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iPhones Bricked By Setting Date To Jan 1, 1970 (theguardian.com)

Posted by yaelk on from the apple-bugs dept.

lightbox32 writes: Beware of a hoax circling the interwebs, which can be seen by setting your iPhone's date to January 1, 1970. Many people are reporting that doing so will brick the device. It's unclear what exactly causes the issue, but could be related to how iOS stores date and time formats. Jan. 1, 1970 is a value of zero or less than zero, which would make any process that uses a time stamp to fail. Apple is aware of the issue and is looking into it.

4 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. False headline... by slashkitty · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's recoverable just by letting the battery run out, or disconnecting the battery (harder but faster) Bricking is when you permanently break the device.

    --
    -- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
    1. Re:False headline... by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You could just remove the battery. Oh. Well, at least it's not soldered on to the motherboard.

    2. Re:False headline... by slashkitty · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's actually attached with a snap clip. Only the original iphone had it soldered on. I've replaced a few iphone batteries.

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      -- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
  2. Re:So it's only a brick for several days by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, it isn't.

    A) because it doesn't actually break in the first place
    B) Brick means unrecoverable, recovery here is trivial if it were to work as the story goes.

    C) You've been trolled, the phone doesn't actually brick in the first place, worst you bought into something this silly.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager