iPhone 16 Pro not turning on

Allmus2025 wrote:

iPhone 16 pro max charged overnight while turned off. Used a different but compatible lead and wouldn’t turn on. Volume up and down quick tap and held power button sorted it. Sorted but disappointing and complex for someone who doesn’t look on YouTube for an answer. A phone of this level and pricing should be more full proof I would have thought.

Why are you turning it off to charge it in the first place? It is not necessary, nor even recommended the phone be powered off to charge. In fact, doing so, stops necessary background processes and prevents the normal backup of data to iCloud.

I was having the same issue here with my brand new iPhone 16 Pro. My phone died this morning, I have had it on charge for over four hours and tried all the usual botton combos to try to get it back on. This is completely unacceptable for a brand new $1000 phone. I could not be more disappointed in Apple.

**If you are having this issue too- try this botton combo**

quick press one at a time: power, volume up, volume down. then hold power until apple icon comes on. This was the only thing that got my phone back on. Hope this helps someone!! Good luck!!

All these answers of press this and that will not work. Please see the gurus coupled with AI answer. It worked for me and all I did was click on itunes.

"If your iPhone 16 isn't working, the "trick" of clicking on iTunes is essentially putting your phone into recovery mode by connecting it to your computer with iTunes open, which allows you to potentially restore your phone's software and potentially fix issues that are preventing it from functioning normally; this usually happens when you see a "Connect to iTunes" screen on your phone after attempting to restart it, prompting you to connect it to a computer with iTunes to troubleshoot further." 

Heardy123 wrote:

Hi

Brand new iPhone 16 pro turned off and on Magna charge.woke up this morning would not start!

tried fast volume up/down many times no joy.

Gave it one more go keeping my finger on the start button for much much longer (1 min) voila it came on!

Apple don’t want you turning your iPhone off at night!!!! WHY????

Loyal apple customer ANGRY!!!!!

WHY are you turning the phone off at night to charge it? It's not only not necessary, it's counterproductive. The phone does updates at night while charging. The phone backs up at night while charging. It's not recommended to power the phone off at night. You cannot overcharge an iPhone.

After mine died, charged it for a few hours with a magsafe charger. Waited until the charger showed the phone fully charged. Removed phone from its cover and performed the vol up/vol down/power reset several times. The reset maneuver is easier to do with the bare-bones phone. On the 4th or 5th reset attempt I held the power down for about 3-4 minutes and thankfully it finally turned on. After it booted, I updated to 18.2.1.

Thanks for your suggestion.

Whether you are an Apple customer or not, of course you can turn your phone off when you want to. Of course, if you do you can lose text messages and other notifications sent while it is off, you lose automatic nightly backups, which is OK if you manually back up frequently or don’t care of you lose your content if the phone is damaged, stolen, or just has a hardware failure. And you also lose some of the sophisticated charging features that can extend the life of your battery.

Apple’s recommended best practice is to charge overnight, every night, with Optimized Charging and automatic backups turned on. But you are certainly free to ignore recommendations from the people that designed, built and programmed your pocket-sized computer that can also make phone calls.

Why do you think it’s a bug, rather than a hardware problem with YOUR iPhone? I have no problem turning mine on if I turn it off, and apparently millions of other users don’t have a problem either, or they would be posting here. Have you had Apple Support evaluate your phone?

The one day I am supposed to go the airport with my son, my new Apple iPhone 16 Pro won't turn on after charging at night. Now I have no access to check in, or my boarding pass. This is inexcusable Apple. I have attempted to hard reset, but without success.

I have a IPhone 16 Pro purchased three months ago and yesterday my phone shut off on it’s own and I was not able to restart it using the recommended push the up volume, down volume and hold the start button. I tried for over an hour. I tried plugging it in to a charger and it still would not come back on.

This morning I tried the recommended steps and it finally came back on. This only happened after I did the newest update.

I also have been using an IPhone for the past 15 years and have never had this problem before.

Same issue here. Mom’s new iPhone 16 Pro Max won’t turn on after being left overnight to update to latest iOS 18.3.1 version, while plugged-in to charge. Followed the button steps outlined by Apple Support to no avail. We don’t have a computer (only iPad) and don’t have the time to run immediately to an Apple Store. This is really something that Apple needs to address with an urgent fix, as it’s leaving customers without a working phone.

Update: I finally visited T-Mobile, and the salesperson there followed the same steps suggested in this thread. They clicked the up volume button, then the down volume button (in quick succession), and finally held down the button on the other side for approximately 30 seconds. As a result, the phone started up. However, this shouldn’t have happened in the first place. We should have had the phone available and turned it on, especially considering that we were expecting an important call.

Perscorilo2002 wrote:

We should have had the phone available and turned it on, especially considering that we were expecting an important call.

Technology made by imperfect humans is not perfect. Sometimes, glitches happen. However, now you know how to do a forced restart which means you can probably resolve a lot of issues yourself and fairly quickly.

This just happened to me too. I got the iPhone 16 Pro Max about 2 months ago. First time this has ever happened to an iPhone I own. Really scary. Thought the phone had died. It took about 10 attempts at force restart for the apple to show on the screen. Hopefully it's a software issue and they solve it on the next iOS update.

Sorry for not getting things right on my first attempt 100% of the time. While it’s true any computer/smartphone can crash at any given time, it’s very suspicious that it has happened to at least 1,400 people with the iPhone 16. I’m glad I got my phone back to life and really hope it doesn’t happen again. But if it does, it will surely only take me 9 attempts next time

No, I consider it a problem when it happens to several devices instead of just a handful of people, even if it’s just a tiny percentage of the total (as far as we know). It is strange to me that so many people on this thread have had many iPhones and never had it happen before, just with the 16. Why is it so difficult to accept that there might be a problem with this generation of iPhone? People here get so defensive and attack the buyer (who has paid hundreds to over a thousand dollars for this device and is justifiably worried when something like this happens for the first time and on top of that sees that so many other people are having the same issue with the same model). And just as we cannot be sure whether it has happened to the 1,400 people that have hit the ‘me too’ button, we do not know how many people out there have had this problem and haven’t shared it here.

I guess people are just looking for whatever reason to fight and belittle others on the internet, instead of focusing on how to fix problems and improve future products for consumers. Have a great day