iOS 26.2.1 has rendered my phone unusable

Yep I’ve had same issue!! Has also made my phone lag like nothing else and has crashed it twice in the space of 2 hours. It’ll be up at 90% battery and then all of a sudden the battery has died and phone is turning off.

Honestly, I would’ve lost my mind if they told me I had to have AppleCare to fix my phone. It’s a software issue that came from Apple that messed up the phone not you. Apple should be fixing everybody’s phone regardless if you have AppleCare or not

Same. Apple should replace my phone. I’m using Facebook Messenger to make phone calls when home. Camera issues, connectivity issues, loading time, phone heats up like heater, crashes-it’s horrible. Too many issues to list.

I can confirm that I've been experiencing major problems since the iOS 26.2.1 update, particularly with CarPlay and my iPhone 16. I have to delete and reinstall my car's car every time because the Bluetooth connection fails. So I'm using a wired connection until Apple fixes the problem.

This has to be one of the worst updates. The "new" design looks bad and don't even get me started on how badly my phone is performing. Apps crashing, phone freezing, Face ID not working. I've been doing all the tips and tricks to make the phone better, but guess what, I should not be doing all this. An update should not require me to go through all this challenges and changing my settings and my phone configuration which worked perfectly until now.

CodyBluedog wrote:

Apparently there Was a way to undo the update but it’s been discontinued.

There has never been a way to downgrade except from beta versions. Nothing new here.

My agent told me it was illegal to do it now even if possible.

I don't know what you mean by "agent" but they are wrong.

It’s unbelievable how disruptive this is, especially in a healthcare setting when every few minutes you have to restart the phone and when it does come up, the keypad freezes and you have to restart.

Apple must address this issue ASAP.

nelsonmor wrote:

...

I’m 100% sure the 26.2.1 update broke both the eSIM and GPS functionality. The main problem is that Apple won't admit it's a software bug, and they haven't provided a fix or a way to downgrade without wiping the phone's data.

Software bugs affect everybody, this affects you and maybe. few others. So not a bug.

Yes your phone can get damaged by an update if it is already on a knife edge due to weak hardware.

You may have to buy a new phone.

I'm struggling to do my job because my phone is sluggish. Opening an app takes forever, and phone seems to "pause" before it responds to anything I'm trying to send or do. Please Apple, fix this mess!

iOS 26 update is terrible. I can’t read anything on the internet without article jumping up to the top even when I’m half way through. After I updated to 18. 2 a huge amount of my photos in messages turned to green bubbles and my see all feature was not working. I was told so called engineers were fixing it. That was in 2023. Now it’s worse. Apple charges so much money for their phones. The18.26 update is also very hard to navigate. Who cares about the glass look. Apple shouldn’t put out updates unless they are thoroughly checked. They don’t seem to care about their customers. Renee

Apple has changed the look of Mac OS and iOS multiple times. Every time there are those the are challenged by the changes in appearance and functionality of some aspects of the User Interface. This is nothing new. 

Apple’s installed user base is over 1.5 billion users. Making a single user interface perfectly compatible for every user is literally impossible. Apple will make changes (or not make changes) based partially on the feedback they receive through their official channel, linked below and good luck.

Product Feedback - Apple

Apple and Apple Support do not participate in the communities here. They only moderate our posts to insure all user guidelines are followed in regard to content and user behavior. Your thoughts and feelings will not be reviewed by Apple. 

You may want to review the information in the article I linked to below. It explains the adjustments you can make to mitigate the effects of Liquid Glass that you’re experiencing. 

Liquid Glass - Love It Or Hate It - It's … - Apple Community

iOS 26.2.1 has messed up the mark up function for files. On a w-9 that I’m trying to fill out: When I click the text function to fill out the form; it shows thin vertical blue lines all across the document. The opposite of the horizontal lines that you need to be able to fill in text.

rich parker wrote:

Does anyone commenting here work for Apple, or is this ‘community’ a way that Apple can provide ‘support’ without providing any?

Ah, it always pays to read the Terms of Use before agreeing to them.

Apple Support Communities Use Agreement - Apple Community

Specifically:

"Apple may respond to questions but does not formally provide technical support on the Site."

This is a user-to-user technical support forum. Apple's participation here is largely limited to making sure everyone obeys the rules. The only time I've seen Apple employees post here in the last couple of years is if the question involves serious health or safety issues. And even then, it's to provide links to the appropriate Apple resources.

However, many of the people here have decades of using Apple products bothe personally and professionally. There are a number of IT folks and engineers in the mix. You have in this forum access to experts.

If you want to contact Apple, there's a link to support at the bottom left of every page in these forums.

rich parker wrote:

Does anyone commenting here work for Apple, or is this ‘community’ a way that Apple can provide ‘support’ without providing any?

Had you actually read the Terms of Use you agreed to when you joined the forum, you'd already know this is a user to user only forum. And no, Apple isn't here, doesn't respond here, nor do they read the posts here.

As many of us spend countless hours trying to help our fellow users, your question is frankly disparaging to the many people here who get no pay to help users.

Other being uninformed, did you have an actual question about your iPhone?

I updated my iPhone SE in December of last year and it died overnight. It could no longer charge, no matter what I did, past 1%. I took it into the Apple Store and they said my 3 year old phone had the motherboard malfunction and that there was nothing to be done. So I had to buy a new phone. I’ve been waiting to see when others complained about the issue because I couldn’t find anything online at the time.