Over the years, Apple has found ways for us to avoid plugging the iPhone into a Mac—remember when all iPhone updates required a connection to iTunes? Now, with the iPhone 16, Apple will let you restore an iPhone that’s in Recovery Mode wirelessly, just by placing it near another iPhone or iPad. That’s very handy.
Of course, we don’t have to restore iPhones every day, thank goodness, but when the need arises, then the simplest and fastest method will be the most welcome.
Until now, there was no way for consumers to restore an iPhone wirelessly. You can restore an Apple Watch or Apple TV firmware from an iPhone, and it looks like the iPhone will now be able to do something similar, according to 9to5Mac. To restore an iPhone in this wireless method would be the first time Apple had done this. The publication was able to simulate the new system to see how it works.
It said, “Essentially, when the iPhone 16 enters Recovery Mode for some reason, users can simply place it next to another iPhone or iPad to start the firmware recovery. The other device will download a new iOS firmware and transfer it to the bricked device. This means that a Mac or PC will no longer be needed to fix firmware issues on iOS devices.”
This is a neat way to do it, though it looks like it’s restricted to iPhone 16 series phones, for now at least. That’s because, the report goes on, “The new phones are shipped with a special recovery partition that can manage the entire process regardless of whether the main iOS partition is booted. It’s unclear whether Apple plans to add this system to previous iPhone models in the future or whether this actually requires new hardware.”
Even if it’s only the latest model that this works for, it’s a big benefit and much easier than connecting to a PC or, worse, taking the iPhone to an Apple Store to be fixed.
It seems it’s something Apple has been working on for four years, but it’s only now coming to fruition.
