Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
T-Mobile iPhone Users Seeing Frequent Random Restarts and Blue Screens
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Dare I say that this exact issue was happening to me on a Rogers phone in Canada...
It started happening more and more frequently, my phone won't turn on now
That's probably not related to what TMobile customers were experiencing. You likely had a hardware failure--take your phone in to Apple.
I have a T-Mobile iPhone 6--I bought it because it was the only of the first ones that came out that was actually unlocked. It is no longer on T-Mobile service--I happily have it up on StraightTalk as my carrier and I can tell you my phone is having no problems, memory or otherwise. T-Mobile should stop pointing the finger at Apple and stop trying to sabotage the iPhone's reputation when it is obviously something they pushed out to phones on their network. Why I like unobtrusive carriers like StraightTalk--only $47 a month including tax, works practically everywhere and now they've up'd BYOPhone users to 5Gb a month and then afterwards only slow down but not cut off--yep I like saving money on the same or better service without headaches of carrier goof ups--sorry T-Mobile.
PS--please don't get me wrong...I do like T-Mobile and would have stayed with them but they have ZERO service where I am so couldn't.
PS--please don't get me wrong...I do like T-Mobile and would have stayed with them but they have ZERO service where I am so couldn't.
I've not had this problem on my UNLOCKED T-Mobile 5S and 6+. I wonder if the phone being unlocked have anything to do with this being the reason why.
I had T-Mobile for over 7 years, until I just got tired of never having phone service outside of a municipality. Travel outside of a city, town, etc. U could forget about being able to use your phone, even on major interstates or highways. I do not have that problem with my new carrier, C-Spire Wireless, even on remote roads or areas! C-Spire even gave me a signal booster to use in my home, since I have a metal roof and that kills most cell phone signals. I understand that some carriers charge $100-150 for that same device. I refer to T-Mobile as T-UNMOBILE!
Haven't had the restart problem for the past day and a half. Not sure what fixed it. By the way both iPhone 6 plus and 5s were purchased full price unlocked at an Apple Store. I added the T-Mobile service later. I'm running again with wifi-calling enabled
So I haven't experienced this issue since most people started having it- all of a sudden, it's like it never happened, although when it did, I had about 12 kernel panics in one day, which is entirely too much. I visited the Genius Bar today and he told me several things:
1. Hard resets are bad. He said if you hard reset your phone (sleep/wake + home) that will likely make the problem worse as it could corrupt the firmware (this goes against everything I've read but oh well...)
2. He said he's seen this issue before, and that he could do a special type of restore through iTunes that re-installs the firmware- it should eliminate this type of issue.
3. So he did. I'm reinstalling apps- not thrilled that I've lost all my text chains, but so far, so good. Phone is not running hot all the time with wifi calling enabled like it was before, so I'm hoping this will be it!
1. Hard resets are bad. He said if you hard reset your phone (sleep/wake + home) that will likely make the problem worse as it could corrupt the firmware (this goes against everything I've read but oh well...)
2. He said he's seen this issue before, and that he could do a special type of restore through iTunes that re-installs the firmware- it should eliminate this type of issue.
3. So he did.
I'm reinstalling apps- not thrilled that I've lost all my text chains, but so far, so good. Phone is not running hot all the time with wifi calling enabled like it was before, so I'm hoping this will be it!
Last edited:
I want all of you folks on this message thread to start doing the following:
1. Close all unneeded apps (double-click on the Home button and swipe away the apps you don't want to run).
2. Reboot your iPhone once per day. (preferably in the morning when you first wake up).
Let's see if my suggestion suddenly clears the problems you folks are all experiencing.
1. Close all unneeded apps (double-click on the Home button and swipe away the apps you don't want to run).
2. Reboot your iPhone once per day. (preferably in the morning when you first wake up).
Let's see if my suggestion suddenly clears the problems you folks are all experiencing.
Alright Doc, I'll bite. Since you're up on all the comments coming in from iPhone 6/+ users on AT&T and Verizon, please enlighten us.
(Edit. The overabundance of comments are coming from T-mobile users experiencing this issue.)
Last edited:
That's an odd way to start out...
No.
This is cargo cult mentality.
Our three phones have not had the problem in a couple days. It was just that one 36 hour window or so.
We made no changes other than to call and report it to TMobile.
I wonder if it *was* the solar flares?
TMo on Twitter told me it was some software thing. And that they didn't have specifics.
