White Apple Logo Screen of Death Stops iPhones in Their Tracks

Posted by digiprod--2008
7 August 2008 @ 8am

Thanks for writing this. I will add to the description you wrote here that sometimes a third party apps will sometimes just quit, then all of the third party apps will quit. Restarts and hard resets will not allow them to run anymore. When this happens even reinstalling them does not help and a restore of the iPhone is needed.

Worse yet I have had an app quit that reboots the iPhone leaving you with the white Apple logo of death and nothing else can fix this but a total restore.

I point this out as the bugs are not limited to installing and updating apps.

iTunes 7.7.1 also has a serious bug where it creates a new file with an incremented number every time you update an app. You are soon left with many copies of the same app in the Mobile Applications folder filling your hard drive. iTunes seems to never know when you need or don’t need app updates and sometimes offers 5 or 6 copies of the same app when you check for updates. If you download these the above problem of re-creating instead of overwrite app files becomes even worse.

I have had my iPhone 3G freeze on the Apple logo needing a restore 26 times.

Posted by daniel4510_dotmac
7 August 2008 @ 8am

This is exactly what happened to me, after which, following a lengthy restore, my iPhone lost the ability to connect to any WiFi network.

Posted by macraptor
7 August 2008 @ 8am

OK, I am on my third iPhone, and while the first replacement was needed for a “bad” iPhone (not even the Genius Bar could break the loop to get it to reconnect to iTunes), second and third iPhones (Black 16 GB versions) have gone down this path. I have two other 8GB iPhones that have not had any problems, but are more lightly used than my 16GB. I have, since 11 July, restored my iPhone 11 times! Until this afternoon, I thought update 2.0.1 had fixed it. I was so wrong.

Worryingly, today’s crash occurred without any Apps loading or updating at all. After hours of normal use of inbuilt and App-store apps, and a few phone calls, I turned my phone off (it interferes with the email on my MPB if I leave it on) in perfect working order. Four hours later, I turned it on, and instead of the usual 40 seconds to PIN input, it took about two minutes. A check of iPod function revealed “the usual” frozen iPod screen saying I had no music or content on the phone. 10 seconds on the Home button to break back to the Home screen.

All the Apple native apps worked, but all added apps (even Remote, by Apple) started, flashed screen, and returned to home screen.

Attached to iTunes, the same problem as before. iTunes showed all the music and podcasts and photos as being on my phone, but the iPhone showed none of them.

WORSE, I had a good working backup from just an hour before the crash, so I thought I’d just restore that. But when the iPhone was hooked up to iTunes it started an automatic backup of the corrupted iPhone which WIPED my morning backup immediately.

And, yes, the only answer that has worked is to do a RESTORE as a NEW iPhone. With hours of waiting and extra work of perpetually re-establishing preferences and accounts.

I love the iPhone when it does work. But conservatively this love has cost me 30 hours of sleep and work and family life in under a month just to keep it functioning.

The last advice of the Sydney AppleStore genius bar guy? “It will be fine if you just don’t load any Apps on it from the App Store. Just keep it running with the inbuilt apps.”

I feel like I’ve paid quite a price for being an alpha-tester.

Posted by ajxharg
7 August 2008 @ 9am

I had the same happen to me quite a number of times. I was in an O2 store and asked if many people had returned phones with these issues and was told no. On that basis I asked for an exchange as either it is only some phones that are affected or they are lying about the number of returns they are having in which case I have a new phone. The phone also had come with cracks under the glass that I didn’t realise where cracks until I saw my girlfriends new phone. The new phone arrived and the home button didn’t work but stability was much better. I am now waiting for my third phone.

Posted by unsungsong
7 August 2008 @ 10am

After having my original generation iPhone for just over a year, I had never had to do a full restore until version 2.0 software. Since then, I had this problem 5 DIFFERENT TIMES and had to do a lengthy full restore process, the last one took OVER 3 HOURS to complete. Please also be aware that when the iPhone is restoring, you may get an Activation error that it cannot find the signal, but this corrected itself as the restore cycle continued. Since 2.01 I have NOT had this problem so hopefully it is one of the many non-desrcript “bug fixes”.
I was beginning to think Apple purposely wrote some code to have this happen to first generation iPhones so that users would opt to upgrade to iPhone 2.0!

Posted by staarr54
7 August 2008 @ 10am

This has happened to me several times. At first, I went nuts, ran to the Apple store and they did a complete restore. Since the first time, it’s happened several more times, mostly when downloading aps. It locks up for sure. However, I don’t panic anymore. My “work around” is this. Disconnect the iphone from ALL chargers….computers, wall outlets, etc. Just let the battery run completely down. Which is does in about 2 to 3 hrs. When it has completely run down, plug in the battery charger and “reboot”. Bingo………you are up and running again. But………this is a pain and Apple really needs to deal with this issue.

Posted by jbenninghoff
7 August 2008 @ 10am

I have managed to get into the Apple-logo-loop 3 times now, and fortunately was able to restore from backup each time. Here’s my advice based on my experiences:

1. Always install applications using iTunes. Every time I looped my iPhone, I was installing an App from the iPhone. The first two were updates, but the third was a brand new application (via 3G). So far, I have never caused a loop by installing with iTunes. Always installing with iTunes also means that you can restore your phone right away if you get looped.

