Upgrade you iOS devices to 9.3 before it's too late
I read articles few months ago stating DON'T set your iPhone to 1 January 1970 or you'll break it on various blogs. Being a PHP Developer I were aware and still amuze with the limitation of TIMESTAMP MySQL datatype being limited to address those date ranging from 1970 AD to 2038. When I first came with those articles of breaking iPhone/iOS setting date to 1970 I entered iOS Settings>General>Date & Time and turned Set Automatically Off that gives us date time setting with rotational values.
At that day I felt lazy to rotate that cycle to 1970 and stopped testing the bug. But later on yesterday Mar 24th 2016, when I were on a metting with my officemate I had few minutes of leisure so randomly playing with my iPhone I entered the datetime settings and started to rotate the cycle for as much as it rotates. I thought going back to the date day by day will take a long but eventually I got the date Set to Jan 1 '70 and time 05:30. Beyond which I couldn't decrease it.
Being well aware of possible consequences I were not afraid to enjoy it. As I approached The Singularity I noticed my Time Bar was gone and something different was happening. I didn't attempted to revert the date back to current or turn the Set Automatically button On (I don't know why) but as a I had read before I turned the Phone power Off to open the Pandora Box.
After the phone shut down successfully I attempted to Power On the Phone. I saw Apple is appearing on the screen but not proceeding. I were optimisitic it'll proceed normally before I felt iPhone is heating on the course of 2/3 minutes I waited. Then I finally decided to try it later. Now the friend I were meeting is free to discuss with me about official works. When I returned to my room I tried to switch the phone On but it's not going as expected.
I connected the iPhone to iTunes but the it's not even showing the S/N of Phone and asks to Update software or Restore. I started downloding the ipsw file of 1.8GB to restore my phone. It was already 5PM so I left the download as it's and escaped for home with my SIM card Swapped to Colors small bar Phone that I carry regulary. Later on in the night I shared it with my Wifey and I attempted Opening the screw of iPhone to remove the Battery as suggested by online blog but she stopped me and googled with a solution that Apple have released iOS 9.3 just 2 days ago fixing that bug. So I started downloading the ipsw file from https://ipsw.me/9.3 and followed the article If you changed the date to May 1970 or earlier and can’t restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. It took nearly 6 hours for me to download the 1.8GB ipsw file and thus I spent this night without sleeping but suceeded Upgrading my Phone to that bug free version where I can freely set the date to 1970 back and forth :D.
I am writing this article right after my iPhone completed upgrading, it took one and half hour to complete this article and it's now 6AM.
Good Morning...
PS:
As stated on some blogs my phone is not unhibernated/solved after 5 or more hours neither changing the SIM Card solved this.
Photo Courtesy:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3396264/posts?page=38
http://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/973599