Did they tell you how to fix it on the phone? Because I did not see any carrier update or iOS update. Why did it happen and only for about 36 hours? A little bit of transparency would be nice.
Not 7 years, just 3 years of buggy iOS. Before iOS7, you never saw Springboard crashing, didn't you?
I don't really see it crashing now, nor have I for the past three years.
And the fact that you know what Springboard is implies to me you jailbreak. When you jailbreak all bets are off regarding reliability...
I have seen a few very specific high profile glitches, mostly all fixed promptly by various iOS updates - and I did recommend that people wait to update to iOS7 until a couple update cycles in... But that was more related to the way iOS7 worked with some external interfaces than it was related to stability in general.
I do have some issues I wish Apple would address - a couple which are pretty serious I think. Software has a lot of bugs - it's pretty par for the course.
I have been using Apple products since 2000 and have not really seen any increase or decrease in stability and quality.
If you wanted to see buggy: I adopted OSX at version 10.0.4 back in 2001 and that was super unreliable. OSX was virtually unusable for regular consumers until at least 10.2.
I am not saying Apple deserves any kind of free pass. Just that I don't think the actual quality of software has declined.
You are not alone in your opinion of general Apple quality decline. There are a lot of people that agree with you, see these two compilations - one from October of 2014 and one from January of 2015.
http://mjtsai.com/blog/2014/10/11/apples-software-quality-decline/
http://mjtsai.com/blog/2015/01/06/apples-software-quality-continued/
This is a fairly decent counterpoint:
http://www.everythingicafe.com/apple-software-quality-decline/
I also remember one article about how our phones are becoming much more integral components of our lives and our relationships with our phones are more intimate than other computing devices : so we notice problems more... But I can't find that one now...
You hypothesis is wrong, I never jailbreak. Springboard is not an app installed when you jailbreak, Springboard is what you use right now, its directly shipped from Apple Inc.
If your iOS7 does not crash, then you are the exception to the rule and you should be thankful.
I agree with you in one point, more and more people are upset with current Apple quality of software.
I know that. But it's not something that is publicly advertised. Generally, it's only well known by the jail breaking community.
It's an underlying technology. Not a consumer visible one.
We're on iOS8.
There are hundreds of millions of iOS devices running iOS8, our two anecdotal stories are not relevant statistically.
Its a developer info, just search it here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/navigation/
iOS7 or iOS8, they are too buggy by Apple standards.
A growing number of T-Mobile iPhone users are complaining about seeing frequent restarts and "blue screens of death" on their devices, a problem that seems to have begun very recently. MacRumors has received several complaints from readers, and there are also numerous reports of problems on Twitter, Facebook, and reddit.
Affected users are experiencing a split second blue screen that's followed by their devices restarting, and it appears most people who are seeing issues are T-Mobile customers that began having problems last night or this morning.
Known devices with problems include the iPhone 6 Plus, the iPhone 6, and the iPhone 5s, with restarts happening at 10 to 30 minute intervals. Multiple versions of iOS 8 appear to be affected, including iOS 8.1 and iOS 8.3.It is not clear if T-Mobile recently pushed a carrier update that's causing the problem, but a reddit user who spoke with T-Mobile's support staff said that he got the impression that T-Mobile believes a memory problem might be the cause of the restarts. "The sense I got from the technician is that a) they suspect memory problems, and b) they're getting a lot of calls about it," he wrote.
Some users have had success putting a stop to the restarts with a hard reset, and that's the solution that T-Mobile is recommending to customers who call in. If that doesn't work, T-Mobile is instructing customers to clear out their old text messages and do a factory restore via iTunes.
Update: Many users are reporting that disabling Wi-Fi Calling fixes the issue.
Article Link: T-Mobile iPhone Users Seeing Frequent Random Restarts and Blue Screens
FWIW, one of our two phones fell prone to this problem. T-Mobile, iOS 8 current at the time, wifi calling used.
Clean powercycles, hard restarts, did not fix. Not having a lot of time before a business trip, I went directly to a full factory reset for my wife's phone, and iTunes restore - problem went away.
I have screenshots of the series of kernel panics that the phone experiences, some just minutes apart.
Something persistent was definitely wrong, but does seem resolved by rebuilding the phone.
Clean powercycles, hard restarts, did not fix. Not having a lot of time before a business trip, I went directly to a full factory reset for my wife's phone, and iTunes restore - problem went away.
I have screenshots of the series of kernel panics that the phone experiences, some just minutes apart.
Something persistent was definitely wrong, but does seem resolved by rebuilding the phone.