2. Always run a backup before installing or updating applications. Usually this means just plugging in your phone and letting the backup complete … however long it takes. ;)

3. Some applications just don’t install properly. Installing with iTunes will generate an error saying the App wasn’t installed. On 2.0, the solution is to delete the app (yes, you lose the data) and reinstall. Now that I’m on the 2.0.1 firmware, the app installs but all data is lost. If the data was critical, your only option is to restore from backup (hence #2).

4. If you loop your device, and you have a lot of applications, restore will take a *really* long time. I have 60+ apps and a full restore took over 3 hours (about 3x full backup time). The restore will appear to halt at 90%, but is still running - if you interrupt it part-way your applications won’t all be there. When the restore is complete, you’ll get all your SMS, app settings & data, etc, but any synced data (movies, music, photos, contacts, etc.) will have to be re-synced after the restore.

(Optional) I also always run a backup after installing apps - either by disconnecting and reconnecting, or by control-click-iPhone “Backup.” Always let backups complete; when you add or change apps, they will take longer, but if you cancel, you risk corrupting the backup.

For those who say that we should expect this from new software - I respectfully disagree. Certainly, Apple will fix these issues, but the software was also delivered prematurely and/or insufficiently tested. The whole point of the App Store was to prevent crashes - the app update process should be failsafe, and it’s not.

Overall, I am very happy with my iPhone 3G and hope Apple will deliver fixes to these issues soon.

Posted by mgarc1125
7 August 2008 @ 10am

Yeah, I had something similar when I tried to update to 2.01 but the only difference is that my phone wouldnt even retstore. I went to the apple store and they said that this bug sometimes cant be resolved on PCs and must be restored on a Mac. So they restored it on a Mac and now it works fine but still, 2.01 doesnt seem to be worth it because its still really buggy.

Posted by Kenny Cark
7 August 2008 @ 10am

5 iPhones… 3G repalced within 72 hours of purchase for this problem. The guy sitting at the Genius bar next to me, there for the same problem “Apple screen of death” too many restores to count. All my posts deleted off of Apple discussions…Apple may be refunding all my money for the 5 iPhones I’ve purchased over the last year! They will not bite the bullet like Microsoft did and repost/give the option of going back to version 1.1.4. Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung, and Blackberry’s marketing department should jump on this issue and do a few commercials just to give Apple a taste of what it’s like!

iPhone 2.0=Windows Vista

iPhone…It’s not for business!

Posted by Yelsmek
7 August 2008 @ 10am

I’ve experienced this. What appears to happen is that the OS takes far longer to boot than normal. All I’ve had to do is have patience and wait for the login screen shortly after the two vibrations. This can take 3-5 minutes (I didn’t time it, but time passed very slowly). My impatience sometimes lead me to believe that the iPhone was bricked and to force another restart. However, after the first, long, really long, incredibly long reboot, the iPhone seems to boot normally. Just be patient!

Posted by rhoff_dotmac
7 August 2008 @ 10am

I had this happen to me just yesterday. I did not have to do a lengthy restore. I held the top sleep button in for a lengthy time about a minute and it eventually restarted. After the restart it went back to installing the app, (which seems to be taking longer and longer to complete). It has been working fine since.

Posted by Yelsmek
7 August 2008 @ 11am

P.S. My comments shouldn’t be construed to mean that the cause of this long reboot isn’t because of corruption or other problems. It may be and probably is a good idea to restore the iPhone firmware – but it isn’t absolutely necessary. All I’m saying is that the iPhone will (usually?) reboot and be usable.

Posted by jberk17
7 August 2008 @ 11am

I have been experiencing the “Apple Logo Screen of Death” for awhile now (23 restores and counting) on my three week old 16gig 3G. I was hoping the 2.0.1 update would fix the problem but it hasn’t. My phone still freezes whenever I go to download or update an app, My patience with Apple to get this problem corrected is really wearing thin.

Posted by moodyryan11
7 August 2008 @ 11am

i have the same ongoing problem for the last 7 days!!!! i replaced my first 3g iphone after i contacted Apple! the issue never stopped! i keep resetting my iphone but it does freeze in the process of adding the applications! Somehow, i have a feeling this might be an itunes bug that needs to be fixed! i tried installing the apps one by one , few times, but sadly, it is not working properly!

Posted by moodyryan11
7 August 2008 @ 11am

and for the record, i am using a Mac to restore !

Posted by bdf74
7 August 2008 @ 11am

Happens to me too. And it’s happening everywhere in the world: I’ve seen people reporting this from the United States, from Japan, from Ireland, from Italy…

And I still haven’t found any website writing about this. Is everyone scared about Apple reactions?

What a mess, Apple. After MobileMe, this. What a mess.

Posted by ruxpin_dotmac
7 August 2008 @ 12pm

Yes, it’s hard not to be a conspiracy theorist when all of our year-old iPhones are bricking just as the shiny new 3G models arrive!

I have encountered this repeatedly with my original model iPhone since updating to 2.0 (and now 2.01). Once a freeze occurs, the only way to get past the Apple logo screen is a factory restore. Curiously on my device the factory restore screen refuses to pop up unless I’m connected via USB to the Mac. If the iPhone is not connected to the computer, it will never go to the restore screen, just keep rebooting and freezing up.

And then (once you get to the restore screen on the device and in iTunes) you’re in for a nightmarish restoration process 8-12 hours in total just to get back to a working iPhone again. (The 2.0 software has sped up the backup process for working phones, but sadly the same cannot be said for the restoration process when you brick your iPhone). And then, half the time iTunes reports that backups are corrupt and can’t be used. The other half of the time the backup is restored. Yet after the agony of finally getting everything working again, it is a crapshoot: it could be 36 hours, or it could be 20 minutes, but the Apple logo screen is going to come back again and haunt you. Guaranteed.

