I’m using an iPhone 13. Yesterday, I received an automatic update prompt for iOS 18.x. I believe I was previously on iOS 17, although I did not pay close attention to the exact version. Since the update was taking a while, I left the phone connected to a charger and stepped away for a bit.
When I came back, the phone was stuck on the black restore screen showing the cable and computer icon. I have tried force restarting it several times, but it keeps returning to that screen. I then connected it to iTunes (version 12.13.7.1 on Windows 10) and used the "Update" option. Unfortunately, the update fails after about 10 to 15 minutes. After failed "Update", currently iPhone is simply displaying the Apple logo with a progress bar which is stuck as shown in the screenshot below:
On top of that, iTunes keeps filling up my disk with temporary files located at C:\ProgramData\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Temporary Files 1 ... 8, which I had to manually delete to free up space.
Is there any way to fix this and restore the phone without losing my data?
The update was triggered automatically, and I did not make any manual changes. It seems like a bug with iOS, and now I am stuck without a working phone.
I also noticed that the name of the .ipsw file is not labeled as iPhone 13. Instead, it is named iPhone14,5_18.5_22F76_Restore.ipsw, which I found a bit confusing.