What causes a boot loop?

I recently had a boot loop issue. Here's what caused mine:

I tried downloading a free app and then pressed the Home button. Instead of the app icon showing up on my home screen as it downloaded/installed, my phone froze. After waiting a few moments I attempted a hard reset. This caused the apple logo boot loop. Corrupted app perhaps?

I had to plug my phone into my PC and use iTunes to do a restore.

IPhone 7 Plus 256GB, iOS 10.1

11/1/16 Update:

My iPhone 7 Plus encountered yet another Apple logo boot loop shortly after restoring the first time. Once again I had to use iTunes to do a restore. This time I restored "as a new phone" instead of using a previous iCloud backup.

So far so good. I think the iCloud backup I brought over from my 6S Plus to my 7 Plus was corrupted.

I'll keep you updated if I encounter this issue again but restoring "as a new phone" may be the key to solving this issue for those having similar issues. Inconvenient, yes... but hey, if it works!

Thnaks for the reply. I too chose "set up as new iPhone" each time just to alleviate the chances of a backup being corrupted. Sadly, it still happened again. I wish I could discern from Apple's 10.1.1 release notes if this issue was fixed. Apple rarely include all improvements/bug fixes in their release notes.

The iOS Facebook app seems to be the common denominator for some; myself included. When you either install or delete the app, it gets stuck and ultimately leads to the dreaded Apple logo loop/freeze. Perhaps the indexing or coding for this app is the culprit.

this does occur when u jailbreak i got jailbreak on a old device to see what its like with all the features and also got if for fun but i dont use it for anything bad and when you get this from jailbreaking you just have to reset your device to factory settings to fix but this happened to me on a iphone 5c and it didnt have jailbreak but it would be in the loop for about 3 hours then it would work then just go into the loop again but the strange thing was when i went into a game i had unlimited coins and gems for some reason but then when i went back onto it they were all gone and when it does this before the apple logo appears lines would come on the screen then the screen would go dark then go into the loop but i believe it was caused by low memory and to many files i think apple should really have a look at this also my iphone 4s got disabled for 13 billion minutes and when i hook it up the the computer it charges but wont show up on itunes so i cant fix it i think they should look into this

Virus - no.

Try resetting the device by holding the home and power keys down until the Apple logo appears.

Barry

How would I (or anyone else) know what caused a specific problem on a specific device?

Barry

It could be a corrupted file, a bad app or install, or myriad other reasons. It's like trying to ask why a computer freezes up. You have to ask a lot of questions to troubleshoot it.

Same here. In my case, it was Facebook. I frequently delete and reinstall this app as it caches like crazy.

For what it's worth, I've also made the following change:

Settings - general - accessibility - reduce motion (on).

ios seems to run much smoother and seamless with the reduced

motion setting.