iOS 26.5 contacts, Messages, call- COMPLETELY NONFUNCTIONAL after setting up iPhone 14 Pro Max, now affecting iPad too

If any mod is reading this and can do so PLEASE just get me into contact with an actual apple engineer working on this. It has been a month and I have done every single support and troubleshoot.

I am trapped I can only fix this by making a new icloud account. Making a new icloud account requires signing out, new account needs to be imported from a different icloud.. No easy way to transfer data from one to another and some data is completely inaccessible because of this bug. So I have two options, switch to new account, lose payment history all of my settings, config info etc, backup with impartial info, rebase everything that relies on either phone and my icloud (which is a lot and intentionally made very difficult). or pray and wait for a fix where ive gotten 0 info over a month..

I never would have expected this would go on for so long but now im like has it been long enough that apple will finally fix it? Maybe its not worth doing this.. The support always says oh they know and a fix is coming soon. Ive seen so many security updates and new demos but none of it has been related and every version thats been out, ive tried, and all have come up with the same issue. But the false hope and horrible communication has been a nightmare. Ive had bosses, customers, friends not be able to reach me. Not been able to make payments, to sign up for apps because of this. What a miserable experience.

On my Apple devices, every single one of them, opening contacts, or any of the services I mentioned will give me a white screen. Neither the interface or the functionality works. Staying on any of these apps will cause it to crash after 15 or so seconds. I mean the apps are literally bricked, none of the functionality works and I can't even scroll.

Yes, all of my accounts were logged in.

If you go into the app selector by doing the up swipe and then go back into said app you will briefly see a cached state of the messages or contacts, but you're not able to swipe, scroll, or do anything. You can see the interface and then maybe you get a quarter of a second where you can swipe but then it immediately freezes and then goes back to the crash.

It's probably some sort of corrupted iCloud thing. Same thing on ALL devices

I guess so, but given the fact it even inbound calls answerable, and it started happening after I added a new phone to my Apple account I put originally it as phone because I'm not sure how to classify it. However, I agree with you, this seems like a service or synchronization kind of issue. But the services are Apple and kind of essential

I had some time before this, I don't know if it's correlated but I had an AI agent go and update my personal contact card with a new phone number. I never checked or verified if it finished and I'm not able to check now. But it wouldn't be beyond the question for it to have used some unique operation to try and do that confusing Apple...

I am so upset about this. Another thing I just started looking at- the the side button combination with volume up, the key by to shut the phone off- also stopped working on both phones. This is really unacceptable. It's been three four days during very important time that I've had to purchase another phone just to keep myself afloat... Apple is not reaching out to me over email and I've submitted reports and feedback in five or six different places.

Even when escalated to a senior engineer. It basically didn't give me any next steps at all. I tried to post on the developer forum but it got taken down I think I also tried a post on Reddit but I didn't have enough karma. Does anybody else have any suggestions what to try?

Hello my friend Lawrence. I have done this multiple times. I have also factory reset my phones. The force reset function does indeed work, but the issues I face still persist regardless as I detailed in my original post. These issues proliferate not just to my phones but to my iPad and Mac services as well. There is a very, very brief period. I would estimate less than one second after each force restart where my contacts I can scroll and I do get notifications by phone number. but then immediately after it brings me back to the white screen freezes and then crashes.

I have had multiple chats using acquaintances phones, without good support. I am on the move and own a business so I have not been able to bring them in to physical support. I doubt, given the nature of the issue, the genius bar would understand the issue and give me a reasonable solution. It is probably an iCloud or contact corruption sort of issue so I need to get into contact with engineering. All system diagnoses from the Apple tool side came back strong.

I would appreciate if you stopped sharing redundant information in this thread because even in the original post I detailed the fact I tried all of the support options available to me and mentioned force resetting twice.

There was a brief period where Discord had the same issue. It was just the Discord app. But then that reverted itself. And then sometime after I opened contacts and then noticed it was blank. I open messages and I noticed I couldn't do anything. Third party apps now work fine. Discord is working. So is WhatsApp. Messages, contacts, phone. Nope.

Thank you for the information about the genius bar. I'll go in hopefully today. I guess it's the only thing I can do. I'll go under frozen unresponsive. I tried to select iCloud option and it said I can only go through the chat support.

One I have tried resetting to factory settings multiple times. It seems like the backup is therefore corrupted.

No, I do not believe I have any apps that promise to protect against virus or malware or file systems apart from the default file manager, even after launching an unsynchronized factory reset the issues persisted.

I guess too, I wouldn't test this, but I think it's unlikely emergency services calls work.

Additionally, one interesting detail, when I received an inbound WhatsApp call after that it completely removed my ability to call people even on WhatsApp even when I could call in WhatsApp but not the default phone services before, outbound only.

I don't know if I mentioned this here, but it also seems the issue also affects my ability to shut down my iPhone by holding the side/power button and the volume up button. When I factory reset the thing comes back, but when it synchronizes to my iCloud for some reason that ability goes away. Force reset and software bind still works, but the normal way does not.

This is definitely an interesting experience. I never seen anything like this before.

I made my way to the genius bar and they could do nothing but escalate it.. I also learned that even when my first request to Apple support was to escalate, they did not in fact do so. I specifically asked for it to be escalated. They put me on the phone with a "senior engineer" where I got zero workable information or next steps and apparently did not even escalate it when it affects the very core functionality of the phone. Phones are still unusable...

Hopefully after this genius bar appointment it'll be escalated. Given it's Saturday, I'm probably looking at another week at the very least. Imagine not being able to receive bank verification codes when making transactions or being able to call emergency services.

I went to the Genius Bar. I've done every single fix in this thread and

I've been on this for quite a while. Nobody from Apple has got into

contact with me. This is serious enough of an issue that it deserves to

be escalated. It's been almost a week. I'm not able to use my phone.

I went to the Genius Bar. I've done every single fix in this thread. Nobody from Apple has got into contact with me. This is serious enough of an issue that it deserves to be escalated and somebody should ideally get into direct contact with me. It's been almost a week. I'm not able to use my phone. I can't reasonably jump and make assumptions without some sort of extra diagnostic information I don't have the capability to generate on my own. I would be willing to do anything. If I knew that deleting all of my contacts from the web and then restoring from some backup would work, I would do it.

But nobody has got me any information and the most that the people at the Genius Bar told me was I should just make a new iCloud account. The thing is there's just a lot of information on there and it's a really big inconvenience. I thought that someone would be able to help and just delete the corrupted elements so I wouldn't have to go through these processes, but ****.. I've done everything recommended by Apple.

I couldn't find a manual or any primary trustworthy information to understand how the contact structure works and what I could have done to break it. So I would appreciate if anybody has any details on this.

Still broken not able to get BANK CODES. Calls - again only accessible when every single contact is deleted- seem to drop after 20 or so minutes. The call service drops and it says the call timer is running but im not able to hear or say anything. Therefore im not even able to call apple support anymore. I have no route to getting any help whatsoever. Nightmare.