Yesterday’s afternoon, I upgraded my iPhone 17’s iOS v26.3.1 (a) to v26.4 on my wifi after making a local iTunes back up in my 64-bit W10 Pro. PC. Everything was fine until about 30 minutes ago, I noticed my Wi-Fi calling wasn’t connected even though enabled in iOS’ Settings’ Cellular’s options. I disabled and enabled, but it still didn’t fix it.
So I decided to power off (swipe top down and hold down top right corner to finger swipe right method) and power on my iPhone. I got its Welcome screen again like yesterday’s iOS v26.4 upgrade. And then, it told me to activate my iPhone with VZW and then relogin into my Apple ID account.
What the heck? Did anyone else run into this after upgrading and required rebooting iOS v26.4 and doing a power off and on to reboot iPhone? I tried to reproduce it again, but it didn’t happen again.
Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon. :)
It happened again after tonight’s manual reboot (top right corner screen power button in iOS v26.5’s control center). After rebooting, my iPhone said iOS v26.5 software update complete again like two weeks ago with its iOS v26.5 update and its reboot. It showed its Hello screen and manually connecting to a wifi AP (still remembers the password for my home wifi router). Also, it had to activate and log into my Apple account to unlock my iPhone. My old 12 mini also told me that a new device was just added for FaceTime right after I logged into my Apple account. This was the second time it ever did this since I got this new iPhone 17 from March 2026. I never had this problem happened with my 12 mini, 6+, and 4S before my 17. Is this normal for the newer iPhone models?
Here are a couple screen shots I managed to take, but couldn’t get Hello and wifi screens:
I had an issue several months ago, where after installing a routine iOS update on my iPhone SE 3, I lost WiFi calling. The solution was to call my cell phone service provider (not Verizon) and have them re-enable WiFi calling on my account. Somehow it had been disabled during or directly after the iOS update. Once they re-enabled it on my account, then WiFi calling returned to normal. It was strange.
I noticed my wifi calling can be off or on randomly. It didn’t come on right after those two manual reboots. After I woke up, I saw it on again. Anyways, the bigger issue why my iPhone had to go through Hello, activation, manual Apple account login, etc. even though I already updated my iOS a few weeks ago.
