iOS 17.3 beta 2 bricking iPhones, Apple withdraws rollout

Apple today released iOS 17.3 beta 2 builds for the selected testers and it is reportedly bricking iPhones after installation.

The update fixes an issue in StoreKit where APIs that provide transaction values would unexpectedly fail when the purchase price of the transaction is very large.

There’s not much to see about the new features in the changelog. Post-installation, beta testers begin to report on social media and other forums that their iPhone with iOS 17.2 beta 2 begins to boot loop.

In simple words, a boot loop refers to infinite auto restart and in some cases, it leads to nothing when the device pretends to take you to the home screen.

Following such reports, Apple officially announced to halt of this rollout.

“iOS and iPadOS 17.3 Beta 2 have been withdrawn temporarily due to an issue that prevented a small number of devices from starting up.” wrote Apple.

iOS 17.3 Beta 2 withdrawal notification from Apple, source – Apple

iOS 17.3:

Last month, Apple released iOS 17.3 beta 1 for the testers and it brought a major addition to the iPhone devices enhancing the overall security and privacy.

The new stolen device protection feature is one that we’re talking about. It can secure your key credentials even if someone steals your iPhone.

The feature is still in beta and may be released with a stable iOS 17.3 update.

Beta program:

Apple beta program lets users experience the upcoming pre-release software. It also allows developers to collect valuable user feedback to improve the software and fix issues.

But beta software is incomplete build, which means it may contain errors or bugs that may not function similarly to a stable iOS or other Apple software release. Therefore, the concurring issue can be seen as one of these beta behavior.

Solution:

iOS 17.3 beta 2 testers who got bricked by this rollout can recover their devices by entering into Recovery Mode and restoring to a previous version of iOS.