Some Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus Smartphones Mysteriously Powering Down 59
MojoKid writes: Apple's iPhone 6s and 6s Plus were two of the most highly anticipated smartphones to launch so far this year. The excitement surrounding Apple's new refresh cycle flagships was so great that Apple reported record first weekend sales, with 13 million devices finding their way to customers. However, it appears that some of those customers are having a puzzling issue with their brand new iPhones. Owners are reporting that their phones are turning off randomly when left alone — even when the smartphones have sufficient battery remaining. "New Phone 6s 128GB turned off for no reason the last two nights," wrote Joachim Frey in an Apple discussion thread. "In the morning you then have to push the power-on button for a long time to get it started."
First Post! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: First Post! (Score:1)
You are all cooooo
Re: First Pest! (Score:5, Funny)
C: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
O: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting. Powered off I mean.
C: Look, matey, I if me mum canna call me at night the phone is deaad. I know a dead phone when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
O: Well, he's...he's, ah...probably pining for the fjords.
C: PININ' for the FJORDS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he turn 'imself off the moment I got 'im home?
O: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable display and feaatures idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
C: The features don't enter into it. It goes dead.
O: Nononono, no, no! 'E's just off is all. Such a dimwit h'ta come in to the store to learn how ts turn a phone on? Gaaarsh.
Not a bug, a feature (Score:1, Funny)
This is not a bug... I think it is due to safety reasons... Apple wouldn't allow any device go out of the factory like this... They test them for this kind of things...
It has to do with some security feature... Probably some group of hackers is trying to exploit some vulnerability... which is bad from Apple... but still it is good to know that the devices power off themselves rather than silently hacked... Although I wonder what is happening to the other devices that are not powering off... Probably those h
Are they actually powered down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are these devices actually powering down, or are they entering deep sleep and not coming back? I only ask because that sort of thing is actually quite common on mobiles. I became familiar with it because I bought a used Transformer Prime (TF201) to dive into the wide wide world of Android tablets, it was priced nicely and I'd rather a slightly old mainstream SoC than a new but support-is-only-in-Chinese spanking new one, and with the "best" (highest-performing) kernel some but not all units suffer from a "Sleep of Death" failure where they exhibit precisely the same behavior as is described here in the summary. Holding down the power button for ten seconds or so forces a reset. I am running a different kernel (Omni-V1.1+) than what comes with the custom ROM ("KatKiss", now v28, based on 5.1.1 LMY48P) because the included kernel (GRIMLOCK 5.1-lite) causes SoD and the normal alternate kernel (GRIMLOCK 5.1 (not lite)) causes display corruption due to excessive overvolting... which causes me to pucker.
OK, I broke down and RTFA, and the same question is raised in the article. I'm gonna go ahead and guess that it's still on, but not returning from sleep.
Re:Are they actually powered down? (Score:5, Informative)
If you go to Settings -> Privacy -> Diagnostics & Usage -> Diagnostics & Usage Data on an iPhone that suddenly powered off, the reason why might be in one of those logs. For example, it may be something like a kernel panic or a thermal event (getting too hot and then being forced to shut down). Both events will be logged.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, unwanted shutdowns seem to be a thing with mobile devices in general. The touchpad's been plagued by them pretty much since the first version of android got ported to it and even the newest "stable" releases constantly shut down or boot cycle, and both of my galaxy phones (s3 and s5) have had a history of the occasional pantshitting followed by a reboot.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I think the touchpad's high power draw even while idle rules out the undervolting theory as a general answer.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most often I see it happening when people are using custom ROMs on Android and the kernel-dev screwed up with timings or undervolts the device a bit too much when it goes idle and it basically crashes when it goes to sleep.
I had two Desire Z that had the same problem on any rom -- custom or stock. Random power down in a few weeks without any warning. Many complaints on xda-developers and no solution.
Re: Are they actually powered down? (Score:2)
I have never had that happen from my stupid cheap zte's to my htc's to my current droid turbo.
I know a lot of people with Samsung devices and the seem to be the GM of the mobile world... Big feature list, very popular, constant problems
Re: (Score:2)
I'm going to use "occasional pantshitting" at work, that's classic.
Re: (Score:1)
Holding down the power button for ten seconds or so forces a reset.
In my case I have to press the button for ten seconds, release, then press it again until the screen lights up. So I think the sequence is turn off the tablet, then turn it back on, which is actually consistent with how you'd perform a hard reset on a PC without a hardware reboot button. Some laptops require you to physically remove the battery for a few minutes, but that's not an option with tablets.
