I set iOS 26 to install overnight, put my iPhone 16 Pro on the MagSafe charger, watched it charge just fine, and went to sleep. When I woke up the iPhone showed the “plug into power” dead battery screen. I took it off MagSafe and put it back on. A half hour later the phone was warm but still wouldn’t power on, just showed the battery screen with a little red in it. I took it off MagSafe and plugged it into my iPad charging brick with USB cable to give it more power, still it did not turn on. I tried holding all the buttons to try to force a restart but didn’t work.
For anyone else encountering this, do this to enter DFU mode and restore it. I had to do it a few times before I got the timing right.
- Plug into your Mac and open Finder (or apparently a PC with Apple Devices or iTunes)
- Press and quickly release volume up
- Press and quickly release volume down
- Press and hold right side button
- When the battery disappears and screen goes black, hold volume down and continue holding side button
- After a couple seconds release the side button and continue holding volume down
- A prompt to allow connecting to the iPhone should appear after a couple seconds, click Allow, and it’ll say the iPhone entered DFU mode - proceed to restore the firmware
