Apple has just updated its support website to confirm that the iOS date bricking bug is real and an upcoming software update will fix the issue.

Upcoming iOS Update Will Fix The iPhone, iPad Bricking Bug Once And For All

It came to public knowledge just recently that if you set your iPhone or iPad's date to January 1970, your device will go into limbo once you give it a restart. Interestingly, Apple has just waded into the entire fiascoand confirmed that the bug is (very) real, and recommends that if your device has gone into a boot loop, contact Apple Support immediately.

From Apple's support website:

Manually changing the date to May 1970 or earlier can prevent your iOS device from turning on after a restart.

An upcoming software update will prevent this issue from affecting iOS devices. If you have this issue,contact Apple Support.

As you can see, an upcoming software update will fix the issue once and for all. But it remains to be seen whether that software update will be in the form of iOS 9.2.2 or the final release of iOS 9.3. We'll definitely know for sure in the days to come.

If you're a non-jailbroken user, then there's nothing you can do except wait for the fix to arrive from Apple itself. But if you happen to have a jailbroken device at hand, then you can fix the issue right away by installing a tweak called BrickingDate. The tweak essentially prevents the user from setting a date all the way back from 1970, which in turn means that you can't recreate the problem even if you wanted to forcefully, provided that you have the tweak installed on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch in the first place.

It's great to see that Apple has publicly acknowledged the issue, hinting towards the fact that the company is working in the background to fix things in a prompt manner. And given how grave the bug is, rendering devices absolutely useless by just altering the date, we have a hunch that the company will be swift in releasing the software update to users around the globe.

Jailbreak users should stay clear of the upcoming iOS update as it's not known at this time whether or not the piece of software will be jailbreakable immediately. There's a high chance that Cupertino will put in place even more security measures to make rooting your device even more tough.