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User profile for user: kunnizac
kunnizac Author
User level: Level 1
9 points

iPhone 11 pro: iOS 16.4 -> 16.4.1 Update Disaster

Hello!


My girlfriend's iPhone has been having some serious trouble. A few days ago, we believe her phone attempted to automatically update to iOS 16.4.1 from iOS 16.4 while we were sleeping. When she woke up, she noticed her phone had restarted (had to input passcode instead of face id). Throughout the day, and every day since, her phone freezes up and then restarts every ~10 minutes. I noticed her phone was still on iOS 16.4, so we tried to update it from her phone's settings, but it kept failing and never seemed to make any progress. So we tried plugging it into my Macbook to update it from my Mac's Finder - same problem. This is when I began to suspect that some combination of iOS 16.4 having general issues (I know 16.4.1 was an emergency update) and her storage being nearly maxed out at the time somehow resulted in corrupted software on her device from the original auto-update attempt by the phone.


With the above in mind, we tried clearing up ~30GB of space to give the phone a better shot... No luck with updates. Naturally, the advice at the Apple store was to back up the phone and then Factory Reset it. They ran diagnostics at the Apple store and informed us that the phone had "software issues, battery issues, and storage issues", noting that the battery life was at 77%. We tried to back up the phone with iCloud, but it wasn't working because the phone restarts every 10 minutes as previously stated. We also tried backing up using the computer and the progress bar never seemed to get anywhere, just like with the update. She has upwards of 25k photos and videos and other important data that had never been backed up, so we were not willing to just start from scratch and lose all of her data.


We came across another route to updating the iPhone via the Recovery mode. I plugged her phone into my computer to give it a shot. I watched the progress closely from my Mac and after 10-15 minutes, it seemed like the update was successful! However, when the phone tried to boot up post-update, we got a white screen with apple logo, a progress bar, and "Attempting data recovery" at the bottom. The progress bar slowly moved across until it was around 75-80% of the way finished, before ultimately going black, restarting the boot up process, and giving us a fresh "Attempting data recovery" screen with a new progress bar.


We have no idea what to do at this point. We desperately want this to work and to retrieve her data, but this progress bar never makes it to finish. Is it a battery issue? Could we get it replaced and still have the phone recover the data? Should we tried to force restart it one more time? We are scared to try much now for fear of total data loss.


Please help! Any and all guidance is greatly appreciated.



iPhone 11 Pro

Posted on Apr 14, 2023 10:21 AM

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User profile for user: kunnizac
kunnizac Author
User level: Level 1
9 points

Posted on Apr 15, 2023 7:45 AM

*Update*: We visited the Apple store once again yesterday, where an employee there insisted that we wipe the phone, as it was still stuck in recovery mode. Since we wanted to keep potential data recovery options open, we declined and headed home. Including as much detail as possible because maybe it will help someone who is about to wipe all their memories forever.


At this point, on our way home, we had 3 thoughts:

  1. We knew we had at least cleared up 30GB of space on the phone before the recovery mode update, so we felt storage was less likely to be a key issue moving forward
  2. We felt from the status/progress messages on my Macbook (during the update) that there was a solid chance that software issues could have been resolved
  3. Given 1 and 2, we felt that the primary remaining issue would likely be the battery, which Apple refused to replace without wiping the phone completely


We began to consider reaching out to a third party to replace the battery without restoring the device.


Once we got home, we tried to "Swipe up to recover" a few more times and were still stuck in the endless reboot loop. I'm not sure the following step helped, but we did remove the SIM tray for a moment before popping it back in and trying again. Subsequent details are a bit hazy, but essentially, after continuing to try to swipe up, at some point the text had suddenly changed to "Swipe up to upgrade". After swiping, we eventually got to the classic iPhone setup screen, where it cycles through "hello" in various languages. We thought for sure the data was wiped. Wrong!

We skipped the prompts and the phone came back to life with all of the old data and a successful update to 16.4.1.


Sadly we were sort of back to square 1, as the phone, though usable, was still rebooting every ~10 minutes. We tried to perform a backup, but it would still fail as mentioned in my earlier post. This time we wised up and began importing all of her photos to my Macbook. After a few reboot cycles, we were able to extract every photo.


This morning we will try deleting most, if not all, of her photo library from the iPhone and resume attempting to back up the rest to either my Macbook or iCloud. If successful, we will take the phone back to Apple for a restore and battery replacement. Wish us luck!


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User profile for user: kunnizac
kunnizac Author
User level: Level 1
9 points

Apr 15, 2023 7:45 AM in response to kunnizac

*Update*: We visited the Apple store once again yesterday, where an employee there insisted that we wipe the phone, as it was still stuck in recovery mode. Since we wanted to keep potential data recovery options open, we declined and headed home. Including as much detail as possible because maybe it will help someone who is about to wipe all their memories forever.


At this point, on our way home, we had 3 thoughts:

  1. We knew we had at least cleared up 30GB of space on the phone before the recovery mode update, so we felt storage was less likely to be a key issue moving forward
  2. We felt from the status/progress messages on my Macbook (during the update) that there was a solid chance that software issues could have been resolved
  3. Given 1 and 2, we felt that the primary remaining issue would likely be the battery, which Apple refused to replace without wiping the phone completely


We began to consider reaching out to a third party to replace the battery without restoring the device.


Once we got home, we tried to "Swipe up to recover" a few more times and were still stuck in the endless reboot loop. I'm not sure the following step helped, but we did remove the SIM tray for a moment before popping it back in and trying again. Subsequent details are a bit hazy, but essentially, after continuing to try to swipe up, at some point the text had suddenly changed to "Swipe up to upgrade". After swiping, we eventually got to the classic iPhone setup screen, where it cycles through "hello" in various languages. We thought for sure the data was wiped. Wrong!

We skipped the prompts and the phone came back to life with all of the old data and a successful update to 16.4.1.


Sadly we were sort of back to square 1, as the phone, though usable, was still rebooting every ~10 minutes. We tried to perform a backup, but it would still fail as mentioned in my earlier post. This time we wised up and began importing all of her photos to my Macbook. After a few reboot cycles, we were able to extract every photo.


This morning we will try deleting most, if not all, of her photo library from the iPhone and resume attempting to back up the rest to either my Macbook or iCloud. If successful, we will take the phone back to Apple for a restore and battery replacement. Wish us luck!


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User profile for user: sberman
sberman
User level: Level 10
268,443 points

Apr 14, 2023 3:01 PM in response to kunnizac

kunnizac wrote:

They ran diagnostics at the Apple store and informed us that the phone had "software issues, battery issues, and storage issues", noting that the battery life was at 77%.

This sounds like the iPhone has been catastrophically damaged. The software update was not the cause.


Backups must occur before catastrophes. This sounds like bad news.

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iPhone 11 pro: iOS 16.4 -> 16.4.1 Update Disaster

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