iPhone stuck in reboot loop - too many apps installed?

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Andi1996 Author

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iPhone stuck in reboot loop - too many apps installed?

Hi guys!

Starting some months ago, I've had nothing but problems with my iPhone. However, I've been dealing with most of these or even solved them.

But now I'm stuck on a reboot loop for a few days and don't know what to do.

When did it start? I think it was in May when I first got panic.plist, ResetCounter and SpringBoard-CrashLogs under "Diagnostics and Usage". Following this, everytime I rebooted my phone or the battery was empty, it could take some more minutes than normal for my iPhone to boot. This loading time increased and increased, in October it once took more than two days for my iPhone to reboot. I now have really thousands of those ErrorLogs. The Apple support on the phone couldn't help me either. Additionally, the phone performed some cruel changes I can't explain: Once the language was changed, once the photo gallery had to be restored (the iPhone did that on its own).

However, sometime in November the iPhone crashed, and I was already thinking that it would now last a few days until I could use it again. But somehow it was done within 15 minutes. Without any error or reboot loop. The last two months I haven't had any problems with this until the battery was empty three days ago.

Since then, I have had the iPhone plugged in so the battery doesn't get empty and it's stuck on the bright Apple logo. After about 210 seconds the logo gets dark, then the screen is completely black and it's starting the same procedure again. Sometimes I get the vibration, sometimes the loading circle (white wheel of death!), but everytime it just starts over again.

I am pretty sure this problem appears because I have more than 1300 apps installed (yes, this is a very huge number, but I remember Steve Jobs saying that, with the folders in iOS 4, it would be possible to have a few thousand apps installed), 4000+ photos, and so on. I am pretty sure it's not a hardware, but a software problem. In detail, it's about the SpringBoard. The iPhone 4S only has 512MB RAM, so it's hard for it to load 1300+ app icons into its memory (which it has to because the SpringBoard has to run without any lags). Only in some cases it's able to boot that up, but I have absolutely no idea which cases these are and why it has run well for the last two months, but beginning with the new year stopped to work.

Furthermore, the panic.plist entries all say that the problem is a watchdog timeout. Apple's iOS seems to allow the devices only to take up to two minutes (always around 120 seconds in the CrashLogs) to boot up, then probably another 120 seconds to launch the SpringBoard process (which explains the watchdog timeouts in the SpringBoard-CrashLogs).

I will not restore the iPhone because I unfortunately haven't backed up for a long time and there have been many data changes since the last backup.

So altogether, I tried to collect all the information I know here, but that's really not enough. Apple unlikely wants to help me, the phone support was really nice, but even asked his superior, who couldn't help either.

My questions to you folks now are: Do you have any more information regarding panic.plist's, watchdog timeouts or reboot loops?

What would your advice be? Any chance to get onto my data and back it up? Or is waiting the best solution?

Would it be better to try several hard resets, or let the battery run empty and start the whole process again, or just let the phone plugged in so it tries to reboot on and on until it's hopefully successful sometime?

And: Would it maybe increase the loading time if I would take the SIM card out of the iPhone, so the chance to have an successful try would be higher?

Note: I am still using iOS 5.1.1 because I am completely sure that I'd have to buy an iPhone 5 to run 1300+ apps on iOS 6.

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.1.1

Posted on Jan 4, 2013 5:03 AM

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Answer 1

Andi1996 Author

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Jan 5, 2013 11:15 AM in response to Andi1996

Okay, some more information about this.

Apparently there is a 'watchdog' that listens whether the iPhone's software responds or not. If it doesn't, it forces a restart, and also creates a panic.plist entry (under Diagnostics). Unfortunately the responding time is only 120 seconds. The problem I have now is the so called 'Application Map'. To ensure a smooth browsing through the different screen filled with apps, this map is regenerated everytime the user installs a new app or deletes one. Because I have more than 1300 apps installed, generating this Application Map usually takes more than two minutes. I can only hope that sometime in the next days my iPhone will be able to do this in less than 120 seconds (like it has done that several times before).

I still can't explain why everything had been working great during the last two months. I have probably installed some new apps, but also deleted other ones, so the number of total apps didn't really increase heavily.

However, I've read about some possible solutions to this problem (without restoring - which would solve the problem only temporarily anyway):

Hard-resetting the iPhone until the screen is completely black, then wait a few minutes, then turn the device on. It's possible that this has to be repeated several times, but for the user who posted this it resolved the issue.

For all the (in this case lucky) guys with a jailbreak: SSH into the iPhone, then temporarily move the watchdog located under /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/mobilewatchdog.bundle to a different folder, the iPhone will boot up after a few minutes. Then just move the watchdog back. It's a shame that apparently jailbreak users can resolve this issue, while normal users can't.

I also want to note that this problem has been appearing since iOS 2, which came out more than four years ago. It would be really no big deal for Apple developers to change the 120 seconds to e.g. 300 or even more. I've found hundreds of threads, not only here, where users complain about exactly the same issue. I don't have any hope that an Apple employee will ever read this, but if so, please keep that in mind. I don't understand why Apple has done nothing to solve this issue.

However, if you have any more ideas, please reply here. If there's anyone around here who has managed to successfully install more than 1300 apps on his iPhone (or iPod touch), please post that.

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