iOS 8.1 Release Date Reportedly Set for This Month

Apple’s first major update to iOS 8 will reportedly launch later this month, and it will include Apple Pay, marking the launch of the company’s digital wallet platform as well.

According to Bank Innovation, iOS 8.1 and Apple Pay will launch on October 20, which may also be around the time that Apple launches new iPads, as well as officially releases OS X Yosemite to the masses.

The first beta for iOS 8.1 released to developers earlier this week and it came with hints that it would include Apple Pay, as well as hidden code that suggested the new iPads would be getting Touch ID. This makes us wonder if the release of iOS 8.1 will have something to do with the release of new iPads, in which case we’ll probably see the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 launch around that time.

iOS 8.1 will most likely be a saving grace for iPhone 6 and iOS 8 users alike, as the past two minor updates to iOS 8 haven’t been so friendly for many iPhone users.

Just a week after Apple released iOS 8 to the public, the company outed a minor update in the form of iOS 8.0.1in order to fix a handful of bugs and performance issues. However, the update only seems to have made the issues worse, and Apple has now pulled the update.

iOS 8.0.1 came with a handful of bug fixes and improvements including fixes for the keyboards, Photo Library, unexpected cellular data usage when receiving SMS or MMS messages, and much more. Overall, the update just seems to fix a few problems that have plagued users who installed the update on launch day.

However, the minor update has now created a major problem, with many users reporting that their iPhone 6 can no longer connect to cellular data and the Touch ID fingerprint sensor has quit working. We confirmed this ourselves installing iOS 8.0.1 on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on AT&T and Verizon, and we no longer have cell service on either device and Touch ID will not work either.

However, the company quickly released iOS 8.0.2, which fixed many of the sudden problems that iOS 8.0.1 introduced, but it seems that some users were still having some issues with their iPhones.

Some users reported that even after updating to iOS 8.0.2, the Springboard crashes and restarts constantly. Furthermore, other users are still reporting that they can’t get any cell service after updating to iOS 8.0.2.

Over on our end, a member of the GottaBeMobile team says that he’s had issues as well on his iPhone 6 Plus, where the screen won’t respond suddenly at random times. The only solution that has been found so far for this is restoring the iPhone 6 in DFU mode, but even then the screen won’t respond.

Shortly after releasing iOS 8.0.1 to the public, Apple pulled the update because many users were having major problems with it. While they could downgrade back to iOS 8.0.0, Apple went ahead and just pulled the plug on the update at the time until iOS 8.0.2 released.

If you installed iOS 8.0.1 or iOS 8.0.2, you can still downgrade back to the original iOS 8. All you have to do is download the iOS 8 install file and restore your iPhone by selecting that install file from iTunes (make sure you turn off Find My iPhone before you begin this process).

Apple usually doesn’t let you downgrade to previous versions of iOS after you’ve already updated, but in this case, the company is still signing iOS 8.0, so it’s still open to download and install if you need to go back to it for this reason.