Apple iPhones, iPads BRICKED by iOS 9's 'slide-to-upgrade' bug

Apple has published a workaround after some iPhone and iPad users were left stranded in the middle of the iOS 9 update process.

The Cupertino giant has acknowledged multiple complaints that devices were unable to progress past the "Slide to Upgrade" screen when moving to the latest version of iOS. Apple's remedy: wipe your device and hope you made a backup.

Instructions posted to the Apple support site advised users to perform a factory reset on the frozen iThing and then restore from a previous backup.

This comes after users had been hitting Apple's support boards and other forums reporting the same problem; when installing iOS 9, their iPhones and iPads kept freezing up at the Slide to Upgrade screen.

Reg reader Carlton told us today: "I have just updated my iPad to iOS 9 and found to my horror that once it has 'successfully' installed and then gone through the initial setup phase, I cannot progress past the second request to 'slide to upgrade' page.

"The setup order is 'passcode' – 'slide to upgrade' – ‘select Wi-Fi’ – 'slide to upgrade' at which point no further actions are possible."

He was eventually able to upgrade his device to the new iOS using Apple's suggested clean install procedure, though he said it took multiple attempts to accomplish.

Other fans reported similar problems when they tried to get the latest and greatest version of iOS on their iPads, iPhones and iPod Touch players.

While the issue appeared to be largely relegated to devices running iOS 7 skipping over to iOS 9, Apple would not confirm if that was in fact the case. No word yet on when a fix for the bug will be released.

Apple already has its hands full patching flaws with its firmware updates.

Earlier this week, before the iOS 9 upgrade blunder occurred, Cook and his merry crew had to call off the scheduled release of the WatchOS 2 update in order to deal with some last-minute bugs in the Apple Watch firmware. ®