Sony Pulls A7 IV Firmware v6.0 After Reports of Bricked Cameras

In what is best described as unfortunate timing with the Sony a7 V launching later today, the latest Sony a7 IV firmware update has been suspended after causing serious issues for some users.

The Sony a7 IV firmware v6.0 was only released last week alongside v4.0 for the Sony a7R V, but already seems to have run into complications of the 'Sony A7 IV bricked' variety. Anyone trying to download the new software is now met with the following statement.

We confirmed that some ILCE-7M4 cameras may not operate properly after installing the version 6.00 update. We have suspended the update while we investigate the cause.
If the issue (unstable operations such as repeated reboots) occurs immediately after installing the update, please contact our support center.

We have also confirmed that the camera enters power saving mode when the monitor is closed, regardless of the setting for [Power Save by Monitor]. This issue can be resolved by Initializing all the settings to the default settings.

How Bad is the Problem?

A quick scan of reddit seems to indicate that it's not happening across the board. Some users are reporting no problems with the update, others say their camera is essentially bricked. And there is some definite nervousness from people in the first category about suddenly finding themselves in the second one as we have no root cause for the behaviour yet.

Equally there is no timeframe on when the issue might be resolved. This is a shame because the a7 IV firmware v6.0 definitely bought some interesting new features to the camera. To date, the Sony a7R V v4.0 update is unaffected.