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose it could be a bug. With that said, the fact that it is only occurring on some devices and not others leads me to doubt that explanation. After all, ignoring minor differences in vendors for the CPU (and differences in flash capacity), these devices are supposed to be identical, so it isn't as though there are going to be drivers that run only on some devices and not on others. (I'm assuming this isn't only occurring while some device like the camera connection kit is attached; that would almos
Re: (Score:1)
Nah. Just another example of Apple stealing a feature from the true leader in innovation, Microsoft..."Reboot Hard and Often".
Re:I'm shocked. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're imagining things.
Note that all of those product releases happened under SJ.
+++ Breaking News +++ (Score:2)
When shipping 13 million complex computing units, some may be faulty.
We get this with every iPhone release. Issues affecting a couple hundred devices. Or is there really more to this? I doubt it.
Re: (Score:2)
No, we must all panic and claim Apple is doomed by Power-off-gate!
Whatever happened to Bend-gate?
Re: (Score:3)
When shipping 13 million complex computing units, some may be faulty.
People would happily accept this as an excuse if company's policies weren't so highly toxic towards user hardware. Like the classic response is always: have you restored it to factory defaults. Well no, not I haven't, I figured you may be able to tell me something more than nuke all my settings and hope the problem is gone.
Not Surprising (Score:1)
Apple is drunk from money laundering iPhones. They are pushing a commodity device out the door with little testing for big dollars. I am not, by an stretch a Steve Jobs fan, but this kind of shenanigans would likely not being happening were Steve still at the reigns. Steve was a control freak and cared deeply about perception and simplicity. The current crew care about neither. Apple has no innovated in some time and they are riding the money train largely because of the iPhone. If they cannot push out a d
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot to moan and rant about how Apple downplays serious design faults like antenna gate. And since you say Apple has not innovated maybe you can tells some innovations Samsung made during the last year or two.
Lack of Fondling (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly the phone is just unhappy at not being fondled constantly, since most people can't put the fucking thing down for more than 2 minutes.
The phones detects that the owner, err, sorry- the "renter" isn't constantly touching, fondling, and using the device, and after 10 whole minutes goes into "Snit Fit" mode where it sulks.
10 minutes after that it goes into the "Why You Don't Love Me Anymore" mode, and after a final 10-minute grace period it decides that it's been abandoned for a newer, shinier wife, errr, I mean "phone", and shuts down in a fit of rage (but not before posting to Facebook that you smell, have a tiny dick, and hate your mother).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Clearly the phone is just unhappy at not being fondled constantly, since most people can't put the fucking thing down for more than 2 minutes.
Careful, you'e talking about my precious.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have a dick you insensitive clod.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have a dick you insensitive clod.
You mean it's so small it doesn't even count as a dick?
My my, that IS tiny.
My Nexus 4 does this too (Score:1)
I pulled it out of my pocket about an hour ago and it was off. I'd just gotten it off the charger - it only had about 35% battery left, but it definitely was nowhere near running out.
This happens to me about once every 4-6 weeks. Seems to be totally random. Stock phone running latest official OS.
If it was happening frequently I'd be pretty sad but as it is I just see it as me leaving my computer on for more than a month and it deciding it needs a break and crashing.
Re: (Score:2)
Mine is failing at both the digitizer and the radio and the display is one of the ones that is fiddly to service. Digitizers are cheap, but unless I trip over a cheap repair service it's just going to lie around waiting for me to find something to use it for. It also only has 3.3v USB host which is stupid.
MacBook Black (Score:3)
Reminds me of my old MacBook black which liked to turn itself off randomly. My old housemate had a problem with his as well. There were a ton of blog posts back in the day about this being a physical problem; about heat causing part of the case to expand and a capacitor on the motherboard would push up against something causing it to short and shut-off. That was only one of the theories. There were tons of others. It might have been several different design faults depending on the model/generation.
Re: (Score:2)
I could maybe believe that it was caused by a cold solder joint somewhere on the motherboard or inside one of the chips, but the sort of thermal expansion required to cause a short circuit just isn't very plausible, IMO.
It is about a million times more likely that the CPU heat sink wasn't installed properly, leading to a thermal shutdown.
Power saving or sanity saving? (Score:2)
If you're not tied to on call 24/7 what's wrong with just turning the damn thing off in the evening?
Re: (Score:2)
Because I use it as a watch and alarm clock as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Yea same here.
If you're not on call though I would turn it off on weekends.
Happened to me, but only once thus far (Score:1)
Few days after getting it. Had to hold both buttons to do a forced reset for it to come back on. Hasn't happened again though so fingers crossed. Hopefully it's a software issue they can patch.
Mine is 128 gab Just do not power on anymore. I a (Score:1)