New iPhone 13 stuck on software update

You’ll need to quit the iOS update, then start over the setup.

When you restart, don’t transfer your data from your old iPhone or from the cloud.

You’ll then be able to use the phone but it won’t have your apps or anything on it. Which is fine, for this step the only thing you need to do is update the iOS. You’ll need to go to settings and update the iOS from there.

Once the update is installed, you need to then need to go to settings and go to to General>Transfer or Reset iPhone>Reset. (It was either that or “erase all”. I can’t remember which)

From there the phone gets wiped (except the iOS). It’ll prompt you to set up the iPhone again. You’ll can then either choose to transfer your data from the iCloud or your old iPhone and you should be set to go without having to update the iOS because you already did that successfully before you wiped it.

If at any point you find yourself updating the iOS in the initial phone setup, you’ll have to quit the iOS update and start again. You can do this by holding down the power button.

This is a dumb terrible workaround and Apple should absolutely have fixed this by now. It’s completely unacceptable.

I am having the same problem with my iPhone 13 mini. It’s been 3 hours & it’s still on the spinning wheel on the Software Update page & I haven’t figured out what I should do after reading this post it sounds like everyone is having the same problem but what happened?? What did y’all do? Did you restart your phone or keep waiting on the software update page to change?

This is the same problem I encountered. The first part of transferring from my old phone seemed to jump into action. Then the new iPhone 13 Pro took me through settup steps re privacy, location etc. but then indicated the OS must be updated before continuing and I have been waiting a couple hours for it to complete. The phone seems frozen just like the above photo - there is no indication it is progressing and no idea how many hours I will have to wait before I can see what my $2k toy can do. So sad!

I’m having the exact same issue with a new 13 pro. Have you figured out how to update and transfer phone contents yet?

it just seems stuck. I’ve tried restarting phone and transfer process again but same result.

No. Your iPhone is downloading your data from iCloud AND downloading / installing an iOS update. Your iPhone will need to download and update the iOS version first before the transfer data portion happens.

Make sure that your iPhone is setup to meet the following requirements before you attempt to update the iOS version-

• Your iPhone must have a fast Wi-Fi connection; you cannot update over cellular data or a cellular hotspot
• The iPhone can not be in Low Power mode
• The battery state of charge must be above 50%
• Your iPhone must have at least 6GB or more free storage space
• Your iPhone cannot be connected through VPN
• You should leave the phone plugged in until it finishes updating, both to assure that it remains above 50% and to keep Wi-Fi enabled (Wi-Fi turns off when the phone sleeps if not connected to power).

Axel F.

I had the same issue. After trying multiple times without any luck (even kept it over night) i finally started over (long press the lock button).

Once starting over, go straight to setting up your phone manually and make you do no transfer anything from the older phone.

As soon your Iphone starts, log in to your apple ID, go to settings, software update, then download and install the software on your Iphone (takes around 30 minutes).

After the Iphone is up to date, go to settings and erase your Iphone (back to factory settings).

Go ahead and set up your Iphone from scratch, this time when you scan the QR to transfer all data from your Iphone to the new one, it will directly start transferring the data as your Iphone is already up to date (will take around an hour)

All the process took around 1.5 hours and worked like a charm :)

Well WTF! Apple has known about this since Nov. and gives no F***in advisory to people buying the productt. No instructions given at the Verizon store (and I had a smart salesman) no tip sheet, no error messages telling you what to do. This is the worst :out of the box experience I've had with an Apple product...with any phone at all in fact. No more iPhones after this one! I might even exchange for Samsung within the 30 day return window.

