It's 10:18---after several attempts to restore via itunes (and itunes getting my hopes up, then giving me several different error messages), I got the phone to a point where it turned on and it is taking me through the steps to set up the phone. I'm not restoring betas ever again. Not even if they paid me--and I've been doing betas since ios10. Seems like persistence is what's paying off most. Keep trying to restore/update the phone, even when it says it can't be done. (it's not 10:24pm.)

I'm beyond done. Given that stores aren't open and the Genius Bar isn't happening. It took 4 hours to get my iphone xr to a place where I could get the phone recognized by iphone long enough to try to update/restore. I got that "error 9" message 2-3x, and am still trying. It got to a place where it claims the phone has been been restored and is updating... My phone hasn't worked since it tried updating the latest whatever at 9am. It's 9:45pm now. From 9am until 9:00pm, it was stuck between a white "Swipe up to upgrade" / "black background-white apple" reboot screen. My MacBook wouldn't even recognize any usb ports I plugged the phone into...After 3 frustrating hours on the site trying to connect and chat with someone, I plugged the iphone into my macbook (which hadnt been recognizing the iphone xr) did the reboot "volume up - volume down - hold down the power button" move and held the power button til the phone went into recovery mode.