The last few days have seen increasing numbers of reports from iPhone-using T-Mobile customers complaining of what appears to be random crashes and reboots of their iPhones. Currently there is no solid explanation for why this is happening, and there is no specific fix for the problem.
Posts on a number of social sites, as well as posts on Apple’s own support forums and sites such as MacRumors indicate the iPhone will briefly flash a blue screen and then reset. Users report this happening as often as every 10 to 30 minutes, even if the phone isn’t being used at the moment.
Many users report taking their iPhone out of their pocket or purse, and being required to unlock their device using their passcode instead of Touch ID, as the device had restarted since they last used it.
Some users report that performing a hard reset of their iPhone, (holding the power and Home buttons until you see a black screen with a silver Apple logo on it), has fixed the problem. Others say they’ve resolved the issue by turning of “Wi-Fi Calling.” (T-Mobile is reportedly suggesting that resolution to their customers.)
We here at MacTrast have two iPhone 6 Plus devices on T-Mobile’s network, and we can report that similar reboots and blue screens have occurred on our devices. My personal iPhone 6 Plus would randomly reboot while I was using various apps. There was no pattern for the reboots, they could happen at any time.
I first attempted to resolve the problem while I was on iOS 8.3 by performing a hard reset, but the issue persisted. I then turned off the Wi-Fi Calling feature, and I saw no spontaneous reboots for the next few hours. It should be noted that I soon installed the latest iOS 8.4 beta, and have since observed no rebooting issues.
As for the second iPhone 6 Plus, which is still running iOS 8.3, I tried the reboot, and also turned off the Wi-Fi Calling feature. For the next 10 hours no crashes were observed. We have turned Wi-Fi Calling back on for that device, and will let you know if we observe any more crashes.
So far, there are no definitive explanations for the crashes, although theories include memory problems, a T-Mobile carrier update, or even perhaps that it involves an issue with LTE. (Some users report success by disabling voice over LTE, or by shutting off LTE entirely.
Models affected by the problem include the iPhone 5s, 6, and 6 Plus. It also affects iOS versions 8 through 8.3. (It should be noted that my iPhone, running the latest iOS 8.4 beta shows a T-Mobile carrier version of 19.6, while the iPhone running iOS 8.3 shows version 19.1, perhaps lending some credence to some theories that the issue is caused by a bad T-Mobile carrier update.)
What about you, dear readers? Have any of you experienced the above problems? If so, please let us know about it in the comments section below. Please let us know if you’re a T-Mobile subscriber, which iPhone you have, and which iOS version you’re running. We’ll keep you posted if we hear about a resolution to the problem.
