iPhone XS Max; bootloop & restarts after upgrading to 13.5 and 13.5.1

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Level 1

20 points

iPhone XS Max; bootloop & restarts after upgrading to 13.5 and 13.5.1

Help, I need assistance figuring out what might be wrong with my iPhone XS Max 256gb.

On May 26, I left my my phone charging to update to IOS 13.5. When I returned to my phone an hour or so later, I noticed it was stuck in a bootloop. Black screen with white apple logo, a split second on the lock screen, screen goes black, repeat.

I tried hard reseting, then booting into recovery mode and updating firmware. Same result: Boot loop. Next, I went into recovery mode and Restore. After a few minutes, I saw the white Hello screen, made it through set up, then my phone would get stuck in the boot loop again. Frustrated, I put my phone away and waited for the next IOS update, hoping I'd hear reports of others with this problem after the update.

I tried recovery > restore again in early June - this time 13.5.1 was available. Since then my phone is mostly functional, but it still reboots when I do a few tasks - and of course those are the largely things I rely on.

I've made a few observations. The following actions are almost guaranteed to trigger the reboot:

Open Messages. Sometimes I can send a message or two if I'm quick, but it seems like the longer I stay in it, the more likely it is to reboot
Open Settings > Messages. At first I'd see the pane, and attempting to login (as my Apple ID or create a new one) would cause the phone to reboot. I felt adventurous and did a DFU restore to rule out some lingering problem code in memory. After this last change, as soon as I tap the screen to Settings > Messages my phone reboots.
Unlocking the phone: If the phone sleeps/Auto-locks, when it wakes there's a very good chance that it reboots.
Workaround: I've switched Settings > Auto-Lock to Never and turned off Raise to Wake. But this means my screen is always on.
If I lock the phone by hitting the power button, then wake the phone by touching the screen or hitting power again, I see the lock screen for a split second, then the phone reboots 2-3 times (each time the lock screen appears for a split second before going back again) before it's functional again.
Workaround: I can sometimes bypass the reboots if I can touch the Flashlight or Camera icons quickly. This seems to disrupt the impending reboot.
Bonus Workaround: In addition, I've turned off passcode and FaceID - I was able to set up both of those services without rebooting, but they add additional obstacles in the unlocking process that I don't want to mess with right now.
Charging: gets me in a sticky situation with respect to the lock screen activating. If it does, I'm almost guaranteed to reboot a few times when I pick up the phone.
With the SIM in, the phone seems to crash almost every time I call non-Apple Devices #s. On the other end, I've successfully reached all of the phones on my contact list that are listed as iPhones. The outcome seems to be the same if I use Google Voice. Same for receiving calls. (my phone crashes when I get a webex callback!)

Things that work:

Pretty much everything else works. Mail, Outlook, Facebook, Google Photos, Google Maps, Maps, Find My Phone, App downloads, iCloud Backups, all streaming video or music services, video conferencing services: Facetime, Zoom
I've even re-paired my Apple watch to the phone and use the Activity App and Peloton app without issue.
Notifications (for Messages) actually seems to work when the SIM is in - and this doesn't crash the phone even though just reading messages does!. Since I can't get into the Settings > Messages pane, I guess that's why I can't see anything when the SIM is out. I've started turning on notifications for a lot of things and so far everything has worked.

About my phone:

I bought it new on Black Friday 2018. It's had a screen protector and a case on almost its entire life. I highly doubt there's water damage (I peeked in the SIM slot and didn't see any red - but hey I didn't expect to - maybe it's had a few rain drops or beads of sweat land on it in a year and a half).

Settings > Battery Health shows Maximum Capacity 89%; Peak Performance Capability.

Up until I updated to 13.5, the phone performed perfectly fine.

iPhone XS Max

Posted on Jun 15, 2020 5:22 PM

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Answer 1

sterling r

Community Specialist

Jun 18, 2020 3:17 PM in response to racerboy999

Hi racerboy999,

Thanks for coming to Apple Support Communities for help today. It sounds like opening Settings and Messages cause your iPhone XS Max to reboot. You have tried some great troubleshooting here it seems.

