Apple’s disaster zone continues to wreck iPhone havoc

Apple launched iOS 13 alongside the latest iPhones and ever since its inception, it has continued to be a disaster zone that is wreaking havoc on practically all iPhone devices. Even though Apple released its fourth rushed iOS rollout last week, various problems are being reported and now owners of Apple’s latest models are also not spared.

As per a report by wccftech, a serious problem in iOS 13.1.3 is causing the Ultra Wideband U1 chip in the iPhone 11 range of handsets to fail. What’s even worse, some of the handsets are not capable of being repaired and owners are claiming that Apple was required to replace their iPhones.

After the update to iOS 13.1.3, affected users are seeing a new pop-up warning which states, “Ultra Wideband Update Failed. Your iPhone cannot use Ultrawide band until it has been updated.” A related report by Forbes states, “Apple has tacitly implied some level of scale because it has setup a dedicated support page making a similar recommendation.”

What’s even worse is that the latest beta release of iOS 13.2 also fails to fix the problem.

“I'm getting it too on [iOS] 13.2b3” said a user on Reddit. A post on MacRumors forum also goes on to add, “Also getting error message: "ULTRA WIDEBAND UPDATE FAILED". Had this with iOS 13.2 public beta 2, and today I still have it after updating to public beta 3. Is it a software issue, or is my phone hardware broken?”

Also, the individuals who have taken their new handsets to the Apple Store have stated that Apple sees this as a hardware problem which is a pretty severe consequence of a software update and something that’s unable to be fixed with software.

Apple’s official forums have users reporting, “I had to go to the Apple store and they did the diagnostics and confirmed it was hardware issue and was replaced with a new device.” Another member states, “I had sent the phone logs to them, it was escalated and reviewed and turns out that it was a hardware failure (I do not have the details) but since it is a new phone, [I’m] getting it swapped out for a new phone”

A member of MacRumors forums stated, “My 11 Pro Max had it too. An AirDrop would not work to send, but could receive. Reset and setup as new failed to resolve issue. Visited Apple Store yesterday and did return/replace.”While a person on Apple’s forums stated, “Got this same message after the 13.1.3 update last night. Behaves like a software issue to me. All these people having the same hardware failure after the iOS 13 updates? Weird.”

What’s even more perplexing is that there are also a few scattered reports of certain users experiencing this prior to the iOS 13.1.3 update. The question persists — are the new iOS 13 updates actually making this issue worse? The only ray of hope is that in some cases, a DFU restore has managed to rectify the problem.