Manually changing the date to May 1970 or earlier on your your iOS device can prevent it from turning on after a restart, Apple has confirmed, promising to offer a fix soon. Last week, it was discovered that setting your iOS device system date and time back to January 1st 1970 would crash your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch effectively bricking it. Setting the date back this far would prevent the iPhone or other iOS device from booting up until the battery died.

Apple has officially acknowledged the problem on its Apple Support website. The company says it will release an upcoming software update to prevent this issue from affecting iOS devices in the future.

Those who have experienced this issue after having tried out the "trick", may contact Apple Support for assistance.