If you have restored your iPhone, tested without your backup restored and the issue still exists, then it's most likely a hardware issue. Check out: Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings. If you try this once more, be sure you make a backup as described under "Get your device ready".

Let me know how it goes.

Have a fantastic day!

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Answer 2

racerboy999 Author

Level 1

20 points

Jun 18, 2020 4:49 PM in response to sterling r

For good measure, I booted the phone in recovery mode and chose update again.

When the update completed, most of the symptoms still seem to persist.

The only difference thus far is I'm now able to get into the Settings > Messages screen and look at the settings. But when I tap on Use your Apple ID for iMessage, the phone takes a moment to think, then the screen turns black and restarts.

I find it really strange that the phone is functional for most things that I'd think would be very taxing for the device (games, FaceTime, Zoom, content backup, videos, etc), but ordinary functions like phone calls or messages (even when they're just connected to the internet, not even cellular data) cause the device to restart.

So I have 2 questions:

1) Is there any way I can try rolling back to a prior IOS version?

2) Is there any diagnostic that Apple support can run remotely on my device?

If there is a hardware problem with my device, I wonder if there is some component may not have been up to spec all along, and updating to 13.5.x taxes in on this suboptimal component to the point of failure.

I'm terribly stressed out by the prospect of having to commit $599 to repair for a device that was working perfectly fine before a system update. Help!

And given how much more functional my phone is on 13.5.1 than it was on 13.5 (a complete restarting brick), what's to say that the next incremental update won't restore my old function back to 100%?

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Answer 3

chris_g1

Community Specialist

Jun 19, 2020 8:22 AM in response to racerboy999

racerboy999,

Thanks for coming to Apple Support Communities for help today. There would not be a way to roll back your iOS version. You can visit Get Support to dive a little further into this issue. A remote diagnostic could be run.

Cheers,

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Answer 4

racerboy999 Author

Level 1

20 points

Jun 21, 2020 8:49 PM in response to chris_g1

The latest update: I got on the phone with an Apple support rep yesterday. The remote diagnostic found that my ambient light sensor is malfunctioning. No other notable findings. Interestingly, none of the reboots (related to Messages/Autolock/Phone calls) were logged in this diagnostic.

I was a little surprised that anything was found (my phone is 100% original, no replacement screen or other problems). I compared my phone to my wife's XS Max and indeed, my Settings > Display & Brightness screen is missing the TrueTone option. It seems as if my phone recognizes that the sensor isn't working and has disabled this capability.

As a follow up step, we turned on the more detailed "24 hour" detailed diagnostic logging. It just finished a couple of hours ago and I sent the data to Apple, but a little too late for a follow up call - I'll try calling tomorrow and try to get more insight and next steps.

I'm hoping this will narrow down whether the issue is indeed limited to a faulty ambient light sensor. The working hypothesis at the moment is that those specific Apple app functions try to access the ambient light sensor, and the phone goes through a catastrophic crash, causing the reboot.

Logically, it makes sense that several of these Apple Apps take advantage of the built-in proximity light sensor to provide situational awareness and a better user experience (and save battery life). The phone calling app uses the proximity light sensor to determine if your head is near the phone and turn the display off/on accordingly. The auto-lock uses the proximity sensor to also activate the display so you can unlock it as well automatically adjust the brightness. iMessage causing the crash seems a little baffling to me.

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Answer 5

Gwhit15

Level 1

4 points

Jul 6, 2020 5:11 AM in response to racerboy999

So this is the exact same issue I have having with my phone. Everything is spot on. Did you find a solution to the issue? Pretty lame apple told me I needed to replace the unit if a restore doesn’t fix it. Seems like a waste of $1000 for something an iOS update seemed to cause.

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Answer 6

racerboy999 Author

Level 1

20 points

Jul 8, 2020 2:49 PM in response to Gwhit15

When I made the follow up call after sharing my phone data, the next Apple support rep reviewed the notes from my prior call and set up a repair for me at no cost.

Ultimately, after 2 days of showing a status of “repairing” on the support site, they ultimately sent me a refurb phone.

If you can get your phone in a stable state where it operates for minutes or hours (Try My workarounds in my original post), get on with a support rep and ask them to run a remote diagnostic and try to follow the same process.

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