Egads, my 2G iPhone won’t turn on!

Well to be more accurate, it will turn on, but it will only show the Apple logo, and then turns off after 5-10 seconds.

I have no idea what caused this – I connected it to the charger one night, came back the next morning, and it had the problem. I Googled around for a solution, and it seems that most people that run into this problem have tried hacking or unlocking their phone.  My phone isn’t jailbroken, hacked, or anything. Weird.

I connected my phone to my PC, fired up iTunes and tried to do a restore.  No dice – after iTunes sits there thinking & trying for 15 minutes, it comes back with “The iPhone could not be restored.  An unknown error occurred (1611).”

This 1611 error is particularly scary because it (apparently) means “Hardware failure.”  Which can’t be good.

Fortunately, I was eventually able to fix the problem by starting the phone in what’s called “DFU mode,” and then proceeding with the restore through iTunes.

What is DFU mode, you ask?  I don’t know what DFU stands for (maybe “direct” something or other?), but it’s a way of turning on your phone so that it doesn’t load the iPhone’s operating system.  After putting my phone into DFU mode, I was able to successfully restore the phone.

Here’s how to put your iPhone into DFU mode:

  • Connect the iPhone to your computer and start iTunes
  • Hold down BOTH the power button (on the top of the phone) and home button together for exactly 10 seconds.
  • After exactly 10 seconds passes, release the power button but continue continue to hold down the Home button.
  • iTunes should then show a message saying that an iPhone in recover mode has been detected.  You can now release the home button. 

It’s worth pointing out that your phone’s screen will still be black if it’s in DFU mode – nothing should be showing on the iPhone screen.  If your iPhone’s screen is showing anything at all, you are not in DFU mode.  Start over & try again.

I found a very nice video at iClarified showing someone putting their phone into DFU mode. I recommend watching the video and playing along at home – it will help you get the timing down.

Once your iPhone is in this super-secret DFU mode, do an OS restore from within iTunes. It should then restore your phone to the latest version of iPhone OS compatible with your phone.  You can then sync w/ the last backup you made of your phone.  (Which, in my case, was about 6 months old, but hey, it’s better than nothing, right?)