How Do I Fix My Bricked iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
Your iPhone is stuck on a black screen and you've bricked it, and now you're wondering if there's anything you can do to fix it? Read this guide
Author:Daniel BarrettMay 30, 202226765 Shares1274518 Views
So, you’ve decided to give jailbreaking a try and it didn’t go so well. Your iPhoneis stuck on a black screen and you’ve bricked it, and now you’re wondering if there’s anything you can do to fix it?
Chances are your iPhone isn’t bricked at all. Unless you’ve managed to interrupt a firmware update, it can be pretty tough to actually brick any iDevice. Sometimes the solution is very simple, and sometimes you actually have some reason to panic. Regardless of how things may look, however, you should be able to resolve the problem fairly easily. Just try the following.
What Is A Bricked iPhone?
Having a bricked iPhone means your iPhone’s software is corrupted to the point of no repair, making your iPhone appear to be an expensive aluminum “brick”. Luckily, it’s almost impossible to permanently brick an iPhone. In this article, I’ll show you how to fix a bricked iPhone.
How To Fix A Bricked iPhone
There are only three real fixes for repairing a bricked iPhone: hard resetting your iPhone, restoring your iPhone, or DFU restoring your iPhone. I will walk you through how to do all three in the paragraphs below.
Note: If possible, please backup your iPhone before starting this tutorial. There’s a good chance of losing data during this process because iOS usually needs to be restored to factory settings to be repaired.
With all of these steps, be sure your device is connected to power. Sometimes when it’s having a problem it may run down the battery and you won’t be aware of it because it appears to be off or frozen. You might think something is wrong because it won’t power on, but the battery may just be dead. When troubleshooting, connect your device to power to eliminate that possibility. In some cases you may want to let it charge for 15 minutes before doing anything so you can be sure it has enough of a charge to operate.
Hard Reset Your iPhone
The first thing to try in order to unbrick a bricked iPhone is a hard reset. To do this, just hold down your power button (top/side button) and Home button (button at the bottom of the screen) until your iPhone reboots and the Apple logo appears on the screen.
To hard reset an iPhone 7or 7 Plus, begin by pressing and holding the volume down button and power button at the same time. Then, let go of both buttons when the Apple logo appears in the center of your iPhone’s display. Don’t be surprised if it takes as long as 20 seconds!
After your phone reboots, it’ll either boot back into iOS or return to the “plug into iTunes” screen. If the connect to iTunes logo appears again, move on to the next step.
Also read:How to Fix iPhone Black Screen of Death
Restore Your iPhone with iTunes
If you’ve never restored an iDevice before it’s pretty easy. Just click on its name in the lefthand column in iTunes, go to the Summary section (if it’s not already selected by default), and click the Restore button.
This will download the latest available version of iOS from iTunes and install it on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. iTunes will know what type of device you have and download the appropriate version. When it finishes, you’ll be asked to restore from a previous backup (assuming you made one) or set up your device as new.
Assuming you have a backup, restore from it, then sync your device with iTunes when it finishes. Because a restore wipes out all data and an iTunes backup only retains settings, preferences, and other basic information, this sync can take quite awhile—especially if you have a lot of music and movies. Be prepared to let your phone sync for as long as an hour. When it’s done you should be back to normal again.
DFU Restore Your “Bricked” iPhone
If an error message appears while you’re trying to restore your iPhone, the next step in the process of unbricking your iPhone is to DFU restore your phone. A DFU restore is a special kind of iPhone restore that wipes both software and hardwaresettings, giving your iPhone back a “clean slate”.
Please note that DFU restoring your iPhone, like a standard restore, will erase all content and settings from your device. If you don’t have a backup, you will definitely lose your data at this point. The good newsis that a DFU restore will almost always fix a bricked iPhone. To perform a DFU restore, follow this guide.
Repair Your iPhone
If your iPhone still isn’t restoring, your iPhone may have a hardware issue and need to be repaired. Take your device to an Apple Store or an Apple-authorized repair shop and tell them it stopped turning on. They won’t fix your phone under warranty if you mention you tried to jailbreak, so leave that detail out.
In many cases they’ll be able to get things back up and running for you in a few minutes and everything will be fine. It’s very unlikely your phone will have to be replaced.
Asking Apple to replace it when you broke it isn’t necessarily the most ethical option, so you may want to own up to bricking it if it is, indeed, bricked and your fault.
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