Apple's newest hardware is off to a rocky start, with Neural Engine timeouts crashing Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 models as a smaller group of iPhone 18 Pro owners reports Face ID-related kernel panics.
The new watches reached customers on September 18. Within hours, owners began describing sudden restarts that displayed the Apple logo before returning them to the watchOS interface.
Some Apple Watch devices restarted while their owners used Siri AI, edited watch faces, opened Maps or the App Store, made calls, and recorded workouts. Other reboots reportedly occurred while the Apple Watch was idle.
An Apple forums post includes a panic log showing an ANEHWDevice::ANE Timeout. A Neural Engine command waited 2,020 milliseconds against a 2,000-millisecond limit before the Apple Watch restarted.
The log confirms a Neural Engine timeout on that Apple Watch, but it doesn't establish why the command stalled. A software bug, firmware problem, or hardware defect could produce the same result.
A separate Reddit thread contains restart reports from Apple Watch Ultra 4 and Apple Watch Series 12 owners, while a Facebook report describes three restarts on an Apple Watch Series 12. Those accounts don't all include diagnostic logs, so they support a cluster of similar crashes without proving that every device shares the Neural Engine timeout.
Apple Watch Series 12 is encountering Siri-related boot loops
Reports have appeared on the original watchOS 27.0 build and the launch-day update offered during setup. The update appears to have stopped the crashes for some owners, while others continued seeing unexpected restarts after installing it.
There's no reliable workaround yet. Owners have reported restarts during Siri AI use, watch-face editing, app launches, workouts, and idle periods, leaving no clear trigger.
A separate group of complaints has appeared since iPhone shipments began arriving. The iPhone reports don't include the consistent diagnostic pattern found in the Apple Watch cases.
An iPhone 18 Pro Max owner reported four panic restarts within the first day of use. Face ID appeared to trigger three crashes, while the fourth occurred as Wallet opened.
iPhone 18 Pro users have reported issues with Face ID
The phone went without another reported crash after Face ID was reset, but it restarted again while opening Wallet the following morning. In an updated Reddit post, the owner said Apple Support ran diagnostics, considered the unit faulty, and began arranging a replacement.
Two other iPhone 18 Pro owners reported similar panics, including one whose restarts continued after a software restore.
These new devices have only been in customer's hands for a few days, and isolated issues are bound to emerge after a wide launch. There is only so much testing Apple can conduct internally, and bugs become more detectable when millions of users are available to report a problem.
Apple hasn't publicly acknowledged either set of complaints, and no confirmed fix is available. The repeated Apple Watch timeout supports treating those reports as an emerging bug cluster, while the iPhone evidence remains preliminary.
Owners experiencing repeated kernel panics should install available software updates and contact Apple Support for diagnostics and service options. The issues appear to be isolated and will likely be corrected in an impending software update for both Apple Watch and iPhone.
