The iPhone 13 and its siblings are excellent phones – when they work, but a growing number of users seem to be encountering a concerning problem with the range, namely that the screen will sometimes turn pink.
As 9to5Mac notes, this issue was first reported back in October, with an iPhone 13 Pro user posting on an Apple Discussions forum thread that their two-day-old phone was unusable as its screen would keep turning pink for a few seconds before reloading.
Apple replaced that device, but since then numerous similar reports have rolled in across the web, and not every user has been fortunate enough to get a free replacement phone.
The specifics do vary though. In some cases the whole screen goes pink, while in others the status bar icons remain white. In some cases the issue happens repeatedly or continuously, in others it’s happened once of twice and then the user’s phone has so far seemed fine.
However, the issue seems to be limited to the iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max, and iPhone 13 mini, with older Apple phones unaffected.
It’s not clear how widespread this problem actually is, but MyDrivers presents a possible solution, apparently sourced from Apple’s customer service.
According to Apple customer service, this is a software problem rather than a hardware problem, which would explain why in some cases the status bar icons don’t change color (since it’s not the display panel itself failing). If it is a software issue, then that means Apple can potentially also push out a bug fix for it.
For now though, the company advises backing up your data and upgrading to the latest version of iOS.
From the machine translated comment on MyDrivers it’s not totally clear from that whether Apple means the latest released version (iOS 15.2), or the beta version (iOS 15.3). But we’d recommend starting with iOS 15.2 if you don’t already have that, and only then considering iOS 15.3 if the problem continues, since being beta software it might in itself be unstable.
For what it’s worth there’s currently no official mention of this bug fix in either software version, but then so far there aren’t any release notes for iOS 15.3, despite the software presumably including some new features or bug fixes.
Apple support also recommends making sure all the apps on your phone are up to date, in case there’s some incompatibility between an app version and your iOS version.
Opinion: Apple needs to provide more clarity, and a proper fix
While the advice above may well work for some people, it’s not clear whether this bug has actually been fixed in the latest iOS release or if Apple’s just hoping that will resolve the problem.
So it would be good if Apple could provide more clarity on that – and some actual release notes for iOS 15.3 would be nice on that front.
Hopefully now that this issue is getting media attention Apple will be more forthcoming, and take it more seriously, but that remains to be seen.
