iFixit
There’s been a lot of chatter lately—both on iFixit’s forums and on the wider web—about Error 53,
a problem that’s been bricking a whole lot of iPhones recently. In fact, our Error 53 help page
has been viewed nearly 200,000 times—presumably by people who suddenly and unexpectedly found
their previously-working iPhones rendered useless after a software update.
Error 53 seems to affect iPhone 6 or 6 Plus users—and possibly other Touch ID enabled devices
(the jury is still out on the 6s and 6s Plus, which have a different cable design). Sometimes,
the error crops up after an accident that somehow affects the home button or home button cable.
But more often, Error 53 affects users who have done repairs involving the home button/cable,
either on their own or through a third-party repair tech (read: not in an Apple Store). The phone
works perfectly fine after a successful repair, for a while… but as soon as users connect to a
computer and attempt to update the phone’s OS, they get the dreaded Error 53—and an effectively
dead phone.
Today we’re going to walk you through how an iPhone gets error 53, the effect it has, and the only
way we know how to fix it. For now. Stay tuned as we continue to investigate this issue and
hopefully find some other options for the people who are dealing with this potentially disastrous
error.
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