07 Jun How To: Fix A Frozen Or Unresponsive iPhone
Whether your iPhone’s display remains black or blank, the touch screen or buttons are not responding or an application unexpectedly closes or freezes, check out these steps below to get your iPhone back to functioning as it should.
Display Remains Black or Blank, Can’t Power On Or Off Device
Source: GeeksDesk
The only thing you can really do if your device remains completely unresponsive is to try resetting the device. You can do this by:
- Pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least ten seconds.
- If the device still does not turn on or displays a red battery icon, the battery may be drained and in need of recharging. Connect your iPhone to a charger and try to switch on the device later.
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Touch Screen or Buttons are not responding
If the touch screen or buttons are not responding as they should, a restart usually fixes the issue.
- To turn off the device, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the red slider appears.
- Slide your finger across the slider to turn off the device.
- To turn on the device, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.
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Application Unexpectedly Closes Or Freezes
If an application you are using unexpectedly freezes or closes, you can force the application to close.
- From the Home screen, click the Home button twice.
- Tap and hold on the app.
- When it starts to jiggle, tap the
to close it. - Double-click the Home button and try opening the app again.
If the issue persists, check whether there is an update for the app on the App Store and whether there is an update for your device via iTunes. [divider_line]
If All Else Fails, Restore
If the above steps do not resolve the issue, if the screen remains black or shows a persistent Apple logo, try restoring with iTunes.
Please note, restoring your device means returning the software on the device to factory settings as well as deleting all data content, including songs, videos, contacts, photos and calendar information. It is usually a great idea to regularly backup all of your data to iCloud or save a backup of your data on your computer, so you can use the backup after the restore process is complete.
- Connect the device to your computer and open iTunes.
- If the device appears in iTunes, select the device and click Restore on the Summary pane.
- Your iPhone will restart and you should see on the screen “Slide to set up”. This will take you through the iOS setup assistant.
- If you have backed up all of your iPhone’s data, you can select to ‘restore your device from a previous backup’. This will bring over any content you had at the time of the backup.
If you find that your device doesn’t appear in iTunes, you can try to force the device into recovery mode:
- Disconnect the USB cable from the iPhone but leave the other end of the cable connected to your computer’s USB port.
- Turn off the iPhone: Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds until the red slider appears, then slide the slider. Wait for the device to turn off.
- If you cannot turn off the device using the slider, press and hold the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons at the same time. When the device turns off, release the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons.
- While pressing and holding the Home button, reconnect the USB cable to the device. The device should turn on.
Note: If you see the screen pictured below, let the device charge for at least ten minutes to ensure that the battery has some charge, and then start with step 2 again:
- Continue holding the Home button until you see the “Connect to iTunes” screen. When this screen appears you can release the Home button:
- If necessary, open iTunes. You should see the following “recovery mode” alert:
- Use iTunes to restore the device
Note: When using recovery mode, you can only restore the device. All user content on the device will be erased, but if you had previously synced with iTunes on this computer, you can restore from a previous backup.