iPhone OS Unstable During Apps Installs, Requires Recovery

For the third time in 3 days, I've experienced my iPhone 3G locking up hard during or after syncing applications. The first time happened while I was syncing iPhone apps, the second time when downloading an new app while using the built in iTunes App Store on the phone, the third time while syncing an app that iTunes had downloaded an update for.

In each case,the iPhone reboots, and is locked up while displaying the while bootup Apple logo. This display will remain on until your battery runs out if you are not aware of it.

The only solution is force the iPhone into recovery mode and doing a factory reset using iTunes. You do this by plugging the iPhone into the USB port and launching iTunes, turning off the iPhone by holding both home and sleep/wake keys for 10+ seconds to turn off the phone, then let go of the sleep/wake key but continue holding down the home key until the recovery mode screen appears on the iPhone:

Then in iTunes you'll see the corresponding dialogue:

At this point if you continue the iPhone will be restored as if doing a factory reset, which can take 20+ minutes. Then iTunes will ask you if you wish to restore from a backup — unfortunately, almost every time I do this from a backup, iTunes will later report that the restore failed, so I'll have to start over with a factory reset and choose to start from scratch loose all my settings.

This is quite disturbing, and combined with syncing and backups taking so long when you have apps installed, means that I've decided to no longer loading apps on my iPhone 3G for a while, and instead using my old iPhone for playing with apps.

Hopefully Apple will have a 2.01 update with a fix for this soon.

Comments

[Steve]

Unfortunately, I ran into this same set of problems while attempting to upgrade my iPod Touch from 2.0 to 2.01. The upgrade failed, forcing a complete install from recovery mode. Then (as you mentioned above) the restore failed because "iTunes could not restore [your] iPod Touch because the backup was corrupt". I had to start over from scratch. My previously loaded apps were (mostly) re-loaded, but I lost all of my settings, email accounts, safari bookmarks, etc. :-(

Are we supposed to trust that "Backup" is now working correctly in 2.01?

I guess time will tell if the App Store (and loaded apps) are any more stable now with the 2.01 software (since my device had logged nearly a hundred crashes and kernel panics since first installing the 2.0 software)...

[Jason The Saj]

Yes, I've had a very similar experience...

Perhaps I should write blog on "How Apple ruined my Labor Day Weekend!"

:(

If anyone knows the next time Steve Jobs is making a public appearance in Pennsylvani...please let me know. I want to be there...pie in hand!