Jiska Classen appears to have solved the mystery. Apple quietly rolled out a new feature in iOS 18.1 that reboots a user's iPhone if it has not been unlocked for a certain period of time. The new feature causing police headaches is called "inactivity reboot."

Apple has apparently created a new feature for iOS 18.1 that makes it difficult for brute-force machines to unlock an iPhone.

A recent report suggested that iPhones were secretly communicating with each other in a way the police didn’t like. Now there’s a new answer to the mystery.

A new feature introduced on iOS 18.1 could make it difficult for law enforcement officials to gain access to seized devices for forensic analysis.

Because the reboots make it harder to unlock these iPhones, law enforcement officials, according to a document obtained by 404 Media, say that the rebooting could be part of a new security feature. The theory is once an iPhone is disconnected from a cellular network for a period of time,

Law enforcement officials are investigating a mysterious phenomenon of iPhones in forensic labs periodically rebooting, possibly due to the new iOS 18.0 security features.

A new report from 404 Media says that law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan believe that iOS 18 includes a “new security feature that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time.