I’ve found several triggers for the issue on my device. The most reliable way to freeze up the unit is to try to update an existing application thru the iPhone rather than iTunes: 9 times out of 10 the device freezes midway through the installation process. Another canary in the coalmine is if applications crash once or twice in a row: you are headed to freeze-town quite soon whenever this occurs. You can delay the inevitable by shutting down and rebooting your iPhone when apps start to crash, but that will only put off the freeze up temporarily.

My year warranty fortunately has not expired, and after venting my frustration upon AppleCare, I am getting a replacement phone from Apple at no charge. I encourage anyone having this issue to contact Apple before their coverage expires.

I have no intention of trying to restore a backup to the new phone when I get it. I’ve been down that road before. Something is screwy in the software. Better to cut the cord and start from scratch I fear. I am setting my replacement phone up as a brand new iPhone and crossing my fingers.

Posted by fattychance
7 August 2008 @ 1pm

so I wonder if they will refund my $29.95 “shipping and handling” fee on my ipod touch for this one.

This makes me mad.

I had a feeling it was software related and asked their technician if it was possible.

Oh no I was assured. Well guess what…I wasn’t nuts. I just had it happen repeatedly.

Grrr.

Posted by fattychance
7 August 2008 @ 1pm

By the way…I never had it happen until the recent itunes update.

Posted by keeter--2008
7 August 2008 @ 2pm

I have to had this problem but I think I may have fixed it. I’m wondering if many of those having this issue have a previous iPhone 1st gen that they are still syncing with the same account as their iPhone 3g. That was my case and I think there may be an issue here with having apps on both phones from the same account and how they are getting updated and kept in sync in iTunes. I noticed that I had a lot (5) of different versions of the same apps in the Mobile Applications folder where apps are stored. I’m assuming this occurs when you update an app but wondering why it doesn’t replace the previous version. I think that might be part of the problem. What I’ve done is this.
1. Made backup of my Mobile Application folder found in your iTunes Music folder. Just in case there is an app that has been pulled that I won’t be able to re-download. You can drop this app from the folder onto iTunes to add it back in this case.
2. In iTunes I deleted all apps that I had downloaded.
3. In the Mobile Applications folder I then deleted all those apps since they still show up in the folder.
4. I wanted to start clean so I did a restore of my iPhone at this point to the latest firmware but I didn’t restore from backup and did a sync after the firmware was restored.
5. I have since downloaded about 15 of the apps that I previously had and since they don’t charge for ones already bought I’m ok with that.
6. I am only using my iPhone 3g on that computer and my 1st gen iPhone on another for syncing and backing up.
Results:
Over the last three days I have synced every night and backed up the iphone with no problems. I have also downloaded 3 apps onto the iPhone and another 2 or so through iTunes. So far I have not had one problem and things seem to be good. I would recommend anyone else who has had these problems to follow this and see if it helps them.

Posted by vic.healey
7 August 2008 @ 3pm

I have noticed a couple of oddities when the iPhone 3G has been updating itself. iPhone 3G can receive a phone call which corrupts the process. It will appear to return to what it was doing but you will need to restore the phone for things to work again.

Second I have heard it receive an incoming email whice it was installing a app. I am not sure if this corrupted things but the little single vibrate notice got my attention when I thought the phone should be concentrating on a change to the internal flash memory.

If you try and open another app which it is installing or updating an existing app it will corrupt the install process. ie you can not check to see what the new email was for instnace without messing things up. The app may look like it is there but when you go to use it the phone will immediately kill the app as soon as it opens.

Posted by hdtravel
7 August 2008 @ 3pm

This happened to me yesterday.

I had to do a total restore.

The backup would not work. Corrupt !!

It took 3 hours plus time to reset everything.

IPhone 3G 16GB White, 2.0.1

APPLE PLEASE FIX THIS !!!

Posted by PommieZ
7 August 2008 @ 11pm

As someone who has been struggling A LOT with the ins and outs of iTunes App installations failing, let me share this little tidbit to those who get the “Apple Screen of Death”:

DON’T FREAK OUT AND KEEP FORCIBLY REBOOTING IT.

As near as I can guess what is happening is that the iPhone has sensed it locked up, and a watchdog timer or crash causes it to reboot automatically. But keep in mind that it’s also running a version of Mac OSX on a flash drive that SENSES THE FILESYSTEM IS CORRUPT.

The reason I’ve found that it appears dead is because it’s doing the UNIX equivalent of a fsck on the filesystem, which takes noticably longer than a check of a “clean” filesystem.

If you keep mashing the power and interrupting it, you’re going to screw up the filesystem even worse, and start pushing it towards the only other repair option: the “Restore” from iTunes, which wipes the filesystem and starts over.

So if you notice your iPhone spontaneously reboot, LEAVE IT ALONE FOR 5 MINUTES. If it’s still unresponsive after that, THEN restore it. Otherwise, leave the operating system alone and quit yanking the power away from it!

Posted by Aille2112
8 August 2008 @ 1am

YOu CAN restore it from Windows iTunes, I’ve had to do it several times. The problem is sometimes you have to do it from what they call “DFU” mode.

