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Unresponsive iPhone SE 3rd Gen (2022)

ToTo Man

the band not the dog
I've seen reports of issues similar to what I've started experiencing with my iPhone SE 2022 but not exactly the same.

Background:
I bought my iPhone SE new from Apple in May 2022. It's been working fine until last month, a time that loosely coincided with my installing a Tesco PAYG sim card (I wasn't using it as a phone until that point) and also updating to iOS 16, though I can't be sure how close these two separate events were to when the problem started happening. The 'black screen unresponsiveness' has now happened twice, the first occasion was a few weeks ago and the second time was yesterday.

Problem:
- I’m using the device, it’s working fine, there’s a decent amount of battery left on it, I put it down on the table and either push the power button to sleep the screen or allow the screen to go into sleep mode after the set screen lock time.
- When I next use the device a couple of hours later it's completely unresponsive, the screen is black and none of the buttons do anything, including the 'hard reset' combination of Volume Up + Volume Down + Power.
- The Home button still makes the haptic ‘click’ sound when pressed, which suggests the device is still in a powered-on state, because when you manually turn the phone off or the battery is completely depleted the Home button turns rigid.
- Calling the device from another phone when it’s in this unresponsive state goes straight to voice mail. Plugging the device into the charger doesn't do anything, nothing is displayed on the screen and no noises/vibrations are heard.
- The first time the problem happened, I left it in its unresponsive state overnight. When I checked it the next morning the Home button had turned rigid. I then plugged it into the charger and after a minute or so I saw the charging icon appeared on screen and it charged fine.
- When it happened yesterday, I plugged it into the charger for two hours and nothing happened, so I unplugged it and left it on the table overnight in its unresponsive state. My dad noticed the phone on the table this morning, tried to power it on with the button on the right side and apparently saw the flat battery prompt displayed on the screen, so he plugged it into the charger and by the time I got up it was almost fully charged. It's currently working fine.

Before I bamboozle Apple support with this, has anyone else experienced this weird behaviour with their iPhone? This is the first iPhone we’ve had that’s behaved like this, we had no issues with the iPhone 4, 6 or 11. Is there an easy way to tell if it’s hardware- or software-related? According to Settings the Battery health is still 100%.
 
If I do take it into an Apple store and it ends up needing to be taken out of my sight to fix or is indeed replaced, what's the protocol re security? Is it enough to sign-out of banking apps or should I delete them? Should I sign out of my Apple ID, remove my sim card, etc?
 
If I do take it into an Apple store and it ends up needing to be taken out of my sight to fix or is indeed replaced, what's the protocol re security? Is it enough to sign-out of banking apps or should I delete them? Should I sign out of my Apple ID, remove my sim card, etc?

They'll not have access to any of your apps/login details - they'll connect it to diagnostics and see what's what...

Absolutely back your phone up to iCloud and if you have it syncd with a Mac/PC, back it up to there too for peace of mind.

If you want, sign out of the sensitive apps, stay signed into iCloud on the phone and take it from there
 
You’ll likely need to book it in if you want to guarantee being seen and the process should tell you to back up before you arrive.
I've booked an appointment with a Genius tomorrow. The confirmation text invited me to run Diagnostics in advance of the appointment. It's just completed but it didn't give any feedback as to what the problem is.
 
Slightly off-topic but I'm assuming an iPhone running iOS 16.3.1 can't be backed up to MacBook that's still on Mojave? I've always backed up my previous iPhones' photos/videos to my MacBook using the Image Capture (old school! :D) or Photos app but I haven't bothered with this one yet, lazily preferring to back them up to iCloud, which I haven't yet had the need to retrieve data from. I'm doing an updated iCloud backup as I type this, including app data as well as photos/videos. How do I verify that the backup is a success? Can it be accessed from my other devices?
 
A simple rule of thumb is that if the problem is reproduceable at will it points to a software problem but if it occurs randomly then it points to hardware.

Apple should sort it out.

DV
 
@ToTo Man , I have the same phone as you and routinely back up to my 2009 iMac running High Sierra (its limit). I believe back up just means ‘copy’ in this context.
 
I would be interested to know what the response from Apple is. I have the same phone and this happened to mine once, now thinking it was shortly after the update to iOS16. Hard reset didn’t bring it back to life until it was plugged in and charging then trying that again.
 
My dad's just back with my phone from the Apple Store. Diagnostics showed no hardware issues. According to the Genius the problem is caused by 'Backboard' which apparently controls the Home Screen, and the problem seems to be associated with iOS 16. (That would explain why I didn't experience any issues until last month). He didn't say how common this issue was but he's apparently going to bump it up the list of recorded faults for a potential bug fix in a future iOS 16 update (should I be holding my breath for that?!). Apart from that there's nothing else he could do other than repeating the advice to hard reset as and when the problem arises.
 
My IP 14PM is on 16.3.1; zero issues here...

Is this specific to the SE and that's the iPhone my Dad has and he's not reported any issues either

Have you tried backing it up, doing a factory reset and then starting the phone all over again?
 
Is this specific to the SE and that's the iPhone my Dad has and he's not reported any issues either.
I'm not sure. My mum updated her iPhone 11 to iOS 16 long before me and she hasn't had any problems. I like to wait until the .2 or .3 version of the iOS before updating in the hope that any major bugs have been ironed out by then.

Have you tried backing it up, doing a factory reset and then starting the phone all over again?
The "Reset All Settings" instruction was performed during the appointment today. Do you mean I should "Erase All Contents and Settings"? If I do that and restore from my iCloud backup, won't that just put things back to how they are just now since I don't have an iCloud backup prior to when the problem started happening?
 
I'm not sure. My mum updated her iPhone 11 to iOS 16 long before me and she hasn't had any problems. I like to wait until the .2 or .3 version of the iOS before updating in the hope that any major bugs have been ironed out by then.

The "Reset All Settings" instruction was performed during the appointment today. Do you mean I should "Erase All Contents and Settings"? If I do that and restore from my iCloud backup, won't that just put things back to how they are just now since I don't have an iCloud backup prior to when the problem started happening?

Yes. But it can work as it can sometimes flush out niggles...

Just ensure you do it properly and sign out of Find My and iCloud too, so it's fully dissassociated etc
 
Not much help to the OP, but my iPhone SE updated to iOS 16.3.1 a week or two ago. It works fine and I've not had any problems with it since I bought it in Sept 22 via Vodafone.

it's the only Apple product I've owned and while it works perfectly and I'm quite impressed, it was a bit of a mistake on my part really : I was attracted by the small form factor and low price, but my Samsung Tablet and Acer Chromebook are Android and my PC is Windows and Linux, so I'll be swapping the IPhone for a Samsung soon I think. Sorry, a bit of a thread diversion.
 


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