In application.ios.ts, the orientation should be coming from the status bar, not the device. On iOS, UIDevice.currentDevice().orientation describes the orientation of the device, and is of type UIDeviceOrientation, while UIApplication.sharedApplication().statusBarOrientation describes the orientation of the interface, and is of type UIInterfaceOrientation (a type which doesn't include FaceUp or FaceDown as orientations).

The following is the line which should be changed to grab interface orientation from UIApplication.sharedApplication().statusBarOrientation rather than UIDevice.currentDevice().orientation
https://github.com/NativeScript/NativeScript/blob/master/application/application.ios.ts#L180

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