14 DAY TRIAL // Apple rolled out the iOS 10 update to supported devices only a few minutes ago and it turns out that those who are trying to update OTA are hit with an error that’s pushing iPhones to recovery mode.
This seems to be a rather common bug at the moment and we’re hearing from our readers that the only way to fix the problem is to connect the iPhone to iTunes and perform the restore.
Although it’s not yet clear why this is happening, it seems that the OTA update actually attempts to install iOS 10.0, while iTunes downloads and installs iOS 10.0.1 - the same update was released to beta testers last week after the September 7 iPhone 7 launch event.
According to users who were hit with this error, iPhones that attempt to install iOS 10 OTA complete the download process and when restarting for the first time, they are automatically pushed to recovery mode with a message telling them to connect to iTunes.
This is, in fact, the only way to solve the problem, as iTunes is absolutely mandatory to perform the update to iOS 10. In case a backup does not exist, installing iOS from scratch is the only option.
Beta program for the win
The big question right now is how could this happen given the fact that Apple has released so many beta versions before this public update?
And what's more surprising is that the iOS 10 update worked perfectly fine for testers and their devices were updated to version 10.0.1 from the very beginning, without an intermediary update to 10.0.
Apple hasn't yet suspended OTA downloads for iOS 10, although there's no doubt that it should do that given the big number of iPhones that are rendered useless because of this bug.
We can confirm that this problem is indeed happening on two of our iPhone 6s Plus units here at Softpedia, and recovering via iTunes seems to be the only way to go right now.
UPDATE: Apple has issued a statement to acknowledge the issue and to explain that a fix is already available. Users need to connect their iPhones to iTunes and the update should be completed.
"We experienced a brief issue with the software update process, affecting a small number of users during the first hour of availability. The problem was quickly resolved and we apologize to those customers. Anyone who was affected should connect to iTunes to complete the update or contact AppleCare for help," the company says.
Here are the messages you should get when connecting a bricked iPhone to iTunes for recovery. The update to 10.0.1 is then performed. The IPSW direct download links are available in the box below should you want to perform the update manually.
