iPhone problems

Two days after I got my iPhone I was listening to the iPod when all of a sudden it stopped playing.  I thought that it had just hit the end of a playlist.  But, actually, the phone had completely frozen up.  No response at all.  Blank screen and nothing would trigger an input.  When I called Apple support they told me how to reset the phone by holding down the top button and the home button.  That solved the problem.

Just now I had to use that trick again.  But this time the problem was that the phone became increasingly unresponsive to input on the touch screen.  I was unable to answer a couple of calls because of that.  Eventually, the input just stopped working.  So I held down the two buttons and, voila, it works now.

I'm still perfectly happy with the phone.  My treo had to be rebooted from time to time, so I don't expect perfection.  Not even from Apple.  Hopefully, this won't be a recurring problem.

Update (7/23/07):  The problem has occurred once, again when I was listening to music on 'the iPod.'  But, overall, the phone is working well and I haven't had any major problems.  I have found some things that I would like to see done better, but that's not surprising because I hyper-analyze the iPhone (just like everyone else).  Speaking of analyzing the iPhone, I recommend this very thorough and balanced article.  And here is another from a former Apple employee who is glad for the opportunity to freely speak his mind.

Comments

[nan]

Sounds like you're experiencing what tech folks ironically refer to as the "benefits of being on the bleeding edge." I'm waiting for at least V2, but all the press does have me lusting for the iPhone.

[Wynde]

I had a similar blank screen thing happen to me. I went back to my Apple Store to talk to a Genius and was told that the iPhone is basically like a small computer and is in fact running OS X. So like a computer, every once in a while it may need to be rebooted to get it working properly if it has a problem. Hum, an Apple that crashes - go figure. Maybe with future software updates my iPhone will crash less and less. Until then it is push the two buttons and pray the little Apple symbol lights up.

[packetscan]

Like any digital handheld it'll have to be rebooted once in a while. I don't know a phone that doesn't :-)

[TechGeek]

I think anyone who just bought a "ginnie pig iPhone" is foolish (it should still be considered BETA). I'm just gonna sit back and read all the blogs about everything that has gone wrong with it and learn from everyone elses mistakes. Eventually Apple should create a 2nd gen fixing most of the bugs found . After the product has saturated the market enough, within 6 months to a year it will probably be 1/8 to 1/4 off the origional price. Not to mention at&t servers almost crashed on the evening of Jun 29th due to nationwide overload.

So lets see.. pay 5/600 for a fluke 1st gen, or wait it out a few months and get a near flawless 2gen for less, when both the phone itself and network compatibility has improved. Hopefully it may be open to other more reliable cell carriers down the road too.

[appleuser2]

It might have to do with your songs, if you use limewire or have any songs that you downloaded illegally, those can cause glitches in your phones system, or your computer system for that matter. Just letting you know.

[syed]

packetscan ur totally wrong. Why would apple release the 2nd generation iPhone for cheaper? Obv from the sales from the release of the iPhone shows that the price isnt that high compared to other PDA phones. The next generation iPhone will not be cheaper. Also the iPhone problems right now are nothing compared to how much other PDA phones problems. Most windows phones freeze and crash all the time. the small number of problems with the iPhone is expected. It is still one of te most stable PDA phones out and trust me iv tried every palm windows and blackbery device out

[stickz4jc]

my iphone has done similar things to the blank screen. also i have noticed that when i am using google maps it will randomly go back to the home screen. its happened to me in ipod mode and also in safari! i don't like when it happens and it is embarasing too especially when i'm showing it off to people and it randomly closes the program i am using...hopefully there will be a patch soon.

[pat natale]

Haven't seen the blank screen yet but randon quit and return to home screen from ipod and safari are common.

[TuTKiLL]

Well my iphone was sent to me with part of o-ring hanging out of the right front glass. I ask them to replace the phone and AT&T said I would need to get Apple to fix the problem. I talked to Apple and they wanted me to send the phone to them. (pay $29.00 more dollars to fix their poor workmanship or go to Atlanta 2-hour drive to their store.) No thanks, I cut service off and just paid $65.00. No more AT&T bill ($70.00 +) and no ($599.99) for poor workmanship. Think they would want to keep new customers. Guess not. I still have no cell phone.

