Help! My iPhone seems to have died?

hold down the home button and the little button on the top at the same time for five-ten seconds

Will that be a hard restore and will I lose all my apps and contacts if I do that?

Nope, just a hardware reboot.

Ok – will try that and report back.

And God said, “Let there be iPhone.”

Thank you, thank you @ARE you kidding me !

No prob!

I have had some recent trouble with my iphone also. I read that Apple sends updates that screw up your phone just in time for their new phone to hit the stores. I believe it.

^Myth.

Still believing it.

Also, right after I bought my first iPhone I happen totalk to a woman who was touting the warranty for $99 because she already had changed her phone three times in a year because it had malfunctioned. I have had mine about a year, and overall it works well, but has started to screw up. I don’t use my phone nearly as much as most people though.

iPhones don’t always reboot properly after an update is pushed. That’s usually what the problem is.

^Thank you.

Also, when asking iPhone questions please me more specific about your particular specimen.

Apple does slow the phones down with said updates

No shit.. Generally software is more resource intensive over time. But iOS 7 runs good enough on my iPhone4.

But really, the updates Apple does are hell of a lot better than you get on Android. You actually get them..

One thing you can give Apple is that they keep the OS stable.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Well, not intentionally as there are good marketing and legal reasons for them not to do so. However, the updates tend to be geared more towards the newer and more powerful phones, which tends to unintentionally bog down the older, less powerful models. Both a Pentium 4 and a Haswell i7 can run Win7, but which does it faster?

@johnpowell That is why I prefer Cyanogenmod over OEM. The slowness of Android updates is the fault of the phone-makers (Motorola, HTC, Samsung…) and networks (Verizon, AT&T…) dragging their feet on coding and approving updates. Cyanogenmod updates as soon as it’s ready (offering “nightlies” and “release candidates” for those that cannot wait until testing is complete enough for a “stable” release); Motorola takes it’s sweet time sending stuff to Verizon to sit on for approval. In other words, it’s not a technical thing, but a commercial red-tape thing.

@jerv That’s pretty obvious like mentioned but they have been known to engage in some tomfoolery. A good example was beta testing the OS that came with siri worked great on the iphone 4, no problems at all. When it came time to release officially no siri on the 4 but the newly available 4s had it, same OS. That was my last Apple product. I gave them a shot with a phone and a macbook, both will be may last. Android just offers so much more, is free to develop on, is open source, hackable and available on multitudes of platforms. If your hardware is good and supported well Android works flawlessly. I have had less trouble out of my android phone than out of my iphone. You can get stuck with cheap hardware and no support on Android though like you said from manufacturing and the carriers. Apple controls the hardware and support so much better. That’s both a success and a failure.

@janbb

How often do you do the procedure which just restored your phone to function?

When I first got my iphone, I was totally unaware of how important this is to do on a regular basis. I was ready to return the phone I was do frustrated.

I called the Apple help line numerous times in those early months and practically everyone I spoke to stressed that it was important to do what they called a “hard reset” on a regular basis.

And you know what? They were absolutely right.

Anytime I experience the slightest problem (like slowdown in functioning or failure to click through when web browsing or anything else)
with my iPhone, that’s the first
thing I do. And it never fails. No matter what.

I generally do a hard reset at least once a day (but I do a lot of web browsing) and especially after downloading apps.

Since they clues me into the importance of that simple maneuver, I’ve been a happy iPhone user ever since.

I’d reccomend that you try doing it at least once daily (and DEFINITELY at the first sign of ANY diminished function) for awhile and see how it
improves your enjoyment of
your iPhone.

I’d be surprised if it didn’t improve things for you.

@Buttonstc I’ve had the phone about two years – it’s a 5 – and this is only the second time I’ve done it; but also only the second time I’ve had a problem. I generally don’t use the phone for much other than phoning, texting and getting e-mail but I’ll take your advice. Thanks.

@Buttonstc Are you talking about holding down the home button and the on off button as described above? I want to make sure I understand.

Also, I was told to double click the home button and then swipe the pages that are open up so they disappear. Supposedly that closes that particular app, and helps the phone run better. Is that true?

@janbb Thanks for the Q.

Yes. You hold down both buttons simultaneously until the apple logo appears.

Let it do it’s thing for the few minutes it takes and it will come back to normal.

This is a reset. It’s different from shutting your phone off. In that case you start off the same but when the swipe arrow appears, you swipe it and this shuts your phone off

The double clicking and shutting down pages is also helpful but just not as much as a hard reset.

The reset is kind of an all purpose cure for whatever ails the iPhone. I was told by one rep that the reset on the iPhone is the same as shutting off your computer totally (not just putting comp. in sleep mode).

It gets rid of a whole bunch of excess temporary files which accumulate and bog things down.

As I said, I’ve used it for all kinds of iPhone problems and it has never failed me yet.

@Buttonstc I get it. It’s kind of like rebooting your desktop first whenever you have a problem with that to see if that clears it.

I was so relieved last night when that solved the problem; hated the idea of my phone not working and having to deal with all of that.

My 3½ year old iPhone 4 still works like a champ, mostly, but I am glad to see this Q, as I didn’t know about that kind of a reboot. Hoping it clears up a few small issues.
Thanks, @janbb, for asking this!

iOS 7 should make iPhone 4 run the best it can. Part of 7’s development was about wringing the last bit of performance out of relic iPhone 4 and 4S. If you haven’t installed it do so.

iOS 8 will likely not be recommended for iPhone 4s.

Removing background programs from the multitasking tray will not improve performance in the long ish term.

Unless an app specifically operates in the background (something you can control in Settings) an app will go dormant by about 5 minutes time. Restarting the application from scratch will draw on the battery more than if it is awakened from a dormant state. Clearing the multitasking tray is usually unnecessary.

Apple is obsessed with setting most things for maximum battery life and stability. The typical user doesn’t need to maintain anything. Configuring Settings for maximum battery life excepted.

Rebooting the phone will usually clear any minor issues and should be done every several days. It clears some unneeded files and makes the phone scan for changes in the cell network.

Hard resets should only be done if rebooting fails to fix a problem. Routine hard resets are not recommended. You can often save yourself time by hard resetting before calling support as very often that will be support’s first line of action. Doing so will not cause you to lose any data or settings.

I’ve seen the word “restore” used a few times in this thread. Restore means to remove software and firmware from the phone and reinstall. This should only be done to address major problems. It will require that you back up all applications and data first, then reload.

Some applications are notorious battery drains. Facebook is the best example. Facebook wants to be the only app. It gets insecure so quickly. “Why aren’t you using me constantly?” it whimpers. It is the AOL of iOS applications. Do yourself a favor and remove it. Access Facebook through a browser instead. I won’t even get into the security matters of Facebook and Facebook Messenger.

^ I said “security matters” of Facebook.

I should have said “privacy matters.”

@SecondHandStoke One thing Android and iOS have in common is that having Facebook check for updates every 5 minutes kills the battery quickly. Other apps (like weather) can too, but Facebook is probably the most common offender as more people care about social media updates than weather conditions/forecasts. I set mine to check as seldom as possible, and battery life improved dramatically.

Oh… and fuck Messenger :P