iOS 5 Beta 2 has bricked my iPhone – Updated

Updated 28/6/2011 – See below for a solution to avoid bricking in the first place

And I’ve just bricked my pants, thankfully I think as I type (gives me something to do as I wait the process out), there is a solution.

I was already running iOS 5 on a non jailbroken iPhone 4, legit route (am a registered developer so downloaded and updated via xcode etc), all good, got to the ‘Waiting for Iphone’ message, and stayed there.  So I waited, and waited, but nothing.

Screen was black, so went to power on, and nothing, holding down power and home button, nothing, not a glimmer, one dead iphone.  Bricked.

On a whim I killed Xcode and fired up iTunes, and a glimmer of hope, a dialogue box appears, we have detected in restore mode, still nothing on the screen, no connect to itunes diagrams, but still, who am I to argue, if you can see my iphone I’ll work with it.

Clicking through the process it offered me iOS 4.3 as the last ‘released’ version, so I cancelled out, Alt+Clicked the Restore button and browsed to the v5 beta 2 .ipsw file, and waited, and am still waiting, but it’s restoring and as I type there’s an Apple logo and a progress bar on the screen so something’s alive.

Looking about I did find this link (Apple Dev forums so needs a Dev logon I think) Iphone 3gs dead after IOS 5 beta2 update which pretty much echoes my process, and I can verify the success now as iTunes is offering to restore from backup, and the phone is showing the new activation screen.

Phew, I think, and thanks Apple, that was seamless.

Caveat: Apple warn you not to install Developer releases on your primary / sole device, but I know best, blah, blah, yes, all my fault if it goes wrong I know

Update:  Have installed iOS 5 Beta 2 on 3 Devices now, first two I did normally via Xcode and both showed bricked symptomks of an entirely black screen and lifeless after Xcode finished restoring.  Thankfully both came back to life by re-restoring through iTunes as per above.

The third I’ve learnt from (only 2 failures to learn, I’m getting there!), plugged device into Xcode and clicked the ‘Use for Development’ link in Organiser (it was a new device and UUID so necessary) and let it install the debug symbols etc.  And then quit out, into iTunes and immediately Alt+Clicked Restore, browsed to the firmware and off we go, basically bypassing the wasted and aborted Xcode restore process.  All good, and straight into the new Activation process after a reboot.