For those who were following my issues… “update” using IPSW failed miserably, as did “restore”. After many, many attempts, I ended up downgrading it to 18.0.1 and restored from my backup.
This was completely borked - iCloud wasn’t syncing anything back down to the phone after being left overnight on charger (not even talking backup, which is affected by iOS version, but messages, photos, etc). Additionally, was getting crashes and resprings still. At this point, I started to suspect something was wrong with the phone itself, rather than the software (it had never been quite right since day 1).
Reset the phone, and then used the IPSW to upgrade back to the beta, hoping that it would resolve some of those issues. This actually worked! Phone was running pretty well, and not crashing like crazy like I had seen before on B7 (fresh install). A couple of resprings here and there, but nothing wild, and iCloud was working again, so I thought I was fine to limp along until B8.
Left the phone on the charger and walked away for 15 min, came back to boot loop…. Couldn’t get it stopped. That install lasted about 4 hours :/ At that point, I tried every combo of upgrade and restore for 18.1 and 18.0.1 to no avail. Threw in the towel and scheduled a Genius Bar appt at this point.
Fast-forward to the appointment yesterday afternoon - they try to reinstall iOS after talking about how their utility (configurator…) can reinstall it every time… no dice! That fails. They can’t even run diagnostics on the phone to declare it dead or not because of the state it is in. Phone is getting sent off to their offsite repair facility today and I should hear something this week.
Silver lining - I hadn’t sold my 14 Pro yet, so I at least have a functioning phone!
TL;DR - 16 Pro is bricked, think there may be some actual hardware issue with phone. Apple has it now at an offsite repair facility.
