iPhone XS Max iPhone XS Max Unresponsive

[Jgpsolo]

I’ve been using my iPhone XS Max for 5 days. Yesterday I picked it up and found it completely unresponsive. It had been sitting idle by the sofa for about 45 minutes with plenty of battery. The screen was off, did not come on when I touched it, it went straight to voicemail when I tried to call it and the power button was doing nothing.

A hard reset (volume up, down and long press of sleep/wake) brought up the apple logo and the phone restarted. Battery had dropped 10% during the time the phone had just been lying idle.

• Has anyone else experienced this with their new device?
• Is this indicative of a software or hardware problem or is it impossible to say?
• What can cause these sort of events?

I use the phone for work, including on-call time so it’s important the phone doesn’t give up at random. Luckily this has only happened once so far, but still.

Thanks for any light you can shed or common experiences you can share!

Analytics (which I know nothing about) had a corresponding ResetCounter event:

{"bug_type":"115","timestamp":"2018-09-25 19:06:02.74 +0100","name":"Reset count","os_version":"iPhone OS 12.0 (16A366)","incident_id":"688577C7-DDEB-49EE-BFF2-7D506A7A574C"}
Incident Identifier: 688577C7-DDEB-49EE-BFF2-7D506A7A574C
CrashReporter Key: 014bfe69718d9a219bee9a24a3b687b530d203be
Date: 2018-09-25 19:05:57.92 +0100
Reset count: 0
Boot failure count: 1
Boot faults: force_off
Boot stage: 255
Boot app: 0

(Device was set up from iCloud Backup on Friday)

 

[peejay1977]

I think it's going to be difficult for anyone here to give you a concrete answer or any sense of peace that it won't happen again. I'd suggest making a Genius Bar appointment and having them run a hardware check on it, only takes a few minutes. At the very least it might give you the confidence it's nothing more than a random software glitch but I agree it's not good especially if you are unaware of it.

I've had this once or twice over the years but nothing that was persistent.

 

[thedieselwind]

I just had the exact same thing happen to me just an hour ago. I was using my phone, set it down - picked it up five minutes later and it was totally unresponsive. The screen was black and would not wake. I tried the vol up/down power buttons and could not get it to reset. I hooked it up to a charger and nothing. Finally, I hooked it up to my MacBook and it woke up (booted up).

It's so very strange. I have always had an iPhone and I have been lucky to never have freezes, random reboots, or any other problem. I'm still a little worried that I had this issue just days after receiving it. If I'm out and about and it happens again, I'll be up a creek with no paddle if I don't have my MacBook with me.

 

[Winryito]

Same thing happened to me. Tried to go into camera but whole screen froze up. Had to do hard reset, then stuck at apple logo for 2 minute. Afterwards it worked fine, apple ran diagnostic for me and found no error. Suggested that I return my device and get a new one but I just finished setting it up with 250GB of things, don’t want to go through that hell again. I will wait and see if it happen again.

 

[thedieselwind]

Same thing happened to me. Tried to go into camera but whole screen froze up. Had to do hard reset, then stuck at apple logo for 2 minute. Afterwards it worked fine, apple ran diagnostic for me and found no error. Suggested that I return my device and get a new one but I just finished setting it up with 250GB of things, don’t want to go through that hell again. I will wait and see if it happen again.

That's what I'm afraid of, that it will happen again. Verizon was going to swap it out (within 14 days of purchase) but they didn't have any. They aren't expecting anymore XS Max's in-store until mid-October. I don't live anywhere close to an Apple Store, so that's not an option for me. I've had an iPhone since the iPhone 3G and I've never had one become unresponsive as this one did.

 

[Winryito]

It happened about 3 times in the span of a year with my iPhone X. So I am quite used to this situation. Normally it’s caused by a background software conflict and is one time occurrence. I think we will be fine, I would suggest going apple support online and have them run a diagnostic for you. If there’s hardware issues they will send out replacement units to you.

 

[thedieselwind]

It happened about 3 times in the span of a year with my iPhone X. So I am quite used to this situation. Normally it’s caused by a background software conflict and is one time occurrence. I think we will be fine, I would suggest going apple support online and have them run a diagnostic for you. If there’s hardware issues they will send out replacement units to you.

Awesome! I didn't know I could even do that. Thanks for the advice.

 

[richard371]

Max has been flawless until I picked it up and the lock screen was on and frozen a few mins ago. Took me a bit to get it to power off then it came back up. I’m hoping for software updates to fix these types of bugs.

 

[Apple_Robert]

That's what I'm afraid of, that it will happen again. Verizon was going to swap it out (within 14 days of purchase) but they didn't have any. They aren't expecting anymore XS Max's in-store until mid-October. I don't live anywhere close to an Apple Store, so that's not an option for me. I've had an iPhone since the iPhone 3G and I've never had one become unresponsive as this one did.

Apple can express ship a replacement phone to you. You mail back the other afterward. Call and ask Apple to do that for you.

 

[Viper2005]

I have had this happen quite a few times on my X (last years model). It would only happen overnight as it sat on the charger, and I would find out in the morning when I took the phone off the charger and it was unresponsive. Had to do the up-down-power to hard restart it. I suspect it crashed/kernel panicked during the night when it was charging. Other times it wasn’t completely unresponsive but I know it crashed overnight as it had the ‘requires passcode after restarting’ prompt when I tried unlocking it in the morning.
Fortunately I have not experienced this yet on my new XS Max.

 

[thedieselwind]

Apple can express ship a replacement phone to you. You mail back the other afterward. Call and ask Apple to do that for you.

I saw that option elsewhere also. Thanks for the advice. As of today, it hasn't happened again (knock on wood). If it does it one more time I'll call apple and get that process started. Thanks again.

 

[msp3]

Ugh just had this happen during the 12.1.3 update...

 

[davedvdy]

Is this happening to only the Space Gray model? the coatings they use in the finish sometimes affect things? Mine is doing this too.

 

[thecore762]

It started happening to me and it keeps happening like once a week or so for me!

Annoying!

 

[Tsepz]

Mine did this a few times, but it seems to have stopped, last time it did it was last Sunday. Very odd behaviour. I do hope it is not hardware related.

Mine is Space Grey, 256GB.

 

[Shanghaichica]

I’ve had this happen about 6/7 times. Last time was about a week ago. I have the 256GB gold version. A few weeks ago it happened 3 times in the same week!

 

[thecore762]

They need to fix this ****
My co worker just had it happen to her!