Just when we thought we were over iPhone problems for a while, a new one has seemingly cropped up. On Reddit and other sites, people are reporting that their iPhones are inexplicably powering down overnight, sometimes causing alarms to be missed.
It’s not clear what’s causing the issue, as it seems to be affecting a wide array of iPhone models and even different iOS versions. However, while there appears to be a concentration of affected phones running iOS 17.0.3, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus as to when, why, or how the phones power down.
The main similarity between the reports is that all of the shutdowns appear to happen overnight when phones are charging. Most people wouldn’t notice, except the iPhone will ask to enter a passcode when unlocking as if an update had been installed and the phone had restarted. After further inspection, affected users have also noticed that there are gaps in their battery health charts—sometimes for several hours—when the phone was powered off.
Foundry
In the most extreme cases, iPhones have remained shut off long enough to cause missed alarms. One Reddit user shared a story where both his and his son’s iPhone alarms didn’t sound. Many users shared similar stories in the comments and have seemingly traced the issue to phones shutting off overnight. A Google search for “iPhones shutting down overnight” reveals that the issue may have been affecting users for a while, so it’s possible that iOS 17.0.3 merely brought it to light.
I haven’t experienced the issue on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, but iOS 17.0.3 failed to install several times this week after being scheduled. While iOS 17.0.2 properly installed, the Software Update tab displayed an “Unable to install” error message despite having over 20 percent and being connected to a charger. However, my colleague Halyna Kubiv experienced the shutdown as you can see in the screen above.
Apple hasn’t acknowledged an issue with iOS 17.0.3, which arrived on Oct. 4. This week it released the third beta for iOS 17.1, but it’s unclear whether it includes a fix.
