According to a thread on Reddit, any 64-bit iOS devices suffer from a problem that renders them unusable if the time and date settings are set to a specific point.
Needless to say, though I will anyway, you shouldn’t try this at home, or work, or anywhere else really – unless you fancy a trip to your local Apple Store.
The problem arises if you set the date to January 1, 1970, which will then prevent the phone from booting up again, until you make that trip to the store.
It shouldn’t be permanently bricked, and while other people have reported success in booting their phone after a full drain of the battery, or waiting longer than five hours, there’s no guarantee that will get you working again.
In short, why the hell would you try this?? Now we’ve told you about it and plenty of people can verify it ‘works’ – there’s really no need to test it out for yourself.
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If you do, and the battery drain trick (or removing the SIM card) doesn’t work, then you’ll need to head to an Apple Store for re-imaging of the handset.
We’ve contacted Apple to see if it plans to roll out an update to fix the issue and will update if we hear back.
➤ Changing Time & Date settings to Jan 1, 1970 will permanently brick 64-bit iOS devices [vista980622 | Reddit]
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