Apple is investigating a fault with its new iPad Pro where the device can’t be woken from its sleep state while recharging.
Users of the new tablet –Apple’s week-old competitor to the Microsoft Surface Pro – have taken to Apple forums, Reddit and social media to raise the issue.
The main thread on Apple’s Support Communities notched up 300 comments and 20,000 views in a single day.
All users reported having to perform a hard reset of the device – a forced reboot – to wake the device from its frozen state.
“At night it was down to 40 percent [battery] so I charged it and went to bed. When I woke up it was ‘dead’,” a user, darkfire.shadows, reported.
“It wouldn't wake up. I needed to perform a hard reset to get it to come to life.
“Worked on it for a couple of hours and had to run an errand. Plugged it back in as I was going to need a full charge later that day. Came back to it, same thing. Dead. I needed to perform a hard reset to get it to turn on.
“Used it more, then last night plugged it in and this morning, same thing. I am thinking that there is an issue with this iPad.”
Another user, Chumblybum, reported taking the new device to Apple’s Genius Bar, which performed a full firmware reset – but it did not fix the issue.
“After going to three stores I found one with a spare there were prepared to give me (Sydney CBD store),” the user said.
“Took it home - seemed ok at first but the exact same error occurred rendering the iPad useless.
“Basically it's fine when you use it, but as soon as you walk away and leave it and it goes to sleep. It has a complete crash/failure.”
At least one user reported being told to restore the device from iTunes, however it was unclear how successful this temporary fix was.
Apple finally recognised the problem in a brief support post and recommended – as users had already been doing – a force restart of the device.
However, the company did not appear to have a timeline for a more permanent fix.
“Apple is aware of this issue and is investigating,” it said.
Macrumors noted it was still unclear “if the problem is related to hardware or software. Software is a strong possibility, as iPhone 6s and 6s Plus users started seeing a similar issue with their smartphones randomly powering off and becoming unresponsive last month.”
Rival Microsoft’s Surface and Surface Pro devices are also known to be sometimes sluggish to wake from sleep.
The process can take a minute or more, but generally a force reset isn’t required.
The iPad Pro and Surface Pro devices are being targeted as potential laptop replacements for business and personal users.
The main difference is that the Surface runs a full Windows 10 operating system, while the iPad uses the mobile iOS.
