Apple really dropped the ball on this one. Tried out a refurb'd 7 Plus w/ Virgin Mobile back in early January. Same issue....phone updated when I booted up, then it promptly bricked the microphone when updating to iOS 12. Wasted 3 hours of Virgin Mobile trying to figure out what was going on, with them just sending me to Apple Genius Bar....and of course the "genius" there put my phone on her diagnostic tester. And within 2 minutes, she pretty much said...."yeah this has been an issue since a previous update"! I think she realized what she said and then quickly tried to "Ooops" it away, but it was a pretty frank admission that this was on them. "No longer under warranty" as a refurb....so they weren't about to throw me any bones. Nothing wrong with the phone until the update. The sucky thing is I had to wait around to see that 'genius'....when someone probably could have just told me what I needed to hear.
Good thing Virgin Mobile had a 30-day money back guarantee....so I promptly returned that bad boy to Indiana. And glad that it finally forced me off VM as a carrier. Just ponied up and joined my family plan, traded in my SE, and walked away with an XR for $450. So in a round about way....things worked out ok.
Huge debacle on Apple's part. They can't afford more blunders like that with one of their bread and butter products...because they are losing ground with better versions of Windows and Chromebooks floating around now. The computer section of the Apple store is gradually getting spaced out to the iPad and iPhone.
