Some iPhone users are saying their phone turned off automatically at night
iPhone users are reporting a mysterious bug that turned off their phone at night. The issue doesn't seem to be specific to iPhone 15 models.
Mystery bug turns off iPhone automatically at night
The issue came to light when a reddit user made a post stating that when they woke up to their phone's alarm, their iPhone displayed a prompt to enter their SIM card's pin to unlock the device. FaceID would not work until they had typed the code.
The user, intrigued by why the iPhone had asked for the PIN, checked their battery stats, which can be found under Settings > Battery > Last 24 Hours. This is when they noticed that their phone's battery chart was showing a blank period specifically between 3 and 7 AM. This seems to suggest that the mobile device may have switched off automatically at night, and rebooted later.
If you think that's bizarre, wait till you hear this. The user was not the only one with the problem, several other users have reported the same issue, at around 3 AM as well. 9to5Mac writer Zac Hall has confirmed that on checking the device's battery stats, his iPhone 15 Pro Max was seemingly affected by the issue as well. Hall says he is skeptical about whether the iPhone was actually powered off for the entire time, but could not tell for sure, because he had been asleep. One reddit user said that they had woken up in the middle of the night and noticed that their iPhone was not displaying their StandBy screen, and was instead showing the lock screen.
So, could this issue have been a result of a beta version? Apparently not, Hall and most others seem to have been using iOS 17.0.3 on their iPhones. The bug is not limited to iPhone 15 models, many users have reported facing this issue on older devices like the iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 13 Mini, iPhone 14 Pro Max, and so on. It is not a U.S. specific-issue either, since users from around the world were affected by the bug.
My iPhone 13 seems to be unaffected by the issue. This is rather puzzling, isn't it? What could have caused the issue? One theory is that Apple's servers could have had a hiccup and accidentally pushed a request to shut down tons of devices. I don't think this may have been the issue. If that was the case, how did the phone boot up again?
It's not logical to expect that the iPhones turned off automatically, and decided to boot up just before the user's alarm was about to go off. No, I think the mysterious bug could have just been a kernel panic that may have caused the phone to reboot automatically. It's either that, or perhaps the device could have overheated and bootlooped, which is possible if all these users had left their iPhone to charge overnight. And if it did overheat, it is likely that the device may have turned off automatically due to the built-in thermal protections, which in turn could have triggered a restart, leading to a bootloop.
As for why the battery statistics don't show a record for the time the device was "turned off", maybe it didn't log the time properly? This is pure speculation of course. Hopefully Apple will address the issue if many users report the problem.
Have you experienced this bug on your iPhone?
