Malcolm Owen
A number of 10.5-inch iPad Pro users are complaining about devices constantly rebooting and making them effectively useless, an issue that surfaced in recent weeks following the release of updates for iPadOS 13.4.1 and iPadOS 13.5.
A selection of posts on Apple's Support Community pages reveals there is an unusual problem affecting some owners of the iPad Pro. Users are reporting an issue where their tablet will reboot a short time after logging in to the device, sometimes within seconds of signing in.
One post from May 7 claims a 10.5-inch iPad Pro reboots between 30 seconds and 45 seconds after logging in, "even if no apps are running." The user claims the issue started after upgrading the tablet to iPadOS 13.4.1.
Another post from April 10 indicates the same sort of problem, with an identical model of iPad Pro "constantly rebooting" following the upgrade from iPadOS 13.3.1 to 13.4.1. A complaint from May 23 claims it's happening on an 11-inch iPad Pro, but with reboots every ten minutes, indicating it affects more iPad Pro models than just the 10.5-inch variant.
On May 12, user "weechuan" claimed they had the same problem with a 10.5-inch iPad Pro, where it freezes then reboots, but had attempted to get assistance from Apple's chat support twice from the device. While they were offered a phone number to call, they didn't proceed further due to a frustrating verification process.
AppleInsider's searches of the forums and discussions with service personnel suggest there is an issue that originated from iPadOS 13.4.1, and that it is still affecting new users. The latest post on the subject was posted on May 29, which points to it being an unpatched problem.
Another post from May 12 also suggests that a factory restore may not necessarily work for some users. The post's author claims they went through the factory restore process twice to test if restoring personal data is a cause, only to determine it wasn't and declaring "it's the update."
Following discussions with service personnel, the flaw has not been conclusively proven to be solely caused by the operating system updates and not some underlying hardware failure exacerbated by the update. It also doesn't appear to be manifesting on any other iPad Pro model.
It is unclear if Apple is officially working on a fix for the issue, though it is also unknown what actually causes it to manifest for a relatively small number of users and not the iPad Pro population at large. So far, interim advice ahead of a patch seems to revolve around putting the iPad Pro through a hard reset procedure before it reboots, to try and escape the reboot loop.
On iPad Pro models from 2018 onward, the procedure involves pressing and releasing the volume up button, immediately pressing and releasing the volume down button, then pressing and holding the power button at the top. Rather than using the Slide to Power Off button, users must instead continue to hold the power button releasing only when the Apple logo appears onscreen.
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13 Comments
Interesting. Looking forward to finding out what the cause is. What's especially strange is that it can take up to some minutes to fail. My 10.5 iPP has not had a problem. Makes me think that, as the article indicated, it's some sort of hardware issue that only some units have. A component that has a subtle deviation, not out of tolerance, but marginal enough to cause an issue after a while. It will be interesting to see if it turns out to only effect units built diring a particular period, or that have a different brand of memory, or something.
Not to dismiss anyone who is having the problem, but I also did not experience this with my 10.5 iPP. I hope the issue is tracked down and squashed so that those users can move on to 13.5.
For what it's worth, I've been going through some misery over the past few days. I let my XS Max phone update to the latest IOS a couple of days ago before I left to make dinner. I returned to my phone an hour or so later and noticed it was in a boot loop.
Fast forward 2 days later:
I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos, read many web pages on how to get out of it. I've gotten the phone into recovery mode, hooked it up to my MBA with Mojave, updated firmware, no success. I bit the bullet and gave up everything stored on my phone and did restore: It seemingly worked: I got the white Hello screen, went through full set up, then about 5 minutes into feeling good about getting my life back together, it abruptly shut off and the boot loop problem came back.
I've gone through this process a few times and it keeps coming back. I've tried zipping through the install screens and doing a normal shut down. Didn't work. I've tried this with and without the SIM card in. No difference.
I'm amidst another novel approach:
I updated one of my Macs to Catalina and tried restoring again using the "new" way MacOS syncs with the iPhone (ie not using iTunes). It's been about 20 minutes and the phone still hasn't gone back to the boot loop.
This article was the first I'd seen online with this problem on an iPhone XS Max.
Update to 13.5