Q: Mysterious random total shut downs following 3.1 update

My phone totally shuts down over and over since the next morning after I upgraded to 3.1. I must have had it happen more than 20 times in the 5 times days since I installed 3.1.

It's unbelievable that after how often this is happening to so many iPhone owners that there has not been a solution for this yet. What are we supposed to do? Just keep manually resetting the phone every time it shuts down?

OK. I had major problem even getting the update to load from iTunes. After several tries, I totally abandoned my efforts out of total frustration, as I am not exactly one of the most computer literate people out there.

Then I started reading all theses posts!!! I have not even dared to think about updating my phone or iTunes due to my complete paranoia that my iPhone will inexplicably become an expensive paperweight or simply explode before my eyes.

Should I just leave it until there is a fix? Am I going to HAVE to update it to this troublesome version??? I have the 32g 3Gs - if that means anything.

Replies welcome....

Hi guys! I've been experiencing similar issue with my iphone 3g. Its normally happen after a long time of browsing or playing games on my phone. After i lock it sometimes it just wont wake again. Twice ive to hard reset, but once i just woke up after a few mins. Luckily i've extended my warranty as i've foresee these issue will happen. Strongly encourage you guys to extent it too!

Best of luck!

I just wanted to put in my 2 cents (as if it's needed considering all the posts and views thus far). My phone has become extremely unstable after the 3.1 update (wishing I never did it in the first place, and I should have come here first when I was having an issue). Can't exactly pinpoint it to the update or what is causing the blackscreens/random freezes that require a hard reset. Tried to restore numerous times to no avail. 3G 16Gb. Phone was perfect before the update, haden't had a single problem. So I went ahead and called Applecare because I have some time left before my original warranty is up. The first rep I talked to said they coulden't help me because my "3 months of phone support" had expired. 1st, I was just trying to report my issue as the representitive haden't heard of this issue. The person barely wanted to talk to me, much less hear my issue. So I asked to speak with a supervisor. This person haden't heard of the issue, told me to restore (which I had done already once) and proceeded to do it again. This did absolutly nothing, as right after the factory setting (without any apps or anything) I got the black screen. The support rep said they would send me another overnight (I had to pay a $500 deposit do to the advanced replacement because I can't be without a phone, but anything is better than having an unusable phone). So I"m waiting for it to arrive, and i'm not going to update for a long while. I have no idea if it was my phone that was malfunctioning, but considering the issues that other people are having here, i'm not the only one. Has to be the update. Hope apple will make the patch for it (if it wasnt' my phone the whole time)...

Oh, man. I am totally relieved to find out that not just my phone is "on the blink." 3G, 8GB, OS 3.1. Shuts down on its own at least once daily! I mean, that would be cool if I had actually asked it to shut off LOL. Looking forward to the resolution. . .

I think the issue is WiFi related. At home iPhone always works fine; it is connected to my wireless router. At the office I get this issue periodically. At home I use WPA2 personal security settings, but I'm not sure what kind of WPA2 we have at the office (tech person set the phone for me)

Just wanted to throw in a small update on my iPhone 3G. Since updating to OS 3.1, I have been experiencing the "coma" problem when my phone was idle for a period of time. I tried several of the proposed "fixes" listed in this forum, and elsewhere, but nothing worked, until I tried turning push off. Having tested several other fixes, this seems to be the only one that works for me so far. I do use Google sync, and I have left that function intact, but I simply set my mail accounts (Hotmail and GMail) to fetch every 30 minutes. Having done so, at the time of this writing, I have had no "comas," and I have also noticed my battery performance has stabilized.

Just for disclosure purposes, I have notifications turned on, but only for one app (Todo Lite). I also have the fraud feature in Safari turned off. Neither turning notifications off (completely), not turning the fraud function in Safari off prevented my phone from going into the "coma" before, however.

I know several other people have probably tried turning push off as well, with little or no success, however I wanted to share my experience here, if for no other reason than to provide information for anyone who may be in a position to provide a fix/help.

I have total random shutdowns during sleep and "no sim card" message randomly... It happened at least 10 times since I upgraded to 3.1...

Only reboot solves the issue temporarily... It is very frustrating and after 32 pages of posts no one from apple responding is kind a scary... Where is APPLE SUPPORT?

Can someone post a procedure to go back 3.0.1? Can we use itunes and restore a previous backup?

Regards,

Ilker

After turning off fraud notifications and switching my Exchange email from push to fetch manually at about noon yesterday, I still had one coma yesterday afternoon. Last night, I discovered that I had had three Safari pages open. I closed out of all pages in Safari and shut the app down from a blank page. I also deleted Appbox Pro. No comas/crashes/lockups since. I also just checked my phone and noticed that I've had a page open in Safari since about 10:00 this morning with no issues.

...

I must have jinxed myself. After typing the paragraph above, I just checked my phone and it's in a coma again. So much for either of the above fixes.

I updated my iPhone to 3.1 yesterday. It pretty consistently shuts down. I have to hold the sleep & home button in order to reboot. Apple are you listening?

I just spoke with Apple customer service. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't the abysmal conversation I had. Basically the rep told me that since I had already tried a restore, that completely ruled out any possibility that this is a software problem (even though the restore brings the phone right back to 3.1, and even though the phone functioned perfectly right up to the very moment I installed 3.1). Therefore, it "must" be a hardware problem and since my phone is out of warranty my only option is to purchase a replacement for $199.

I've got an appointment set up with a Genius bar now for Friday in hopes that they're at least marginally more helpful than Apple's abysmal phone service. If I don't have this problem fixed by the end of the week, I'm ditching Apple (and AT&T) for good.

Big Bug:

After updating my iphone 3G from 3.01 to 3.1 the battery-life is awfull...
from 100% to 10% over night (in 6 hours!)... and very often I got a black screen when I try to wake up my iphone. It crashes 4-6 times a day!

Another Big Bug:

Sometimes I can’t send a SMS... after I wrote a message, the "Send" Button is not responding !

Hope Apple will bring out a new update quickly !!!

I have the same problem after right after updated to 3.1. The CS told me to reset. I reseted, it's the same. The CS told me to restore. I restored, it's the same.
I am fed up.

I notice this happened at the location where the reception is not good. It seems that the phone is busy searching network and do not respond to the home button. Sometimes, after a few minutes the phone comes to life without having reboot. But sometimes it just go dead and needs reboot.

I am bringing my phone to a service centre and hope they can restore it back to 3.0. And I think Apple should issue an update quickly or the complaint will keep coming in like tsunami.

Add me to the same problem. Mysterious shut down!!

Try settings/ auto-lock "never"

Worked for me so far.