Plugging in this date will permanently crash your iPhone

It appears having the phone try to move the date past 0 screws it up. A bit of a bug, it seems.

I bet a lot of people try it now. lol

Calling John Titor...

Your iPhone really hates the date January 1, 1970. It hates it so much that it will permanently crash if you change your iPhone's time settings to that date.

January 1, 1970 is the earliest date you can set your iPhone to. If you turn your date and time settings to manual (please don't do this), and scroll the calendar back as far as you can go (seriously, don't do this), you can only go as far back as January 1, 1970.
...
Now, why would scrolling all the way back to January 1, 1970 (00:00:00 in Unix time) turn your iPhone into a brick? If your time zone isn't GMT, your iPhone might think you're in a time before January 1, 1970 -- or before zero. Though Unix time can be negative, it's possible that something about that makes your iPhone go haywire.

Link

Trying it now.

The iPhone forums will be bustling tonight. People just can't help themselves.

If they'd quit trying to get their Candy Crush lives to render faster, nobody would have ever found this out.

Since a majority of people use their phones to read the forums, I suspect we will see traffic to the site slow down as people's phones are killed.

Kind'a like the whole "A normal human can't lick their elbow" stunt, people try things just to see if what is said really happens.

It would appear that some routine in the start up don't like a date in that range.

Need a new phone? Here is the chance. How long before Apple stops replacing them due to this published problem.

If you let the phone run completely dead on the battery and then recharge it it'll bring it back to life

Watch it turn out to be due to a NSA's backdoor. LOL

originally posted by: James99
If you let the phone run completely dead on the battery and then recharge it it'll bring it back to life

if true then that is a useful info for debugging the problem.

Kinda like was was predicted to happen to all modern electronics at the year 2000.. The so called millenium bug..

64 bit processors or related OS

This bug affects any iOS device that uses a 64-bit processor and is running iOS 8 or newer, including iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. For those unsure, 64 bit processors are the A7, A8, A8X, A9, and A9X (iPhone 5s or later, for instance). If you use a 32 bit device, you’re in the clear.

A Reddit thread offers a handful of possible causes of the issue. The most reasonable appears to be that it all comes down to time zones and that setting the date to January 1st, 1970 causes the internal clock to be set to less than zero, which confuses the device and crashes it.

Another user claims that he inadvertently suffered this bug when he changed the time zone on his iPhone from Bejing back to New York, experiencing the same issue.

One Twitter user says that the device could come back on after 5 hours, while another notes that changing the SIM card could fix the issue, as well.

Link

I wonder if it happens with a TZ of GMT or east (+)?

Y2-IPhone?

originally posted by: Vector99
Y2-IPhone?

Y0-iPhone

Does this mean we cant recharge our iPhones via using the microwave?

just means you gotta get a real phone...an android

a reply to: Rabb420

Yep any time lord worth his salt uses an Android, not much point being able to travel back in time if you can't instagram and facebook it

a reply to: Maxatoria

You just gotta bend it a little first, then it will work.

There was also a text message that I guess you could send to Iphones using a certain font and symbols that would jack it up.
www.redmondpie.com...

originally posted by: James99
If you let the phone run completely dead on the battery and then recharge it it'll bring it back to life

Wouldn't just removing the battery for a few minutes and replacing it accomplish the same thing? Or maybe replacing the charged battery with a dead one for a little bit and then putting it back?

a reply to: Misterlondon

I thought that!

Only Apple.

A 1970's Millennium bug for 2016.

Couldn't write this stuff...