iPhone Stuck on Black Screen and Spinning Wheel

Hi,

My iPhone blocked last night with a black screen and a spinning wheel.

If you're experiencing the same problem and wish to know how I solved the problem, jump to the end of this message and give that very simple procedure a go.

It was so late I decided I wuld just try to reboot it by pressing both volume and the power button and let it stay for the night. The iPhone vibrated but the black screen/spinning wheel persisted. I torned the light out and went to sleep.

This morning when I woke up with a slight hope something changed I found the iPhone in the same state: black screen and spinning wheel.

I took the morning off and went on to try a fix it: read a number of messagens on the web, plus some articles but to no avail. Most of them started by suggesting using iTunes and update (no data loss) or restore (to last backup) ot do a factory resetting. Since I had some movies of a newly born grandson I was not prepared to take the easy way and risk loosing those memories. There was supposedly a backup done precisely before the iPhone stuck (perhaps something went wrong, not sure) so perhaps the movies would be there...

Nevertheless I could not get my iTunes to recognize the iPhone. It ended upi with a peculiar message, something like "The application to too long time to respond" (doing a free tanslation here, my iPhone is in Portuguese).

So I started checking iPhone tools. I already have one - iExplore - and it generally does the job, but since it relies on iTunes to start de hook up to the iPhone and since that was not successful , it serve me no good.

I even went to the extent of buying a new tool - I had tried the free version of ReiBoot and it looked promising so I clicked the "buy now" button, hoping that would shed som light into my problem. Unfortunately the "buy now" button on this Mac software sends you to a page where if you are not carefull and in an hurry like I was you'll end up buying... the windows version of the software! Excelent, really what I needed! Alas I did not spot the dim "windows version/mac version", perhaps my fault or some poor page design or both.

So I wrote to the company asking them to change the versions but I'm on TMG so had to wait for the return mail. So I decided to check Youtube - not the first obvious choice for me as a place to find mac software solutions... But I was there checking other stuff so I gave it a go.

And there it was, a small, very smal vídeo by Everythink (iPhone 8 black screen spinning wheel problem resolved | reset trick on iPhone 8 - YouTube). As it stated and the video shows, this saviour says:

"Don’t worry It’s just a bug in iOS we can fix it immediately. Follow the below steps for iPhone 8

Press Up volume button one time

Press down volume button one time

Press and hold side power button for a while.

You will see your screen immediately off and Apple logo appears again. That’s it. Your phone is ready. It’s restarting without deleting any data in it."

Would you believe he was right? As simple as that: a click on the + volume, a click on the minus volume, press power button till the screen goes all black (no "spinning wheel from ****"). 5 seconds later, Apple white logo; 15 seconds later "please enter your code", and all back to normal, nothing lost, as no problem had happened whatsoever!...

So sometimes the easiest solutions do work. :-) Thought this was worthy of sharing here, perhaps you would also entangle yourself on the quest for a complex solution for what it seemed a complex problem...

Good luck!

Cheers,

-- joão

​[Re-Titled by Moderator]