iPhone 12 Pro randomly came back to life after Apple said the logic board was failing.
I have an iPhone 12 Pro that I bought in April 2021. I’ve taken pretty good care of it. No water damage, no major drops, and it’s always had a case and screen protector. The only repair it’s ever needed was a battery replacement about two years ago. I’m a cheat guy who like Apple products, aka a walking contradiction. (My last phone was the iPhone 6)
About 2 months ago, my eSIM suddenly stopped working. I took it to the Apple Store, and the technician noticed I had both an eSIM and a physical SIM installed. He thought the phone was trying to read the physical SIM instead of the eSIM, so he removed the physical SIM and reset my network settings. Everything worked perfectly again for about two months.
Then the eSIM failed again.
Around the same time (about a week earlier), my TrueDepth camera stopped working, so Face ID completely quit.
I took it back to Apple, and they ran their diagnostic (the MRI scan using the QR code). The eSIM test showed a red error, and the technician told me the internal logic board was likely starting to fail.
Here’s where it gets weird.
About an hour after leaving the Apple Store, my screen suddenly went completely black. The phone was still on. I could hear sounds, Siri still responded, music would play, and I could feel vibration/haptic feedback, but the display was completely dead.
And here’s probably my mistake. I went back to the Apple Store, where the guy told me that this was called cascading when one component of the logic board fails it forces other components to fail in succession. Long story short I bought a new iPhone. (17e)
I figured the phone was done for, However I used VoiceOver and Accessibility features to blindly navigate the phone long enough to back everything up to my Mac.
Then later that same night… the screen randomly came back on.
Since then (about a week now), everything has worked perfectly again—including the eSIM. The only thing that still doesn’t work is the TrueDepth camera/Face ID.
Now I already bought an iPhone 17e for $634, but I haven’t opened it. Now I’m debating whether I should even switch because my 12 Pro is suddenly acting completely normal again.
Has anyone experienced something like this?
Does this sound like a logic board failure that’s temporarily behaving?
Is there any chance this phone could keep going for another year?
Or am I basically living on borrowed time before it dies again in a few days or weeks?
I’m curious if anyone has seen an iPhone recover like this after showing multiple hardware-related symptoms.