Skip to content

Screen freeze: Apple issuing fix for cold weather bug

  • by

There’s often some new controversy when a new iPhone launches, and though there have been a few isolated reports of issues the iPhone X has mostly been impervious to the kinds of problems that caused “bendgate” and “antennagate” in recent years.

However, there is one unusual quirk causing problems for some users, with multiple reports of devices becoming unresponsive in the cold.

Many people who bought an iPhone X last week have been complaining that the display stops responding for a few seconds after a sudden change of temperature. Several users reported online that stepping out of the house into the cold causes the device to feel broken for a moment before returning to normal.

Apple has been quick to issue a statement to iMore: “We are aware of instances where the iPhone X screen will become temporarily unresponsive to touch after a rapid change to a cold environment. After several seconds the screen will become fully responsive again. This will be addressed in an upcoming software update.”

So the bad news is that this is a real thing: the iPhone X is affected by the weather. The good news is that it can be fixed with a software update, meaning it’s not a hardware issue. Nobody will need to get their displays replaced.

It sounds like only a minority of people are suffering this issue, but it’s still an odd one. Hopefully this doesn’t snowball (pun intended) into “coldgate.” We’d expect a fix in the next few days with an update to iOS 11.