Recovering the iPhone 3G from the White Apple Logo of Death

The other night I was playing with my iPhone
3G and decided to see if there were any new [color:d896=blue ! important][color:d896=blue ! important]applications
worth downloading from the App
Store.
I launched the App Store and was immediately notified that there were
18 updates waiting for my installed [color:d896=blue ! important][color:d896=blue ! important]applications. I’ve learned my lesson
before about updating too many at a time–it takes too long and also
crashes sometimes–so I chose to just update the Tetris one. The process
was straight forward and did its usual asking me for my password, etc.
and then it started the download. After the download was complete it
started installing the Tetris application. After about two minutes I
glanced over to see if it was complete and noticed that it was still in
the installing mode. Before I could do anything the iPhone rebooted and
then showed me the white Apple logo.

After about five minutes of waiting for it to go beyond the Apple
logo, I started to get a bit concerned. I had encountered this in the
past and normally a reboot or two and worst case connecting it to my Mac
brings the iPhone back to life. So, I did a couple of reboots and it
still hung on the white Apple. I then hooked it to my Mac and it
launched iTunes and then hung iTunes–uh oh.
I got WALD
Some Googling later and I came to find out that there’s a name for the
behavior that my iPhone 3G was exhibiting: “WALD”, or White Apple Logo
of Death.
Thankfully, a few searches on Google led me to this
page which basically told me to put the iPhone into DFU
(Device [color:d896=blue ! important][color:d896=blue ! important]Firmware [color:d896=blue ! important]Update) mode and perform a
Restore. As for putting the iPhone in DFU mode, with the iPhone off,
connect it to your [color:d896=blue ! important][color:d896=blue ! important]computer and hold down the power and home
buttons at the same time. When the Apple logo appears, release the power
button but continue holding the home button down.
Restored … almost
I did as instructed and then clicked Restore when my iPhone was
recognized by iTunes. Then about 10 minutes later the iPhone finally
restored and rebooted.

Re-activate?
I forgot that the new iPhone requires a SIM to be installed to activate
it. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have the SIM installed so the iPhone
went into Emergency Mode. I figured I still had nothing to lose so I
unplugged the iPhone from my Mac, powered it down, and then popped the
SIM in. Then I hooked the iPhone back up to the Mac and iTunes activated
it and then prompted me to set it up as a new iPhone or restore from a
previous backup. I had made a backup at 3pm the day before so I chose
the restore option.
Might as well go to sleep
Let’s recap for a minute. The iPhone was now fully functional again,
after performing a factory Restore, but it didn’t have any of my
information on it. So far the process had taken about 10 minutes. Next
up, though, was the process of restoring from a backup. If you haven’t
done this before, since Apple released Apps on the App Store, restoring
and backing up the iPhone takes FOREVER. In my case, I chose the restore
option and then watched as iTunes said that it was “Restoring iPhone
from backup”.
This process required a lot of patience since iTunes says it’s
restoring but the iPhone doesn’t, then the iPhone finally says “restore
in progress” and iTunes has a very long progress meter that INCHES
along.
As you can see from the [color:d896=blue ! important][color:d896=blue ! important]screenshots below, this restore from backup
took a VERY LONG time.

As of 9:37pm

11:35pm–restore finished a minute later
About 2.5 hours in and my iPhone was finally restored. I haven’t had
the guts to try to install the Tetris update again but for now the
iPhone 3G is fully functional.
Another thing this iPhone experience has taught me is to really
re-think my iPhone usage. I find that the majority of what I do is data
and Apps, so an iPod Touch, without a monthly plan, is probably more
than enough.
While my iPhone 3G was down for the count I used the BlackJack
II with Windows Mobile 6.1. I find myself appreciating the phone
experience on the BlackJack II so much more that I still haven’t
switched back to the iPhone 3G. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
Read more: http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/recovering-the-iphone-3g-from-the-white-apple-logo-of-death-2008094/#ixzz0mn1IMu5f


orig link; http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/recovering-the-iphone-3g-from-the-white-apple-logo-of-death-2008094/