How to fix iPhone 16 Pro Max Freezing issues?

What a painfully horrible user experience. I've never had such problems upgrading my iPhone as I am going from my old 13 Pro Max 256 GB to my new 16 Pro Max 256 GB. I backed up my old phone and started the restore from iCloud last night at 5:24 PM with 52.9 GB remaining (which is weird, because I backed up my old 13 Pro Max and Apple said it was only 37 GB in size...whatever). By 11:06 PM last night I still had 32 GB to restore. I went to bed, woke up at 6:22 AM and there's still 24.1 GB left to restore!!! That's insane.

What worked for me was the backup step from this guide I found on another thread 7 Proven Steps to fix iPhone 16 Freezing issue so instead of iCloud backup I used a Mac to backup data and then restored from it skipping the iCloud it's been two days now the phone is running smoothly now hopping the issue didn't pop up again. 

[Edited by Moderator]

Were any/all of you running the beta with the gold master on your old when you tried to set it up?

I’m having the same issue. Apple support has been useless so far. The guy couldn’t understand me and I couldn’t understand him. He asked me if it had been stuck all week. I then asked him if he even knew what he was talking about because they just came out today. If anyone gets anywhere please let me know. I can’t even make phone calls right now.

Yesterday, I experienced the same issue with my iPhone 16 Pro. After setting it up using an iCloud backup, the phone repeatedly froze, even in the Settings menu, and frequently restarted.

This morning, while adjusting Home Screen customizations, the phone froze again and reset itself. After each reset, the phone remains unresponsive for a few seconds before it becomes functional again.

And I’ve already traded in my old phone…

The sales rep at Apple Store did not let us wait and update, they suggested cloud. Which is okay as my friend got iPhone 16 pro Max and it works fine with cloud restore whereas my iPhone 16 pro is giving me issues. I have traded in my phone already so I don't have the phone to phone transfer. Should I get a replacement? I doubt that would work either because it will have to restore using cloud no matter what. Just wondering if this is an issue with some of our phones because my friend used iCloud as well and has no issues.

So I let my new iPhone go through the entire restore process. Took forever because it kept freezing up. But as soon as the restore was finished the phone is acting totally normal now.

Alright everyone, please try this if you have a MacBook.

Follow all the steps while using cellular network and not WiFi if possible (it produced a lot less crashes for me using cellular).

1. Plug in your phone into your Macbook
2. Go into finder and select your phone from the list of options
3. Turn off Find My iPhone by going into settings > iCloud settings > Turn off Find My iPhone (this might take a few tries given that the phone sometimes crashes in settings)
4. Go back into Finder on your MacBook and click Restore iPhone (NO BACKUP)

The steps above got my phone back to a brand new state.

Now, instead of downloading all of your stuff from iCloud like the previous time, just transfer everything from your old phone (by keeping them nearby) if you still have it.

This should hopefully fix the issues for all of you too!

Best of luck!

Im sorry, but i can not agree with that, after waiting tons of hours to get everything ready and after the first night the phone is still extremly laggy, i can not even open the settings app, not disconnect my watch, ...

Ok. So this is what I did:

took me a few tries but I was able to wipe it out completely and start fresh again. This time I transferred everything from phone to phone. Instead of having it go from iCloud backup. It took 1 hour to transfer it all but it all worked and I have no issues. I will note that I did have a developer beta of iOS 18 on my old phone. The_phillymacight have been on to something there. But it’s working good now. Just wish apple Reps could have saved me 7 hours and told me to do it that way instead of trying to wait for everything to download from iCloud.

I ended up getting it to work by fully restarting the process as if I just opened the box. Full reset and did the direct phone to phone transfer not using the iCloud option. Took a while, but worked perfectly.

I can confirm that just resetting the settings (setting > general > Transfer or reset iPhone > Reset > Reset all settings) after icloud restore is finished, the phone starts behaving normal.

YOU DON'T NEED TO WIPE AND RESTORE AGAIN FROM THE OLD PHONE.

On iPhone 16 pro max iOS 18.0 iCloud restore not working for sure ,

anyone try maybe update to 18.1 then restore for iCloud ?

I finally fixed the issue. The problem was related to the VPN connection, which was somehow interfering with the Wi-Fi, causing it to be blocked or work only partially. I went to Settings > General > VPN & Device Management, clicked on the VPN connection (which was in a 'connecting' state), and deleted it. Once that was done, the Wi-Fi icon reappeared, and iCloud restore resumed as expected.