Brand new iPhone SE 2020 stuck on “Updating Apple ID Settings”

I did finally find a fix that works for me, although depending on how much stuff you have backed up to your iCloud account it might not be viable for you, and even for me, it's certainly not ideal.

Long story short, I took a hard look at what the guy was saying in the article I linked above, and then I went back to the old iPad I have that's running iOS 9.3.5 and created a new apple ID on that iPad, making sure to decline every popup that mentioned upgrading account security or enabling 2FA. Once the account was created, I signed in to that account on my SE and only then enabled 2FA and end-to-end encryption on the SE once it was signed in and verified using security questions.

Basically, I'm just using an older apple device that predates mandatory 2FA to create an iCloud account that doesn't have 2FA enabled by default, and then enabling 2FA once I'm signed in to that account on the new device to get end-to-end encryption working.

This fix works for me because I don't have any data on my iCloud account, as I never used to back anything up to iCloud with my old apple devices when I had them. The only thing I need that account for is Apple Music, as I have 14+ GB of music on that account that I don't feel like manually re-downloading on another account. Since I can actually sign in to iCloud on the new SE using the new account and sign in to iTunes and App Store on the SE using the old account, I can essentially bypass this issue while still retaining my Apple Music library, but if you've got a ton of stuff on your iCloud account, this might not work for you because you'd be essentially losing all of that data when you're forced to start using a new account entirely.

I just find it hard to believe that apple doesn't know about a massive backend bug like this. It's one thing that Apple Support and the Senior Advisors don't know what's going on, since neglecting to train support staff is normal in the tech world, but it's literally just a program loop with no exit condition, which searches for a device connected to the account that fits certain criteria to authenticate end-to-end encryption, but just restarts the search when it fails rather than exiting the program and providing another alternative to authenticate. It shouldn't be that hard to fix, and even if it is, it wouldn't hurt to let the community know that you're aware of the issue and are in the process of patching it.

In the end, I (the customer) shouldn't have to spend my time discovering bugs and finding workarounds for apple's software. There's testers and programmers for that. And, on top of that, nobody should have to worry if a brand new device that they've paid full price for is going to work. Period. I get that my phone works now, and yeah, it does, but still. Shame on apple for making me spend two weeks solving a problem I didn't create. I hope I don't have another massive problem with this phone, or else I'm going to have to seriously reconsider which tech companies are getting my hard-earned money in the future.

After doing some more testing and research, I've determined that everything outlined in the following apple forum post is completely and 110% correct:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251178396

What's causing this issue is basically the backend for 2FA that's responsible for initiating and carrying out the verification for end-to-end encryption, and how that can't be carried out properly on accounts that were created on older Apple products or on the web AND have had 2FA enabled manually on an older apple product or on the web basically because they need approval to enable end-to-end encryption from a "modern" apple device that isn't paired to that account. That totally explains why everything was working just fine EXCEPT for features that rely on end-to-end encryption, which would prompt me to essentially attempt to enable end-to-end encryption but would get stuck doing so because it's not possible for that to happen on that particular account.

So, basically, that first SE that I bought wasn't actually defective and didn't need to be RMAd.

However, no matter what I've tried, my apple ID, the one I'm currently signed in to writing this post, is basically now rendered unusable, as is any apple ID that wasn't created on a "modern" apple device, or ones that had 2FA enabled on one of those "modern" devices. For whatever reason, all of the test accounts I made on appleid.apple.com didn't work on the new SE, because they have 2FA enabled by default using a phone number as the point of verification, so the apple ID wasn't created on a "modern" apple device nor was the 2FA set up on a "modern" apple device. Normally, this wouldn't be a big issue, except for the fact that I have a massive apple music library (over 13GB) that I now wouldn't be able to use on my brand new iPhone because I'd have to sacrifice this apple ID for a different one that apple deems worthy.

Whether or not this is intentional on apple's part, for whatever gain, it still makes me slightly angry that nobody in support knows what's going on. It's not like there's documentation that tells me this arbitrary limitation and workaround exist in the case that I'm having Apple ID problems, but it would be super easy for apple to add a flag somewhere that says that "this account is not eligible for end-to-end encryption so I would have at least been able to figure out sooner that it's an account issue before RMAing a phone that wasn't actually defective.

Well, that was an adventure.

Apple support did the standard troubleshooting steps, then when those (obviously) failed, the Senior Advisor then remoted in and did his thing, told me it was a defective phone, and transferred me to cell support to RMA the phone and send a replacement.

Fast forward a week, I have the replacement, and, you probably guessed it, I'm having the EXACT same issue. Nothing has changed since I wrote the last post.

When I told the senior advisor that it seems like a lot of people on the Apple forums were having this same issue, he told me that "none of that stuff is true". It seems to me like that stuff might just be true, and it's the apple support team that doesn't know what this issue is.

If anybody has any ideas, please let me know, because at this point I'm not convinced anybody in apple support, senior advisor or otherwise, has a clue what's going on here. If I can't figure out why this is happening by the time FedEx is picking up near me tomorrow, I'm boxing this SE right back up and sending it back for a refund. Totally not what I expected from a brand new device direct from apple, especially since I paid full price for what I thought was supposed to be a functional phone.

I can get a Pixel 3a for the same price as this SE from the local Best Buy AND get it set up and ready to go in 1/4 the time it took for this replacement to ship to my house. Quite honestly, if it means a more knowledgeable support system and an ecosystem that just works without certain features being inaccessible due to inexplicable technical errors and glitches on what is clearly apple's end, then I'll be glad to do that over this. I know it might sound harsh, but in the end, I paid good money to get a product that promised to be able to do a set of things, and that product does not do what it says it can do. Seems to me like I should put that money towards a product that CAN do what it promises.