Posted by tampaappleman
8 August 2008 @ 5am

Hi Guys,

here is another victim of this bug. Lost all my recent iPhone pics taken before I could back them up on my mac. Restore wouldn’t work for me since iTunes told me that my recent backup was corrupt !!???

So I had to set up the phone as a new phone and copy everything over manually from the Mac. What a disaster. That leads me to an issue called Quality Control (QC). I am very seriously thinking about starting an online survey about Apple’s QC let’s say over the last 12 months. I am really getting tired to explain to people why this company basically makes such great products when on the other hand I don’t know when to stop complaining about about the mislaunches of the products that weren’t ready for release and their accompanied software bugs (Leopard, Time Capsule, Mobile Me, and the like). I would then forward the survey result officially to Apple. I think Apple needs to sit back, think hard about their marketing strategy and make sure that the good old times are going to return - where an Apple product that was launched actually worked fine. Currently they take much bigger bites than they can chew. If you feel like me and have some ideas how to do that let me now and we get something started. There is one thing that hasn’t changed. Apple still listens to their customers.

Posted by squidlychoi
8 August 2008 @ 6am

You don’t have to completely restore the phone - this is what i did:

1) hold the sleep and home button down simultaneously for about 10 seconds - the phone should just shut down.

2) press the sleep button again to turn the phone on - the white apple logo should appear again.

3) you may have to repeat 1 and 2 a couple of times.

4) after rebooting - your lock screen (with slider bar) should appear. One time, I just swiped the slider bar and I was back. Another time, I had to go through the reboot process (1 and 2) again one last time before I was back.

Essentially, the combination of holding the sleep/on button down along with the home button, then just the sleep button during another iteration will bring your phone back. Beats having to do a full restore - that would really suck.

Posted by phaseshift
8 August 2008 @ 6am

The same thing happened to me a week after purchasing the 3G on its introduction date. I couldn’t get the phone into restore mode. A genius at the Apple Store managed to do so, but once restored, the phone had no Safari on it.

I went through 2 more phones at the store, before the third one finally was acceptable.
Full details of the ordeal are on my blog at:
http://www.fellcast.com/2008/07/iphone-3g-the-agony-and-the-ec.html

It happened to me again with the new phone once, when I was rearranging app icons en masse.

Posted by Wacko
8 August 2008 @ 8am

Before reading this article… this happened to me this morning on iPhone 3G w/ 2.0.1. It was installing an update to an app and I was in a hurry so I cancelled the sync and the phone was usable for about 8 seconds then it locked up. I went ahead and rebooted it and got the apple logo of death. Whenever it was connected to the Mac, iTunes was locked up, disconnecting made iTunes respond. I experience the two vibrations as well at some point while holding it.

Interestingly, I was able to get off my images from the camera into iPhoto without any problems even in the locked state.

I finally got it to the point I could do a restore and restored it. It attempted to install a backup but said it was corrupted or something and so I just set it up as a new one. (looking back, probably best). Anyhow, it started installing applications again and I stopped it as I really needed to leave and it functioned fine and has been fine since.

I will be adding back in all my applications here shortly, but yes… what a pain.

Posted by zimbean
8 August 2008 @ 12pm

When this happened to me I suspected the culprit might be one of the four apps I had just installed. So I tried again to sync with itunes, and although the phone was stuck at the apple logo, itunes behaved as if the phone were successfully synced. So I went to the Applications tab in itunes and deleted all four apps.

Lo and behold, on the next sync the phone uninstalled the apps and then booted up perfectly. I was very glad i didn’t have to do a complete restore.

Posted by mediatime
8 August 2008 @ 4pm

This happened to me many times with iPhone version 2.0 , I was forced to restore the iPhone almost daily. The last thing that happened to me was a crash while playing BrainChallenge . The application quit and all the other applications unexpectedly quit and crashed when I tried to open them. I solved the problem by applying one update at a time but also by syncing ‘Selected Applications’ and flagging them all (instead of choosing All the Applications) .. With this method iTunes at least always recognised my iPhone when connected. The conclusion is however that 2.0.1 fixes some minor bugs but we will have to wait for a definitevily more stable software.

Posted by terryk
8 August 2008 @ 6pm

As reported on ars technica (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/08/08/fix-iphones-apple-logo-screen-of-death-with-recovery-mode):

“Putting the iPhone into Recovery Mode, which you can do by pressing and holding the Home button while reconnecting USB cable, will help jolt the iPhone out of its Apple logo screen of death loop. When “Connect to iTunes” shows up on the screen, you can finally let go of the Home button and iTunes will let you know that it’s in the process of recovering your iPhone.”

Posted by macservicesact
9 August 2008 @ 1am

This happened to me last night - but with a difference and, perhaps, a reason.

My iPhone was very low on battery. I plugged it into the mac to recharge and then BAM - the White Apple of death.

I reset it and restarted it a bout 6 times and just when I was about to give up it came back to life and has been great since.

Interesting to note - I didn’t have to do a factory reset.

Posted by rmurraymd
9 August 2008 @ 5am

This also happens to the ipod touch. It appears to be related to a corrupted application. When an attempt is made to delete the corrupted application the touch “bricks” requiring a very lengthy reset and restore process.