Hi Axel - Is there any easy process for Iphone activation? I don't know why activation is so much complicated and taking hours hours (sometimes more than 8 hours and multiple attempts as well) compared to Samsung whre activation process goes very smoothly. Can u do activation first and then SW upgrade later on ? In general brand new phones comes with latest SW that time, so when customer brought an Iphone, it may be little older, not years old SW, then that should work fine for activation process. Later on you can upgrade any new SWs. I hope brand new Iphone does not come with a very old SW which is not compatible. We have faced this issue when we got our brand new IPhone11. So this seems like there is issues in the activation process of Iphone. Once phone is activated, Iphone is definitely much better product. Please help the customers easy activation process to save our time. I spent lot of time in just activating the phone itself, which I never spend with any other Phones.

I resolved this issue by resetting the phone to factory options which reversed anything I had done. Then the first thing you need to do with your new iPhone is to update the OS. Think of it as your new phone was assembled a couple weeks or months before you received it, but in the meantime there have been updates to the operating system and you need all that new information to do the switch from your old phone. Another way is to relate it to buying a printer that only has a tiny supply of ink - you have to purchase the full size cartridges before you do any large print jobs.

Once the OS had completed the update the swap was amazingly executed. You will love your new phone/camera ;)

Apple's iPhone activation process often gets hung up - perhaps when we inadvertently miss a step or think we have done something wrong. I had the same experience of it seeming to be on a loop cycle. I refer you to my comments above posted on Jan 28, 2022.

You need to stop the process. Power down the iphone and then restart. Then go to the reset setting and clear the phone to factory settings. This takes a few minutes. Once factory settings are restore, the unit's operating system needs to be updated to the current (latest) version. After that you can have it take command and restore all your settings from your old iPhone.

Good luck - be patient. You will also be contacted by Apple support inviting you to a one on one session to introduce you to two features of this new phone that may be of most interest to you. I recommend you wait a couple weeks and learn what you can on your own so that when you have this free session you will be more informed and the information may mean more to you.

I have found a workaround what may help:

1. First login to the new phone and DO NOT copy any data to it.
2. Start the software update (it took me about 40 minutes, but it depends on the server, download speed, etc.)
3. After the update to 15.1.1. is completed on the new phone, reset the new phone and then start the data transfer from the old to the new phone.

This way the entire process took me about 90-100 minutes (to do the update and the data transfer), but at least it worked :)

I had the similar issue, my iphone13 brand new phone setup took 12 hours, still not completed. I have to restore every thing. This is seems very bad user experience, since activating a new phone taking more than 12 hours, I tried twice so far. I know all the required setting like WiFi every looks good. First I tried with Data transfer assuming that it works smoothly like Samsung device, unfortunately Iphone13 not worked at all. I had to restore and started fresh. Lets hope without data transfer it will work this time.

Interesting thing is, Iphone is keep on trying to install the new IOS version, not sure why this will take more than an hour (Samsung hardly takes 10 minutes). I have a very good wifi connection, I have been using other devices just fine with my wifi. My another request is, if the updating or any issue, Iphone can show an error message instead of showing as "Installing now" for hours hours. Overall I felt the activating Iphone13 user experience is really poor. I hope this time my activation goes smoothly. Battery is 100% as well, infact I connected charger also, still no luck.

Does not Apple monitor this site, and if so, why no explanation for why this horrible experience is allowed to continue? Even if the purported Apple programming geniuses can't solve the software problem, the least they could do is provide an instruction sheet explaining how to manually bypass the glitches.

My new iPhone 13 is frozen on the set up screen. I've been trying to transfer data for four days with no luck! Very upsetting because this was a Christmas present, and I'm on a timeline to get this all transferred because this is a trade in, and t-mobile says I only have 14 days (now 10) to ship my old phone out. But it's hard to do that when the new iPhone 13 won't work! Help please!!!

In case anyone else bumps into this: as Axel Foley pointed out it appears to be doing a lot more than a standard update. At the risk of being a bit harsh, I'll say that the UI is just poorly designed. It will say that it is preparing to update which would obviously lead you to believe it's *just* updating, but it's not. You may have to leave it for quite some time but mine eventually did reboot and keep running.