White Apple Logo Screen of Death Stops iPhones in Their Tracks
Apple's Discussion boards are buzzing with a huge problem affecting many users of iPhone OS 2.0 and 2.0.1. People are starting to call it: "White Apple Logo Screen of Death."
The problem manifests itself during an app install or update. During either process something interrupts the iPhone and/or iTunes from completing the task. Then the iPhone spontaneously reboots. The screen goes dark, comes back on, displays the Apple Logo, and at some point the iPhone boots and it's file system mounts. The file system mounting is noted by two short vibrations, beeps or both. The phone actually appears in iTunes and if you have an App on your Mac like Phoneview - you can actually browse the iPhone's media. iTunes will also display the "beachball" and stop responding. iTunes usually has to be force quit in order to get it to respond by relaunching it. The iPhone unfortunately never boots past the Apple Logo. Most users panic at this point considering the iPhone to be "bricked. "
Many people are encountering this problem regardless of whether or not the install or update is being done on the iPhone itself or from iTunes. There simply is no rhyme or reason to it and it's not the fault of any particular App. The worst part is that since some people think their iPhones are "bricked" they return it to the Apple Store. However, replacement phones exhibit the same problem.
If you fall victim to this bug, you have to perform a complete restore on the iPhone. This is a process that can take hours because of inordinately lengthy backup and sync times. Rest assured that usually your iPhone is not "bricked" only stuck in some kind of endless loop. In order to break this loop you need to do a factory restore of the iPhone.
A factory restore is accomplished by pressing and holding Sleep/Wake and Home until the iPhone resets. When the Apple logo appears release Sleep/Wake, but do not release Home until you see the prompt to connect the iPhone to iTunes. You then have to restore the iPhone's firmware, all your settings, all your media, and all your Apps. During this process you are offered an attempt to recover your iPhone from a backup. Unfortunately, backups are just as bug ridden and very unreliable. Users may encounter an error message indicating that a previously valid backup is corrupt.
Our recommendation is as such: Perform app updates singly and do not use the "Update All" feature, and don't perform any other tasks on your iPhone while the update process is taking place.
Requests for comments from Apple Retail and Apple public releations went unanswered at press time.
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.
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.
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!
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.
iPhone 2.0=Windows Vista
iPhone...It's not for business!
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.
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.
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.
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by keeter--2008
August 7, 2008 2:01 PM PDT
- 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.
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (53 Comments)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.