Posted by jjdarby3_dotmac
9 August 2008 @ 10am

After crashing almost daily, having corrupted backups, and iPhone 3g Logo Death, I decided to incrementally install the iPhone Applications. This time I started with only thirty of my favorites. “Other” space occupies 851.7 Meg on this loading. (It has been up to 1.6 Gig.) The process is really time consuming and the downloading or sync process can freeze for both identifiable and non-identifiable events, causing you to cancel it or restart. (There are not enough hours in my day.) I found that if you touch iTunes during an “Apply” or “Sync,” the process will fail. After a Restore last night for three hours, twenty-eight minutes which did not get my Address Book, nor Calendar, I am currently doing a full back up. The Backup progress bar so far is about ninety percent done and thus far has taken an interminable four hours, forty-two minutes. Patience may be the virtue that I am trying to learn in my incarnation in this Apple orchard. However, thus far, 2.0, et all has been straight from the Garden of Good and Evil’s Apple Tree of Knowledge . . . kicked out of the Garden. * * * Finished. It did download the App that failed last night (Nav Clock). Also, it got my Address Book and Calendar. Time: four hours, fifty-seven minutes. I am not going to do anything to irritate it; and, keep its battery full for a few days. What a trip. Apple, please hurry.

Posted by spawnywhippet
10 August 2008 @ 12am

It has to be said that as a new convert to the wonderful world of Apple, I’m not impressed in the slightest. Sure, the iPhone has a shiny interface, but the technology behind it and the stability is downright awful.
I’ve run Windows XP and Nokia phones for years and have never had to do so many firmware updates and restores as this. In the 2 months I’ve owned the iPhone 2G 16GB, I’ve had to update the firmware 4 times, completely wiping it each time. I’ve had countless hangs and crashes, at least once a day I have to reset it. Even my Windows CE mobile was more stable.

How is it that an open platform running a billion unapproved applications like Windows can be more stable than a closed Linux-based platform running only Apple approved applications?

Posted by snapcridge--2008
10 August 2008 @ 9pm

Play by the rules at all times:
1. Read before you do
2. Always have a back up plan
3. Be patient
4. Respect the laws of the phone

Never had on single problem with my iPhone, not one…ever. Maybe I’m the lucky one, but I think it’s because I follow the rules!

Anyway I read somewhere else. That shutting down your iPod and doing a dock restart (allowing the iPhone to start on it’s own by docking it) will help with the issues expressed above…Good luck!

Posted by digiprod--2008
11 August 2008 @ 8am

@snapcridge

Good for you. Unfortunately, the only rule of the iPhone I broke was using it! The backup plan you spoke about for me, is carrying my Blackberry so when my iPhone crashes, an almost everyday occurrence I have a PHONE! If you are talking about backing up the iPhone with iTunes. It takes HOURS and in most cases the backups are useless, as iTunes tells us they are corrupt when trying to use them in a restore wasting more of my time.

Trust me restarts, hard resets, using different Macs to sync with, replacing iPhones all did nothing to fix the white Apple logo flashlight that is looming at any moment of use.

What happens constantly is third party apps (no matter which ones are installed, no matter how many are installed) will quit. Many times when one quits, NONE will ever work again! Restarting the iPhone, hard resetting the iPhone, and reinstalling them DOES NOT help. In fact, many times reinstalling an app or even deleting or updating an app directly on the iPhone will crash your iPhone leaving you what thousands of users are calling the “white logo of death” and a dead iPhone needing yet another total restore. Sometimes a quitting app is all that is needed to watch the iPhone crash and give you the Apple logo forever.

By the way I have also used the iPhone with NO third party apps and still watched as the Mail app, Contacts, Settings and Safari quit, slow scrolling, and having to wait a ridiculous amount of times for my 300 Contacts to show up. iPhone and iTunes updates did nothing to help.

Take a look in your Mobile Application folder and see how many copies of the same app you have in there! Does your iTunes have ANY idea when your apps need or don’t need updating? My doesn’t. Sometimes iTunes want to update the same app with 5 to 7 copies of the same app! Then it makes more copies of the same file, instead of overwriting them or deleting the old ones.

Sorry I lost my patience after 28 total restores, replacing my iPhone 3G, using three different Macs for syncing, stop downloading any apps, and STILL watching my iPhone become a useless piece of metal and plastic each day!

Here is my rule, read the Apple support forums and see the thousands of users with problems and do not assume your the ONLY smart one, you may just be lucky! It has nothing to do with rules. Trust me.

Posted by digiprod--2008
11 August 2008 @ 3pm

Just to clarify. When I got the white logo of death each time. I allowed the iPhone to try and recover, even let it sit for hours as I was on the road and could do nothing more. I tried holding down the home button until my finger hurt and also tried hard resets by holding down home and top button. NOTHING worked in each case. RESTORE was the only answer.

Waiting did NOT help, restarts did NOT help, resets did NOT help no matter how LONG I waited!

As much as I really hate to say it, I will have to agree with spawnywhippet above. I am a long time Mac user and I have NEVER had another phone, including Nokia, Blackberry or even Windows Mobile crash like this. It has been awful. Parading around as an Apple “fanboy” denying the problems is NOT an answer, and sure does not help Apple make better products.

Stability should be number one for the iPhone, iTunes, and MobileMe and CLEARLY it is NOT! Just saying I tried this or that, you broke the invented rules, or mine works and NEVER has it EVER HAD ANY PROBLEM helps no one, especially the person having the problems.

We have three iPhones in our household and many Macs, we are fans, not zealots. None of them are perfect!

