Apple’s newest devices—namely Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and the iPhone 18 Pro family—are seeing early issues involving system crashes, restarts, and kernel panics tied to the Neural Engine and Face ID.
WatchOS Devices: Neural Engine Timeouts
Just days after launch, owners of the Apple Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4 experienced unexpected restarts. These incidents, many of which began roughly September 18, involved sudden boots showing the Apple logo, often followed by a return to the regular watchOS interface. Sometimes, the watch rebooted in the middle of using voice assistant commands, editing watch faces, opening Maps or the App Store, making calls, tracking workouts—other times while doing nothing at all.
Crash logs point to the Apple Neural Engine (ANE) timing out. One log revealed a command waited 2,020 milliseconds—just over the 2,000-ms threshold—before causing a system panic. But while the logs confirm timeout events, they don’t yet clarify what’s triggering them—a software bug, firmware issue, or some hardware glitch could be the cause.
Users are reporting these boot loops particularly on watchOS 27, including during launch-day setup. The software version seems relevant: an update pushed around the time of release has resolved problems for some, though others still see crashes even after installing the patch.
iPhone 18 Pro: Face ID Panic Reports
Similar reports are starting to surface for the iPhone 18 Pro lineup. A number of owners have experienced panics related to Face ID, Wallet, and system crashes. In one case, a user saw four crashes in a single day; three appeared tied to Face ID, another triggered when opening Wallet.
Some fixes were temporary. Resetting Face ID stopped crashes for a time for one user, but it returned with the next morning’s use of Wallet. Others saw panics persist even after doing a full software restore.
What’s Next and What You Can Do
Apple has not publicly acknowledged these issues. Because the devices are so new, unexpected problems are emerging as more users begin using them at scale. The device-Watch issues seem more consistently logged than the iPhone 18 Pro cases, though that could be because of volume differences so far.
If you’re facing repeated restarts or kernel panics, keeping your device’s software fully updated is the first defense. Also reach out to Apple Support; diagnostics and service may be necessary in some cases. Given the clustering of reports, a software update fixing both the Watch and iPhone issues seems likely in the near future.
What this moment highlights is the frailty even of Apple’s most advanced components—especially as the Neural Engine becomes more integral to daily device functions like Face ID, voice assistants, and core system tasks. For users, the risks lie in unexpected downtime, potential data corruption, or even out-of-box regrets. For Apple, this is an early test of how well its new hardware/software combinations scale under real-world pressure. We’ll be watching closely for the update that restores confidence—and how Apple’s quality assurance adapts ahead of its next device cycle.
