Many iPhone users are currently surprised at not being able to unlock their smartphone in the morning using facial recognition or even having to enter their PIN. It seems like the devices crashed during the night. What’s behind it?
Many people leave their cell phones on overnight so that they can be reached by family and friends (e.g. in an emergency) or for professional reasons. It would sometimes be problematic for them if their smartphone simply switched off by itself while they were sleeping. This is exactly what is said to have happened to numerous iPhone users in the past few days and nights – apparently regardless of whether their device is a newer or older one.
Many iPhones crash at night
At the forum Reddit iPhone owners from all over the world describe their smartphones crashing at night. Some of the devices were said to have been switched off for several hours. This was indicated by major charging interruptions in the battery status protocol. What some people also noticed straight away: that their facial recognition or Touch ID didn’t work in the morning, so they had to enter their code to unlock the device. It looks like your device has updated its operating system and is shutting itself down.
In some cases, the PIN code had to be entered so that the affected smartphone could reconnect to the mobile network. Additionally, some users noticed that the default sleep mode on their device did not deactivate itself at the usual time.
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Missed alarm clocks
A majority of the reported cases occurred between around 3 a.m. and 8 a.m., i.e. at a time when many working people have to get up. “My iPhone 15 Pro did this too,” said one user on Reddit. “It turned off at the same time my alarm would have gone off, which of course wasn’t great.”
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Connection to the iOS 17.0.3 operating system?
The problems are probably related to iOS 17.0.3. The operating system is said to have been installed on most of the affected devices, the reports show. The update was rolled out quite quickly by Apple because it was supposed to fix problems with heat generation on some devices – primarily the new iPhone 15 models; TECHBOOK reported.
But what exactly is behind the current problems is still unclear. A program error? “No, it’s a new battery-saving feature,” someone on Reddit surmises. “More likely, the operating system automatically installed some system files overnight while it was loading,” said another. There is therefore reliable evidence that the system did not crash and that the restart was normal. “If it was actually a bug, Apple would have fixed it long ago,” was apparently the unanimous opinion.
Wait – and take precautions
Apple has announced that it wants to fix some problems with iOS 17.1. Among other things, the new action button should be modified again. For the time being, a solution to the mysterious restarts does not seem to have been found. For users who need to be reachable under all circumstances (e.g. for on-call services), the technology editors at “Heise” one hint. “A possible workaround in this case is to deactivate the SIM PIN in ‘Settings > Mobile communications’ for the line/number used,” it says.