Posted by The Gizzle
11 August 2008 @ 6pm

Apple logo iPhone screen of death update.
Letting the iphone sit after freeze did help the first couple of times. But now, this technique no longer works.
I had to restore my iPhone 3G going on 20 times now.
The solution that finally worked for me was to jailbreak the iPhone with (Pwnage tool 2.0.2). Although the iPhone still froze twice after attempting sync.
These are the steps I took.
1. Un-dock iPhone from mac or pc.
2. To get out of sync mode, Hold down the Home and Power buttons until the iPhone shuts down.
3. Push the power button to turn iPhone back on. iPhone will power on displaying the (Pwnage tool 2.0.2) Pineapple of life logo.
4. Let iphone sit like this for seven minutes or until iPhone screen goes black or until the start screen reappear, in which case you are done.
5. But, if the screen is black, just push the home button and the iPhone will come to life.

Posted by snapcridge--2008
12 August 2008 @ 10pm

@digiprod

First of all;
I have looked at the thousands of posts of people with iPhones (or iBricks as the love to call them). Ya see I am not the ONLY smart person and never claimed to be. I will take your comments about never using 3rd party apps at their word, but unfortunately the vast majority of those THOUSANDS of people you talk about have used 3rd party apps and are complaining about jailbroken iPhones. BTW there are MILLIONS of iPhone owners that have had no problems.

Secondly;
I don’t parade around to be anything…and boy is not one I would try out even if it was as ‘Apple “fanboy”. I never denied any problems. Just simply stated I haven’t had any majors one like you speak of. I didn’t simply state mine never had problems I offered a solution that I read about on another blog somewhere at some point.

Comment on the Application updates:
I have had numerous updates to the apps I have downloaded. Each one shows the date they were last modified and each one of them showing that the earlier version had not been used or modified since the date of the latest update (kinda how it’s supposed to work!) Sorry for your woes, but I will add finally that I hope you bought all of three of those iPhones at the same time.

To conclude:
You seem a bit pissy about a phone. Regardless of how many you have and how much you paid for each…it’s still A PHONE!!!

You call me an Apple “fanboy”, yet then say your a fan not a zealot. However, you are the one that did “28 total restores, replacing my iPhone 3G, using three different Macs for syncing, stop downloading any apps, and STILL watching my iPhone become a useless piece of metal and plastic each day”. Yet, you still own the phones and are still on here complaining about how they don’t work. I won’t spend half my day trying to figure it out. I will let the great folks at the Apple store fix them if I can’t figure out the problem in a few minutes. If they can’t fix it, then I would simply get a refund and move on to the next product!

In this household there is one iMac, 2 iPhones, & 3 iPods. They all work (and have had small bugs, none of which weren’t worked out within just a few minutes) and we enjoy all of our Apple products, but if any of those devices gave the length of problems your iPhone is causing you….simply….they would have been replaced. Tell me sir…who’s the real “fanboy”…sorry…ahem zealot here?

Posted by rmurraymd
13 August 2008 @ 8am

After multiple “brickings” while trying to update my itouch I found that rebuilding my computer’s desktop has solved the problem for the last 4 days.

Posted by digiprod--2008
14 August 2008 @ 9am

@snapcridge

Glad you experience has been better than mine. I have yet another appointment at the Genius Bar this afternoon will I will ask for yet another replacement iPhone. I have also called AT&T and was told I can return my iPhones by September 1st at no penalty and if the next replacement does not fix the crashing, apps quitting, and white logo of death I am experiencing I will be retuning the iPhones for a full refund. I just finished my 30th Total Restore on one iPhone alone.

The problems of the iPhone are mounting with many many users complaining about 3G reception problems (I have this also) being written about on many sites, including mainstream websites. The Apple support forums and Genius Bars in my area are full of people with iPhone problems. I had to wait two days for an appointment. So I am not alone by any means. I have two other friends with iPhones (one in Florida) experiencing similar crashing, quitting apps, and 3G reception problems. The Apple support forums are so full of complaints that Apple is pulling some of them down as people post them, I have seen it.

iTunes leaving tons of app files and recreating them is NOT how it is supposed to work by any means. At one point I had over 1.5 GB of apps in this folder, when should have been no where near that (should have been about 350MB). I had 12 copies of AIM alone!

iTunes has no idea when an update is needed and sometimes wants to download 7 or 8 copies of the VERY SAME app when it thinks it needs an update! If you looked in your Mobile Application folder and saw multiple copies of the same app with incremented numbers, you PROVE my point. If this is the way Apple intends for it to work, you will have gigs of useless files polluting your hard drive in a year! Show me another Apple application that does this? Or any other from anywhere else.

Jesus, backups on the iPhone take forever so much so that the Joy of Tech website even wrote a cartoon about it! Take a look.

You are right about one thing “I am pissy about it” as Apple stays silent and offers no fixes or even acknowledges the problems. Then I post my experiences on a web site like this one and a guy tells users they are having problems because “they did not follow some invisibale rules.”

I will be returning the iPhones if this last ditch effort at the Genius Bar does not fix these issues. I have tried to be patient, but time runs out on September 1st for a refund. So off I go again to the Apple Store.

In my household we own 2 iMacs, 2 older PowerMacs, 1 Mac mini, 2 MacBooks, 2 MacBook Pros, 3 older PowerBooks, 2 Apple TVs, 2 iPhone 3Gs, and at least a dozen iPods. There is also Linux and Windows machines as well as a Windows Mobile and Blackberry phones. So I think we have at least some experience with technology and Apple. We are not idiots.

