iPhone 3G: Three Screens of Death
News Analysis. Windows has the Blue Screen of Death. Xbox 360 has the Red Ring of Death. Apple, meet Microsoft. Some iPhone users are reporting not one, not two but three different screens of death. |
How do good iPhone 3Gs die? In black, white or logo. Or so say forum posters whose iPhones stopped at one of the screens.
Is there irony here? For years, Mac users have poked fun at Windows users for the Blue Screen of Death. How strange then that Apple's iPhone has three different screens of death. Can you say payback?
The logo screen is the one from which some iPhone 3Gs can resurrect to new life. Their death is exaggerated. There's an interesting Apple support forum thread on the problem, with the first post dated July 12—the day after iPhone 3G went on sale.
"Oh Joy," wrote one commenter. "I guess I can be added to the list. Apple logo will not go away no matter what I do. 35 resets later the logo is still on the screen. Very annoyed."
Common theme for problem's cause: App Store. The iPhone Hacks blog also identifies the App Store as the cause and recommends "to prevent this problem ... update iPhone apps one at a time instead of using 'Update All' and avoid doing anything else on your iPhone while the update process is taking place." The fix involves holding down the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons, then restoring the iPhone firmware. The above iPhone Hacks link explains how to bring new life from the Apple logo Screen of Death.
I've seen the Apple logo screen of death on several iPods and even a MacBook Air. The Air rose up to Heaven, while the iPods were reset and rebooted.
The Black Screen of Death predates iPhone 3G. It was a notorious iPhone 2G killer, from which life could be restored—with a little gumption and the right firmware update.
The White Screen of Death is an iPhone's final swan song. WSOD is perhaps the most common variety. It's a known malady on iPods, other mobile phones, the Nokia N-Gage and even Mac OS X.
On Aug. 14, Red Herring reporter Lalee Sadighi blogged about her new iPhone 3G—affectionately called LuckyCharm—going from the White Screen of Death to Apple gadget Heaven. So much for lucky charms.
There seems to be some confusion on support forums between the Apple logo and White Screen of Death, although it's possible they come from related causes.
Another blog story comes from Robert Banagale, whose iPhone went White Screen of Death in late July. After troubleshooting failed, he took the mobile into the local Apple Store. He writes:
A person at the Genius Counter replaced after I provided a brief description. The Genius Counter technician did not spend any time troubleshooting / verifying them. This leads me to believe that this could be a common enough problem that it is occurring in other phones i.e. a white screen / sleep state nonresponsive. I asked what might have been the problem and he seemed firm that it was a hardware issue and did not express any surprise. He suggested that possibly there was something going wrong with the screen power.
Robert was skeptical about a hardware issue, however, because the Apple Genius told him to set up as a new phone. Otherwise, he would restore from backup. If a software problem, or software-causing hardware problem, the restore could bring back the dreaded white screen. There has been some forum chatter suggesting corruption caused by App Store applications is the cause for at least one of the screen-of-death problems (the aforementioned logo). Also, there is a reason why Apple CEO Steve Jobs has promised a fix in September for App Store problems.
Meanwhile, Apple has a quick-fix guide for anyone having any kind of iPhone problems. We're a three-iPhone 3G family now. Except for "Call Failed" problems a couple weeks back, our iPhones are working just fine. Fingers crossed.
[Please send your tips or rumors to watchtips at live.com]
Comments (11)
joe. There is one more. The home screen of death. All of a sudden when you are browsing a complicated web page on safari it crashes and iPhone returns to the home screen. This happens quite often.
Posted by Mugunth | August 29, 2008 10:30 AM
In fact, mac os x could also die such a death with a white screen, and I have seen that for quite many times. The problem seems to be related with network.
Posted by yuhong wang | August 29, 2008 3:06 PM
Mugunth wrote: "joe. There is one more. The home screen of death."
I experienced this one the other night. The Borders Website kept crashing Safari, and I ended up at the Home Screen. So I switched to Barnes and Noble, which Website worked fine and where I could search the local store for the title I wanted. Barnes and Noble got the sale.
Joe
Posted by Joe | August 29, 2008 3:22 PM
Very timely posting. I had to have my first iphone replaced becasue fo this and just about an hour ago my iphone 3G went sour apple on me.
Ugh!
Posted by David | August 29, 2008 4:33 PM
I've had my 3g for a couple of weeks and have gotten the logo screen of death twice and Safari has crashed back to the home screen more times than I can remember. Don't know if it's just me or not, but several apps do the same thing... So much for a Mac being more reliable than Windows (or in this case Windows Mobile 6).
Posted by Ken | September 2, 2008 11:11 AM
Mugunth : There is one more. The home screen of death. All of a sudden when you are browsing a complicated web page on safari it crashes and iPhone returns to the home screen. This happens quite often.
A 'screen of death' is when the device dies and can't recover except through a reboot (e.g. Windows Blue Screen of Death) or worse.
What you're describing isn't a 'screen of death' it is an application (the web browser) crashing and the device returning to the home screen. This is annoying, but it's not 'death'.
On the 'screen of death' front, my iPhone (8 GB, original model) has twice gotten stuck on the boot logo screen. Both times doing a restore fixed the problem, and it's working fine now, but it's a little unsettling. At a guess, it seems to have something to do with installing applications - I didn't have these problems before installing tons of apps from the Application Store.
Posted by Laird Popkin | September 2, 2008 11:33 AM
There is one my wife's iPhone 3G experienced, continual reboot. Crash, screen goes black, Logo comes up, then CRASH, screen goes black, Logo comes up CRASH, ...
Phone was replaced w/o question
Posted by Paul | September 5, 2008 11:22 AM
The security certificate for this site expired 9/4/08. Browser warns of expiration.
Posted by J O'Brien | September 5, 2008 11:25 AM
Is this Jay who posted the last comment?
I don't think the browser problem qualifies as a SOD either
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Posted by Lilian | September 5, 2008 9:06 PM
Just got my iPhone 9/6/08, that afternoon I was checking out the different functions when the phone quite working. The screen went black with the apple logo in the middle and stayed that way for about 15 minutes. It finally reset and has worked fine since.
Posted by Darrel | September 8, 2008 11:55 AM