I have been having terrible problems in uploading my iPad Mini 2 of late. The upgrade to 7.1 and 7.1.1 have both left my iPad in "recovery mode" – bricked until connected to iTunes where it forces me to reset all my settings and lose all my data.
I had assumed that this was a one off but as it's now happened two upgrades running I'd love to know what's happening in order to fix it for next time – I'm left scared to update!
The upgrade had been downloaded over wifi automatically and the iPad had full charge at the start. The verifying bubble was then displayed, before the iPad restarted and showed only the connect to iTunes logo.
This is still the case with versions up to 9.3.1 – every iOS update that is applied over the air (downloaded straight to my device) bricks it whilst tethered updates do not. Does anyone have an idea what is going on?
The situation has progressively got worse for me in that now even tethered updates brick the iPad briefly. I also tried to do a factory reset without upgrading and had the same problem! The iTunes updates just keep failing with unknown errors and eventually the device runs out of charge, at which point turning it on again brings the device out of it's bricked state. I'm guessing at this point this is likely to be a hardware error?
Best Answer
Firmware umbrella may be able to kick the device out of recovery mode after the upgrade:
http://blog.firmwareumbrella.com/
Alternately, try to do the upgrade through iTunes as opposed to OTA.