Just for the record we have never tweaked, tampered, or even tried to jailbreak our iPhones. Have NO desire to do this at all.

There are no fanboys here, just a user, that is telling his experience. I have written Apple about these problems and as you might expect, no answers. The Genius Bar staff, seem to have none either, just restore until it crashes again. Sorry, they do not know why, maybe a fix will come one day is the mantra.

I have sent the crash logs (there are many of them to Apple) and the Genius Bar tech also took crash logs. The iPhone 3G crashes, that is why there ARE crash logs on an iPhone that followed the “rules.”

Again this has never been about a JAILBROKEN, tweaked or modified iPhone. It even has had problems with NO apps from the App Store installed. The 3G reception problems are well documented on many websites around the world and are not exclusive to one area or AT&T. Pay a visit to BusinessWeek, MacNN, TUAW, Wired Blogs, MSNBC, or DSL Reports to see.

Posted by digiprod--2008
15 August 2008 @ 8am

Figured I would give an update. Got a replacement iPhone 3G yesterday afternoon. I have a new appointment for this afternoon as the replacement (my third iPhone) has 3G problems were pages did not load and timed out in Safari that only a restart could fix for a little while and other problems.

Apps started quitting again with no fixes for this, so yet another restore and hours later after working for a short time I have the same problems. Also the iPod app does not see any of the purchased content which is music, video, audiobooks and some podcasts. iPod tells me there is no content. The About section in the General settings says the 16 GB iPod is half full!

Restore was on a yet another Mac. Thank god we have so many. Could not tell you about phone calls as I did not have the iPhone working long enough to make any.

When you go to the Genius Bar now, they just hand you a new iPhone without any troubleshooting as I guess this all they can do until Apple admits the problems and brings a fix. There were four others in the store with iPhone 3G problems.

At this pace RIM has nothing to worry about as hard as it is for me to say that as I am an Apple stockholder.

Posted by unsungsong
16 August 2008 @ 6am

Went two weeks without a problem after the 2.01 release came out. Then yesterday there were some application upgrades that I updated through iTunes on my Mac. I did NOT upgrade them directly through iPhone as some here have suggested that was what causes the problem. After sync, iTunes gave a message that some of the applications could not be installed and returned an error message. Phone behaved normally until I shut it down for the night and then tried to turn it on the next day….Apple Screen of death…. Now I have been restoring for the last 4 hours from backup and it has been stuck with about 90% of the status bar indicating blue/complete for about an hour and a half now!

Question—if I decide to restore it as a new iphone instead of from backup, will AT&T activation or the phone still take place automatically?

Has anyone restored as a new iPhone instead of from the backup and still had this screen of death problem.?

I think Apple is so focused on fixing the 3G issues that have begun to surface in the media with the new phone that this problem is on the back burner. They don’t seem to react until media attention focuses negatively on them and I have not heard this issue mentioned outside of the forums.

Posted by snapcridge--2008
16 August 2008 @ 10am

@digiprod

Seems we got off on the wrong foot. I think first and foremost…my iPhone isn’t a 3G. And now that I see all the problems that people are having with them…I’m glad I opted to wait before I bought one when I got my new iMac. I will agree with the backing up issue, it’s a PITA! I just cancel it and let the sync finish.

Wanted to touch on one thing though. You mentioned that you have multiple copies of of the application updates, but I only have two for each of the apps that have updated and I know that AIM had updated at least 4 or 5 times since I installed. Not really sure why it’s different on my iMac.

By the way lol…you have an awful lot of Apple stuff how many kids do you have? Or do you live in Utah or Texas? Seriously though, you have 2 Apple TVs so you obviously like them. Considering buying one. Is it worth the money?

Posted by DrDave
17 August 2008 @ 5am

I got the Apple logo screen of death this morning while synching my 16GB iPhone 3G. I also noted that the iPhone was quite warm when I discovered it announcing to the universe that its creator has royally screwed up. So although it appears inert, it is doing something. I suspect some sort of loop. If the hackers could solve this by jailbreaking, I suspect that jailbreaking would become much more common. Last week I encountered the other common syndrome of iPhone dysfunction: non-Apple apps crash at start-up and all your music is gone. Also your custom ringtones are still there, but they no longer function. This seems to probably be a DRM thing with some kind of signing/authorization issue. That also required a full restore.

All told, I’ve probably spent 3 hours in the last two weeks resetting my iPhone 3G and restoring or replacing app data (addresses, weather somewhere other than Cupertino (somewhere in Hell I reckon now, etc.).

Apple, confess and seek redemption. Soon. For now I am telling everyone interested in buying an iPhone (and it’s a surprising number) to forget it. This is the absolutely worst kind of advertising imaginable and if Apple doesn’t do something soon they may never recover from this debacle.

Posted by Traumdoc
18 August 2008 @ 5am

Living the dream of having an iPhone 3G has turned into a nightmare. Right now at this same moment 8:30 am at work, my iphppne exhibits the screen of death. That means that I will not have a working phone the whole day, and will need to restore it for hours after getting back home. SHAME ON YOU APPLE, HOW DARE YOU RELEASE A PRODUCT/SOFTWARE WITH SO MANY BUGS THAT MAKES WINDOWS VISTA LOOK GOOD? SOMETHING SO VITAL AS A CELLPHONE SO UNSTABLE , THAT COSTUMER ARE SCARED OF TOUCHING IT BECAUSE IT MIGHT CRASHED.
THE DAMAGE TO YOUR REPUTATION IS UNIMAGINABLE.

