According to RBC, technobloggers speculated that the glitch could be related to Apple’s attempt to remove Telega from its devices.
After updating iPhones with the Telega app installed, the devices stopped working, writes “Durov’s Code” portal. Users reported the same problem en masse: at night the smartphone tried to update, but the process was interrupted, and then the device completely locked.
Several employees of service centers confirmed to “Durov’s Code” that the problem smartphones had the Telega application installed.
Later, to test the theory, technoblogger Sergey Romantsev simultaneously updated three different iPhones to the latest version of iOS 26.4.1, one of which had the Telega app installed. The iPhone with this app never started, while the others had no problems.
Experimental results
The iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone 16 Pro Max participated in the experiment. Romantsev emphasized that all three devices had never been repaired, and there were no complaints about them. Telega was installed on the latter. The blogger emphasized that there was enough free memory on the device – 900 gigabytes, and added that all three iPhones were regularly updated and constantly used.
“This is the only iPhone that hung on this update. It froze completely, we resuscitated it only with a restore and a backup that was created before. And I am left with no other conclusion but to say that the Telega app is to blame,” he said.
“Malwarebytes iPhone
The tech blogger speculated that the malfunction is related to Apple’s desire to remove the app from the iPhone.
“It was flagged as malware, when you update your device it would have come back. But since Apple can’t pull it up from the App Store, I conclude that this is the method they resorted to to force you to do a restore,” the blogger said and advised to “not touch this update at all.”
RBC notes that “Durov’s Code” has already reported that the Telegram-based Telega app could start intercepting the messenger’s traffic starting March 18. After that, Telegram introduced labeling for user accounts that use third-party apps or “mirrors.” Last week, Telega was removed from the App Store apps.
