Apple’s Neural Engine is now linked to reboot complaints on two brand-new devices in the same week. Reports of iPhone 18 Pro units randomly restarting surfaced first. Now some new Apple Watch Ultra 4 and Apple Watch Series 12 owners say their watches are doing the same thing, with a strikingly similar diagnostic pattern.
What Owners Are Seeing
Since the two watches launched last Friday, owners have been posting in the MacRumors forums about devices that suddenly flash the Apple logo and restart mid-use. It’s happened during workout recording, phone calls, and everyday tasks like checking a watch face or opening Maps. A few owners say it has even happened while the watch was just sitting idle on the wrist.
At least four owners have shared what MacRumors describes as “panic-full” diagnostic logs. They all point to the same cause. The Apple Neural Engine hangs for roughly two seconds, then a firmware watchdog forces a restart before the chip can recover on its own.
Not an Isolated Setup Glitch
The reports span both the watch’s original launch-day software and the day-one update it downloads during setup. This isn’t limited to one firmware build. One owner even swapped in a replacement unit, only to see it hit the same Neural Engine panic. That points away from a single bad batch of hardware.
By the time MacRumors published its report, roughly 30 owners had described similar reboots in that one forum thread alone. More accounts have since appeared on Reddit and in Apple’s own Community Support forums.
What to Do If Your Watch Is Rebooting
Apple has not issued a public statement on this specific issue as of September 21. There’s no confirmed fix yet. Even erasing the watch and setting it up as new hasn’t stopped the reboots for some owners.
Keeping watchOS updated is still worth doing in case Apple ships a quiet fix. If the reboots happen often enough to affect daily use, contact Apple Support directly rather than waiting on the forum threads. Two new devices with the same chip family are hitting the same failure pattern in the same week. That’s usually the kind of problem Apple fixes with software, not a recall.
Read more: iPhone 18 Pro Panic-Full Reboots: What Owners Are Reporting
Source: MacRumors