Posted by anonymous777
24 August 2008 @ 8pm

Total, absolute brickage on my G1 today. Had the white apple of death on Friday, followed the instructions above, and it reset okay. Today, I was listening to the ipod portion, and answering an e-mail when it just crashed. I tried resetting it per the instructions above….nothing, zip…just the white death apple. So, off to the Apple store I go where the “geniuses” said “oh, you’re out of warranty by a month. Your choice is to get one of the refurbs we have in the back for $199, or buy a new one for the same price. Needless, to say, I ended up getting a new phone. Very pissed though. Been a total Apple guy for years and now all that loyalty is severely being tested. I’d be happy if I could just get the darn thing to be a touch so my son can use it. Tomorrow I’m going to ATT and seeing if I can’t do something with the sim from the dead phone and returning the new iphone. We’ll see if that works.

Posted by ckwmv
27 August 2008 @ 2am

I posted the following in a thread at apple support website:

I ran across the following fix from http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/08/08/fix-iphones-apple-logo-screen-of-death-with-recovery-mode. I haven’t tried it myself but it’s definitely worth a try comparing to spending hours on restoring, which I have done twice so far:

Darwinian Dude
Many people have experienced this on the Apple forums with 2.0, 2.0.1 hasn’t fixed it. I’ve got lots of apps, and i’ve restored 5 times since July 11th, and my backup only worked once. But, Mr Buzz posted the following. I’m yet to try this as it hasn’t happened again, but it seems to be a way to save your data and make it boot up when frozen on the apple logo and others have reported that this works.

15-MIN SOLUTION: CONNECT TO ITUNES AND REBOOT 3 TIMES TO AVOID RESTORE
So this has happened to me more times than i can count, and I’ve recovered both my phones (2G + 3G) using this method. I’ve seen some people in this thread allude to this solution but let me just spell it out completely and hopefully this will save you a few restores on your phone.

1. Connect to iTunes via USB. Do not disconnect for rest of these steps. iTunes may appear frozen or stuck with spinning beachball….this is okay, do not Force Quit iTunes. I tried a few times w/o it being connected to iTunes and it doesn’t work.
2. Once connected, hold Home + Power until screen blinks then Apple logo comes back up.
3. Wait until Apple logo dims slightly (~5 minutes or less). Do NOT reboot until the apple logo dims.
4. Hold Home + Power again until it reboots and Apple logo comes back up.
5. After 2 min or so, the phone may vibrate once or twice. Continue waiting for the full 5 min until Apple logo dims slightly. iTunes at this stage MAY recognize the phone…do not sync or do anything in iTunes.
6. Hold Home + Power for the 3rd time until it reboots. Phone may vibrate again after 2 minutes or so. Eventually you’ll break into your Home screen.
Hope that helps and let me know if it does.

Apparently what causes this endless loop is that the SpringBoard crashes upon launch (over and over again) and launches CrashReporter on the phone itself. It goes into an endless loop until somehow iTunes while connected via USB triggers some sort of fix on the SpringBoard or its preferences/database.

August 09, 2008 @ 04:22AM

Posted by beer is your friend
30 August 2008 @ 7pm

I am having the same problem. It first started out one day when I plugged the iPhone into the computer and began to remove all of my applications. I didn’t know why it was doing this and thought well maybe this is part of an update and they would come back. Well they didn’t. All the applications were removed and not only that the applications were removed from the application panal in itunes itself. So I had to redownload all of the applications told by an iPhone Specailist. I did this and once complete started to use an application, I think it was called Dual Level, a free program that helps you level things like a mirror or picture frame. It froze for 30 second to 1 minute then it restarts to a white apple logo. I waited about 20 minutes hope to god it would come back to life but nothing happend. So I googled about this and found that others, many others were experienceing the same problem and the process of restoring the iPhone. So I restored the iPhone and it worked perfect for a week and then it did it again. After I installed an update to Labryinth and started to play the game, it froze again. 30 seconds to a minute later it reboots to the apple logo again. I was really frustrated at this point and thought well maybe I got a bad batch or something. I call apple, they have no clue about whats going on which I think is a lie. They said that you should bring it back to the apple store and exchange it for a new one. I was frustrated, but releaved that I was getting a new phone that will not have these problems. I went their today and exchanged iPhones. I come home, connect the cable for a backup, and the backup wouldn’t work. Said thier was a problem and needed for it to be considered a newly registered phone. So without any other choice, selected it new phone and it started going through the process of installing all my applications. Then I selected for my music and photos to be uploaded. After all that, with a new iPhone, I clicked on my clock application to set my alarm. The moment I hit save to set the alarm it froze again and rebooted. Back to the White Apple of Death! I am so pissed off and dissapointed with Apple. I called back for technical support and the guys says he’s never heard of it and should exchange it again for another one, and explain the issue at the store. Now out of all people to explain the issue to the last person to explain to would be a person working at a store comapired to a representative that I’m on the phone with. The representative says well I’m sure that there will be an upadate soon to resolve this problem. Well I’m at the point of returning the piece of crap and waiting till one day the news says the iPhone problem has finally been fixed. Because I need and phone for the meantime, We need a phone for the meantime! Im sick to my stomach and I’m sure Apple is too!

Posted by The Gizzle
12 September 2008 @ 3pm

iPhone Firmware 2.1 seems to have fix my Apple logo screen of death issue. at least for now.