While some people surely love their new iPhone 16, many users have been hit since its launch last month by a serious bug causing their phone to freeze, ignore touch inputs, and then randomly reboot. But it looks like the end is finally in sight, with the rollout of a major software update that reportedly contains a fix.
As igamesnews reported in September, many iPhone 16 owners have complained about display “dead spots” which, if hit, cause the entire screen to become unresponsive to taps and swipes, and the phone restarts. Not all units are affected, but there have been enough reports to attract Apple’s attention: on Reddit, on the MacRumors forums, and on Apple’s own community pages.
For a worrying period, Apple either didn’t seem to notice the problem or was unable to fix it. iOS 18.01 arrived on October 3 without affected owners seeing any improvement (in fact I can confirm that my iPhone 16 Plus, which currently uses iOS 18.01, had the problem this morning), while from its seventh beta, iOS 18.1 didn’t seem to do it. contain a fix either. But it has now been confirmed (via MacRumors) that the public release of iOS 18.1 will correct the problem. This is officially mentioned in the update’s release notes, which appeared yesterday alongside the release candidate.
Why did it take so long for such a serious bug to be fixed? Maybe Apple’s software department has just been busy because it’s been a cursed update cycle. Just last month, iPadOS 18 had to be pulled after destroying the iPad Pro M4, while the Apple Watch faced a mirror image of the iPhone 16 problem when users reported “touches”. ghosts” earlier this year.
iOS 18.1 is expected to roll out on Monday, October 28. It’s easy to update your iPhone; just open the Settings app, go to Software updateand follow the instructions. The update contains other fixes and fixes, as well as new Apple Intelligence features for the iPhone 16, so it’s worth installing as soon as possible.
