Around Noon Central yesterday, Apple released iOS 8.0.1, a minor update to iOS 8 that was supposed to fix some bugs. Unfortunately, if you installed the update over-the-air on an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, the update also killed cellular service and Touch ID (the fingerprint sensor) on your iPhone. Whoops.
Apple pulled down iOS 8.0.1 because of this bug, but if you updated your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus yesterday while the update was available (as I did), then I suspect that your iPhone stopped working as a phone. What do you do? Apple’s website says that there are two solutions.
First, for the truly patient, you can wait for iOS 8.0.2 to come out, which Apple says will be in the next few days. [UPDATE 9/25: You didn’t have to be that patient; iOS 8.0.2 came out at 7pm Central on Sept. 25.]
Second, you can connect your iPhone to a computer running iTunes and reinstall iOS 8.0. Apple’s complete instructions for doing so are here. I followed those instructions last night and it worked just fine, didn’t take very long (under 10 minutes), and didn’t cause me to lose any data on my iPhone.
Here is what iOS 8.0.1 was supposed to do, which I imagine is what iOS 8.0.2 will also do when it comes out in a few days:
