My iPhone completely reset itself to factory settings for no reason

[Kutt]

My iphone suddenly reset itself to factory settings for no apparent reason, and I lost everything I had on it.

Before I call Apple tech support, is there any advice you can give me?

 

[xxChrisxx]

My iphone suddenly reset itself to factory settings for no apparent reason, and I lost everything I had on it.

Before I call Apple tech support, is there any advice you can give me?

Buy a Samsung Galaxy.

 

[InvalidID]

That sucks. I would be wary of buying an Apple product after an experience like that.

 

[IMP]

Avoid any Apple product, period.

 

[Astronuc]

My iphone suddenly reset itself to factory settings for no apparent reason, and I lost everything I had on it.

Before I call Apple tech support, is there any advice you can give me?

Google "Apple iPhone reset" or something along those lines to see if anyone else has blogged/posted about it.

 

[Kutt]

Evidently some other people have been having this problem as well. Apparently it's a glitch with the software, and a very bad one..

 

[erythrotis]

It just happened to me! I googled to find an answer and found this page. Thanks to all the people who have contributed useless comments.

 

[russ_watters]

It just happened to me! I googled to find an answer and found this page. Thanks to all the people who have contributed useless comments.

Welcome to PF and 2016!

 

[Psinter]

It just happened to me! I googled to find an answer and found this page. Thanks to all the people who have contributed useless comments.

Yes, they are useless comments. Very useless indeed. I'll try not to be useless and point out a few things.

Still, I'm going to call baloney on your comment (for not saying the other word which also starts with B and is an expletive) because I searched and it appears to me that answers on other websites are equally useless. Sending you to read the user manual or similar or just spouting out anecdotes of them having the same problem. So if that is more useful to you (I'm just guessing here), let me advice you on how you could maybe fix it:

Read the user's manual.

Another note (I'm going to use bold to highlight important parts of my answer and explanation to the answer):

On Android there are these applications for rooted devices which tell the user more or less about what every application does. That could help to identify and maybe fix the problem on an iPhone on user level... Unfortunately I searched and there is no equivalent for iPhones, which means that if no ordinary user on the internet has come up with an answer that satisfies you, the only ones who can closely watch applications and OS behavior through logs are Apple itself. Which leads to the answer:

Pay Apple or an Authorized Apple Service Provider for support. An explanation of why:

You have to pay because of "your own security". Doesn't make sense, right? But don't look at me, I didn't come up with that lame excuse. It's similar, although not exact, to something very old called Trusted Computing (but similitude implemented in software according to the OS developers philosophy) and it implies that you have very little control over your phone and that includes what you can do to fix problems. You the user are classified as a threat to your own device by the OS developers (they say you can break it by touching something you should not have touched that's why the "for your own security" excuse) and therefore a lot of privileges over your own device that could help you fix the problem yourself (like the software linked above) are not available to you. The developers of the OS are the ones that decide what is good for you and what is not. Meaning it is a locked technology that on serious problems only they can fix or an extraordinary computer geek who breaks the law and TOS of the device may also be able to help you. But you won't find that kind of people in this forum.

Let me therefore repeat the conclusion:

Your technology is locked, if the problem doesn't happen on user level (for which you also have so little control over to identify it), only Apple, an Authorized Apple Service Provider, or someone who breaks the law can fix it. And you won't find any of those in this forum.

Now, since this is a Science forum, if you want to know in primitive theory what could possibly be the cause of the observed symptoms in hardware; not software, and not for the iPhone, but for generic circuits; there is this thing called State Diagrams in Digital Design which explain in theory how a system or circuit can fall into a state of reset:

https://www.ee.usyd.edu.au/tutorials/digital_tutorial/part3/t-diag.htm

That doesn't explain how it can happen in the iPhone, but if the iPhone has digital circuits, which I believe it has, it can happen, not because of software, but because of hardware. It also doesn't explain how you can fall into a state of a loop or a one way state of no escape (which can be called bricked, but not necessarily), yet you can find that information in a book of Digital Design.

Does knowing all this including the similitude to Trusted Computing solves the problem? No, but it goes to show why Apple or an Authorized Apple Service Provider are your best shot (and probably the only shot) at who probably can help you with your problem and why you will keep finding useless responses everywhere you go. The stuff is complex and locked by design, this isn't a Java Exception problem that can have many answers and open for fixing.