I hope you don’t need this.
TLDR;
My iPhone died & I brought it back to life :)
Recap
I woke up this morning checked the time on my iPhone, as I unlocked it, I saw a loading screen. I didn’t give it much thought as I was probably still waking up.
I had planned to go for a run but it was already 7.30AM, I checked my iPhone again after a couple of minutes and now it was stuck on the Apple Logo with a black screen. I just figured that it was restarting so I let it rest for a couple of minutes but nothing changed.
Well, I was fully awake now and somewhat getting terrified. This is not how I’d want to start my day, let alone my week neither anything. I had disabled iCloud Photos a few weeks back as I was struggling to figure out how to delete unwanted videos and photos and it was just not working for me so I was worried that I’d lose everything that had not been backed up since then.
Something similar thing happened to me a few years ago with my iPhone 7 before I started paying for iCloud and I lost a ton of stuff and there is no way I was going to relive that memory. I was determined and I did some research on the internet, there were some valid answers largely pointing to iTunes but this isn’t 2019 so that clearly wasn’t going to work.
Luckily I stumbled upon this post that had some valid answers but nothing worked when I did all the steps on the first try. The trick was to hold the volume up, volume down button with quick succession and then hold down the power button until the iPhone booted in recovery mode.
The file manager opened up and there were two options; one was to restore from a backup and the other was to update the iOS version. I chose the latter though I was worried my iPhone did not have enough storage space to install the update. ( that’s what it was complaining about for a long time but I ignored it )
I accepted the terms and conditions ( without reading ) and the download started, I was sensing some sort of success and calm was restored. I went to brush my teeth and once I was done I realised the download had stopped unexpectedly. Well, maybe not, as my WiFi weirdly disconnects and I can’t figure out why but that’s a problem for another time.
I was worried as I figured this was going to happen again as the file was over 7GB. I tired again but the download wasn’t starting, that got me worried but also got me thinking of other options.
I’ve had 3u tools ever since I’ve owned an iPhone. It came recommended from a good friend of mine. I used to use it to add music to Apple Music but I’d never done more than that. I realised that it recognised the iPhone and there was a smart flash option and even better iTunes flash option ( which the first search result pointed to ). I did some reading about it online and it seemed a solid option. I also realised on 3u tools it had a selected firmware which was similar to what I’d seen earlier so I was on the right path. I tried to download the file but the download was super slow and wifi disconnecting.
3u tools actually allows you to import firmware if you have it locally so I decided to download the firmware separately. This was even if the wifi would disconnect I’d simply resume it again. I managed to get the same exact firmware on the Apple developer website, downloaded it and imported it into 3utools.
I chose Retain User’s data option, then I pushed the flash button. The 3u tools prompt provided no guarantee that my data would be recovered which worried me for a second but I’d come too far to turn back so I confirmed and managed to flash the firmware to my iPhone ,
then import it on the apple developer website https://developer.apple.com/download/ . I wasn’t sure I’d get it but I’ve download an iOS version the way so I wasn’t worried
It took about eight minutes and it was really nice ( nerdy ) seeing the commands on the screen. The process was a success and the next screen was attempting to recover the data which took a while as I held my breath.
Phew, It worked! Thank God.
I was abled to get into my phone again with everything still in tack and surprisingly the new iOS version came with Journal, apples new app for journaling. I’ve always wanted to journal but I was banking on the day one app so I’ll see how this goes.
Retrospective
I’m not sure what happened
I read on the internet that it could have been a software glitch but I think my iPhone ran out of storage space and somewhat couldn’t boot correctly. I am not sure how I was able to flash the firmware but I also acknowledge that I’m not so knowledgeable on this.
Moving Forward
This was definitely worrying and it was not the first time something like this had happened. I’m writing this article so I can somewhat retrace my steps if this ever happens the third time. I am fortunate enough to own a MacBook and even somewhat know about 3u tools software that was of great help. I will be doing backups weekly on my macbook, incase anything weird happens I can simply restore a previous backup from my Mac or even go through this entire process again.
Has something like this ever happened to you? If yes, I’d like to know how you went about it?