iPhone 6 Plus Crashing (a lot)

No, none of what I tried above worked.

My latest update:

I've put the iPhone in DFU mode (holding both sleep/wake button and home button until Apple logo appears, then releasing sleep/wake button). This also erases the iPhone firmware when iOS is reinstalled, but restoring from the backup may still bring the problem back.

And it did.

So I've done the DFU restore again and stopped the sync before it put all of the apps back on the phone. I had 993 apps and at least one of them may be causing the crashing issues. So I've selected just a few hundred that I actually use and I'm going to see if that stabilizes things. Regardless of apps/settings, at least I have my text messages for now.

If this doesn't work, I'll be doing a full restore to factory settings then finding the best online utility for extracting the Messages database and restoring it (if there is such a thing). Currently I'm looking at iFunbox, iCopyBot, and iExplore.

If anybody has additional info, please chime in.

Thanks!

Payton

Not sure. I've seen problems like these happen to other people and the recommendation is always to restore and not put the backup back on the phone since it contains something corrupt.

I just really wish Apple would permanently store iMessages and associated media (pictures & video) on iCloud, just like Contacts and Calendars, etc. Not only would that solve my current problem since I could bring all messages back down outside of a backup... but it might actually allow my Mac/iPad/iPhone to keep everything in sync since all devices could ping the same centralized message database on the cloud. 😟

That's interesting you didn't restore from a backup and are still having the problem, though. If you can set the phone up as new and reproduce the problem, that would seem to indicate a hardware issue (logic board or something). And Apple would replace that.

Have you tried restoring by putting the iPhone in DFU mode and then setting up as new?

It appears my issue is resolved, although I'm not sure if this will work for anybody else. If you're having problems after a DFU restore and not putting the backup on the iPhone, something else may be wrong.

Every time I would restore from the backup, things would look normal as it continued to sync over apps. At some point during the process of restoring the apps from iTunes, the phone would start mini crashing. As I mentioned in my original post, this didn't appear to hinder iTunes from putting the apps onto the device, it just waited until the iPhone was booted back up to resume the restoration.

So... I concluded that perhaps something was wrong with an app it was trying to restore (or a folder configuration). So I performed the DFU restore once more to clear out the firmware. Once again, I chose to restore from my 5S backup (which was actually a backup of my new iPhone 6 Plus at this point since I had received new texts I wanted to keep). Only this time, after the initial restore was complete, but before apps had been synced from iTunes, I killed the restore and unplugged the phone.

At this point, I had everything a really wanted on the phone besides the apps. I had restored so many times, I was content with losing my saved app data, etc. So going off some screenshots I took of my app folders, I began downloading the apps again manually from the App Store. To my surprise, many of them retained their configurations once I opened them, so obviously at least some app data came with the restore. But I am happy to report no crashes and everything appears to be working normal. At 993, I needed to trim down my apps anyway.

If anybody wants addition info or instructions, don't hesitate to ask. I'll keep responding to this thread to help others if I can.

EDIT: Also, since I haven't tried syncing my phone with the computer again yet, I am a little afraid it might start trying to put apps back on once I plug it up. So I decided to manually move my backup outside of the Backup folder (just in case I ever need them again and so iTunes can't find it and try to resume the restore). You can find all of your device backups here:

Finder > "Go" menu > hold down option and click "Library" > Application Support > MobileSync > Backup > hexadecimal backup folder

Once I get brave enough, I'll plug in my iPhone, stop the initial sync iTunes tries to do and then perform a manual backup. That way I can freeze everything in working condition in case iTunes starts messing up my iPhone again when it actually syncs.