iPhone X incoming call bug: Some Apple users unable to pick up phone on new handset

The problem appears to be relatively limited

A girl reacts as she tries an iPhone X at the Apple Omotesando store on November 3, 2017 in Tokyo (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

Some iPhone users are finding themselves unable to actually pick up the phone.

A bug in the iPhone X – the new, £999 phone that was released in September – is leaving people unable to answer phone calls, according to people who are experiencing it.

When a call arrives, the phone will actually ring. But nothing wil show up on the screen, users complain, and there's no button to actually pick up the call.

Eventually, after a wait, the screen arrives and people are able to answer the phone. But that can take several seconds, potentially leaving to missed or abandoned calls.

Apple is understood to be looking into the problem, and it's still not clear why it's happening. Some report that restarting the phone fixes it for a short while – but then it will appear again, after a few phone calls.

A number of users on Apple's support forums detail the issue, which was first pointed out by the Financial Times. But the problem appears to be rare – those discussions are relatively limited, though there are some people discussing it on Twitter and Reddit.

The problem appears to be confined to the iPhone X – and doesn't happen to everyone using that phone. It's not clear whether it's the result of a bug with the hardware, the software or a combination of the two.

The bug doesn't appear to keep the calls from arriving on the phone – it still rings, and the call will be registered. In that sense it is different from the reports of antennagate, many years ago, when people complained that the phone's signal could occasionally cut out and so the call wouldn't actually make it through.