iPhone 15 Stuck on Software Update

Nope, gets hung up with 1 min 33 seconds and never moves via cable to iTunes from mac book. Apple is no help. I am going to call Verizon Wireless, send this back and change all of our 7 phones back to Android. It usually take 8-12 hours to upgrade all of our iPhones and get everything squared-away. We are going on 72 hours and my youngest son's iPhone won't' upgrade WHICH MEANS his other phone is a brick as well. I cannot contact my son on either device, so I am frustrated beyond belief.

Any help or advice would be appreciated, I also cannot or don't know HOW to contact Apple Support, His device is not listed on my wife or I's Apple Account, so HOW do I contact Apple Support about HIS phone?

Hello everyone! I don’t normally put things up in these forums but wanted to share how I sorted this issue! My mum got a new IPhone 15 yesterday I tried for 5 hours to set it up for her with no luck! Took it to my house this morning with quicker wifi and update was completed within 10 minutes!

Set up phone as new and don’t transfer anything over. Set up as brand new. Sign in with Apple ID you use. Then go to setting and update first. Then erase iPhone and then start again and it will not show and activate.

So i am not sure if this will help anyone but this is what worked for me. I literally sat by phone and tapped the screen when ever it started to look like it would go into sleep mode - ie, every 15 or 20 seconds. That kept the phone on for the update to download and to prepare to transfer - it took about 15 minutes for the whole process to complete and now it is finshing the transfer of information from one phone to the other.

hope this helps

So fun fact yall. It will not backup the new phone with a phone that does not have ios 18. I used my 11 pro which i received yesterday around 6 CST and it still had not updated when i woke up around 3 am CST. But when i used my ipad which i recently updated to ios 18, it immediately started downloading the new software. I didnt update my iphone 11 because it didnt have enough storage room for ios 18.

flrty wrote:

Just figured this out on my own. No apple store visit required. All you need to do is hold down your power button and click start over to reset the iphone. Once it’s done resetting start the process over again but DO NOT use the transfer from an old iphone feature. Instead set it up as a new phone with no backup. Once it’s all done setting up go to Software update tab in the new iphone and update it from there. When it’s all done updating go ahead and fully erase the new iphone again. This will allow you to set it up using a data transfer again but you won’t have to update the iphone in the process. Should be smooth sailing from there. Cheers.

Thanks, very helpful!

You have to set up the phone as if you weren’t transferring data and without an Apple ID. Once you’re on the Home Screen go into settings and update the phone. After it’s done updating factory reset the phone with the “Erase all content and settings” option and you should be good to go from there.

Kmoon44 wrote:

You have to set up the phone as if you weren’t transferring data and without an Apple ID. Once you’re on the Home Screen go into settings and update the phone. After it’s done updating factory reset the phone with the “Erase all content and settings” option and you should be good to go from there.

Indeed; just like flrty posted 3 days ago.

I got this stuck, for hours. Help!

The Wi-Fi should not be VPN or a Hotspot. It should not have any anti-virus.

What step is it on? There are 3 steps to the update: Downloading, Preparing, and Installing. Depending on download speed, it is not unusual for an update to take an hour or more.

Because that screenshot shows the update size (425.5 MB) and shows no additional evidence of the update even starting, I suspect your Wi-Fi offers one of the roadblocks I mentioned in my post above.

Glad it’s resolved.

Enjoy your Apple gear.

Hi, you meant it will take more than 4 hr to update? Thanks