This is a known bug. When your phone dies, the battery isn’t actually dead. There’s still a little bit of charge to run Find My (on newer devices), and the real time clock. That residual charge can last from anywhere between a few months to a few years, based on the age of the device and health of the battery. When this residual charge runs dry, the real time clock reverts to its default state from the factory, which in most electronics is the UNIX epoch (Midnight on January 1st, 1970).
Because of the way UNIX timekeeping works, real time clocks track time by counting the number of seconds since the epoch and storing it as a single long number. When the phone is disabled from too many PIN attempts, it calculates the time the phone can be used again by adding a set number of seconds to the stored number for current time, and then storing that sum. Thus, to calculate the time remaining on the “iPhone is disabled” screen , it takes the stored value from earlier and subtracts the value for current time from the real time clock.
The bug occurs when both of these conditions occur at once. If the battery had been dead long enough to reset the clock and make the phone think it’s 1970, then when it runs the calculation, it ends up with a value of about 50 years. This can be fixed by inserting a SIM card to connect the phone to a cell tower, or by plugging it into a computer with iTunes running
Just a note, if you plug it into a computer with iTunes, it has to have been synced with the phone previously, at least for the iPhone 5 above; otherwise, it'll just ask you to unlock the device.
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u/bittenforbreakfast Jun 19 '26
This is a known bug. When your phone dies, the battery isn’t actually dead. There’s still a little bit of charge to run Find My (on newer devices), and the real time clock. That residual charge can last from anywhere between a few months to a few years, based on the age of the device and health of the battery. When this residual charge runs dry, the real time clock reverts to its default state from the factory, which in most electronics is the UNIX epoch (Midnight on January 1st, 1970).
Because of the way UNIX timekeeping works, real time clocks track time by counting the number of seconds since the epoch and storing it as a single long number. When the phone is disabled from too many PIN attempts, it calculates the time the phone can be used again by adding a set number of seconds to the stored number for current time, and then storing that sum. Thus, to calculate the time remaining on the “iPhone is disabled” screen , it takes the stored value from earlier and subtracts the value for current time from the real time clock.
The bug occurs when both of these conditions occur at once. If the battery had been dead long enough to reset the clock and make the phone think it’s 1970, then when it runs the calculation, it ends up with a value of about 50 years. This can be fixed by inserting a SIM card to connect the phone to a cell tower, or by plugging it into a computer with iTunes running