Warning: Turn Off Airplane Mode before Updating your iPhone with the latest Firmware; Tip to Fix the Problem

Victor Agreda over at TUAW has reported a problem that everyone should be careful about before updating their iPhone with the latest firmware update using iTunes.

His warning message:

"Turn off Airplane Mode before updating your iPhone firmware"

It looks like Victor is not the only one who puts his iPhone in Airplane mode before upgrading, one of readers, Mario had also reported an issue few days back while trying to update his iPhone with iPhone firmware 2.2.1 which was released by Apple last Tuesday. He also has the habit of turning on Airplane mode before upgrading but he hit a problem this time.

Mario, one of our readers had commented:

"I'd never jaibroken my iPhone, the reason why is because all the features I've ever need are either part of the base setup or are in the iTunes store. That said I have no problems when it comes to updates of firmware, but after trying to run the update it took roughly 2 hours to do the backup and when the updating process started it gave me an error. It says something like "Could not run update because iPhone drop the connection". I restarted the process again and the same thing happened. Something important to say is that I turn on Airplane Mode always while running updates to make sure nobody will call me in the middle of the process.

Is really funny to see something like that, it seems like Apple will need to release a patch to make it work like it should."

Based on Mario's comments, he always turns on Airplane mode before upgrading but he seems to have hit the issue only this time which is strange.

Victor Agreda over at TUAW wrote about his experience:

I finally updated my iPhone to 2.2.1 today, and after a reboot I got the screen that says it needs to verify or authenticate the SIM card. Unfortunately, that failed because, while I do have a SIM card in there, I do not have AT&T service -- and I had the cell radio turned off. My iPhone is never used as a phone (I don't have T-Mobile in my area, so even unlocking it would be useless). I wound up restoring the iPhone, which took a couple of hours.

However, Victor points out that there is a better solution to fix the problem which was posted in Apple's Discussion board:

"To turn off Airplane Mode on your seemingly "bricked" iPhone, disconnect the USB cable (or undock), then slide the Emergency Call switch to reach the emergency call phone. You'll be prompted to disable Airplane Mode. Tap "Disable". Then press the Home button, reconnect the phone, and watch iTunes recognize/reactivate your iPhone."

I have never put my iPhone in Airplane mode before upgrading so have never faced a problem, but I would agree with Victor, the best thing to do, to avoid running into a problem is to always turn off Airplane Mode before applying the latest firmware update.

The intriguing thing is that the phone wants to access the cell radio during the upgrade process and disabling the cell radio makes this impossible. I am not sure why? I will update the post if I get more details. In case you are aware, then please let us know the reason in the comments.

Do you turn on Airplane mode before upgrading? Have you faced a problem reported by Mario or Victor? If so let us know if this helps or if you used some other method to resolve the issue.

Thanks Mario for reporting the problem, hopefully this information helps!

[Source and Image via TUAW]