Don’t set your iPhone’s date to 1970

Recently, a post on Reddit detailed a new iPhone bug that bricks any 64-bit iOS device when its date is set it January 1 1970. Since this post, many news outlets have written articles about this bug and it didn’t take long until there were “guides” that tricked users into bricking their iPhone.

iPhone brick guide

The devices affected are: iPhone 5S, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, iPad mini 4, iPad Air, iPad Air 2.

Currently the only fix involves temporarily disconnecting the battery by opening the phone or letting the battery drain (this can take a while).

The reason why the bug works is that computers calculate the time and date by counting how many seconds have passed since January 1 1970 (the first day of the Unix epoch/the zero time) and if your clock is set to this date then 64-bit iDevices freak out and get stuck in an infinite boot loop. More details can be found in the video below.