Bizarre date bug breaking Apple iPhones and iPads

A new bug which has been rendering iPhone and iPad devices useless has been discovered online.

By The Newsroom

Published 15th Feb 2016, 10:23 BST

Updated 15th Feb 2016, 11:30 BST

Changing the date of your Apple device to January 1, 1970 - or being tricked into doing it - will permanently break your phone or tablet forever.

The bug within Apple’s date and time settings in iOS causes such an issue that the devices cannot be recovered.

The date bug affects iPhones, iPads and iPod touches with 64-bit processors, meaning an iPhone 5S or newer, an iPad Air, iPad Mini 2 or any iPod released in 2015 or newer.

The devices must also be running iOS 8 or iOS9.

Apple