doesn't always shut down, but functionality just quits, like the phone, internet etc. It reverts with rebooting, but before the update, I don't think I've had to reboot more than a couple of times the many months I've had the phone. It seems it has to be the program, no?