[Angie Hartford]

All this, and a battery that's soldered into the gizmo. I think the iLust is fading for this gal...

[Chad]

I've owned a Ipod for 2 years now and have had 0 problems. Apple has a nack for getting things right which is directly reflected in their stock price which has roze from around $85 a share the first of the year to $135 a share recently. I just ordered a Iphone simply because I belive they are doing the right thing. The bar has been set SO high now for every other company that makes and sells phones it's simply astonishing. Who ever says the Iphone will drop in price is simply not thinking. When is the last time you saw an Ipod go on sale? NEVER, thats when... The price is directly set by apple and just like the service plan, there are NO discounts. Costco dosen't even give breaks on Ipods, instead the gimick is to toss in a few free items. I bought a treo 650 years ago and still use it with 0 hassles even today (until my Iphone gets here) People wrote bad things about them but I have never had a problem, just don't have your dog fetch it for you or clean the fish bowl with it and your chances of it NOT working are very very low.

[HS]

Packet Scan:$100 - $200 iPhone...... maybe in 5 years. A second gen 8 gig nano is still$250

[James Cash]

There are more glitches with the software. Soon you will not have the ability to put someone on hold or swap calls. This will happen even if you swap phones and sim cards.(Never swap sim cards. You will have to go on itunes and set it up again. As if it is another iphone on your account.)Just try to put someone on hold. When you take them off of hold you will not see the keypad symbol light up again. Then you know that the phone has disconnected the call. Also be aware that you cannot swap calls.My friend and I both had the same problem. I went to the apple store in Towson, MD. First they swapped my phone. It still happened. Next they asked me to go to the AT&T store and get another card.(AT&T are dicks. There don't care about anyone with an iPhone) So I got a new sim. Viola, Same problem. But now my phone has no signal. While waiting for someone to tell me how to get my phone working again I noticed that 2 phones on display in the apple store had the same issue. Also, An employee's phone in the apple store has the same issue. Now this problem doesn't always show up at first. So just call your phone from another number and see if yours is affected. If so there is no way to answer a call after you are on another one.

[thjatty]

I had problems with unresponsive features of iPhone (wouldn't unlock, slow, shutting off iPod and even Google Maps). I did the reset you suggested and it worked. The reset saved me a trip to the AT&T store to get a replacement.

[WhiteHenry]

A Comment to Tech Geek: Oooh, as if everyone who bought the iphone didn't have this miraculous insight that you have. Right, we all know it's the first version and the inherent flaws you may buy into upon purchasing a first generation. Thank-you for being Captain Obvious.

I've had some problems I noticed today. But nothing that one reboot didn't take care of. Good luck to all the people who purchased one now, I hope you all have better luck in the long run. And remember it doesn't make you smarter for having purchased one now-- but sure as hell makes you cooler. And at the very least, cooler than you'll ever be even if you got one, Tech Geek.

[chrisd]

As I log more hours onto the iPhone I notice glitches reoccuring. One, after long use, I can longer dial out ising the keypad. The keypad appears and i hit the number to input, it shows up on screen but then disappears, so you cannot complete a phone number. Today, made two outgoing calls and when I went to speak to the receiver they could not hear me. I looked at the phone and the mute was engaged. My fingers were not near it, and the phone should not respond to any other touch.

The fix for the above is a reset. However, I have had to do this multiple times today and it is becoming annoying. A couple more problems like this and I am sending this back to AT&T/Apple

[Lifty]

I was in Fry's a local computer electronics store here in california buying a case for my new 8 gig iphone when the salesman asked to see it, while showing him it locked up. I knew how to reset my 60 gig ipod and this was the same but I did'nt hold down the home and on/off long enough thus looking like a dope with my new phone. Im just a little dissaponted if this is what I have to look forward to. If I wanted another PDA phone I had to reset all the time I would have purchased a PDA phone...

[P-DOG]

The iphone is a crazy phone . I never thought a phone would be so capable . The best phone I will own for a long time . APPLE are genesis on making the iphone .

[Mai Jourdan]

I've never been a Apple product person. But since the iPhone came out, I've turned around completely. In my experience with my iPhone, it has been overall GREAT. It is the coolest phone EVER. The only problem I had was when I was typing a text, it was typing really slow. After I sent the text, I went back to check to see if the problem was still there and it wasn't. I know that in the future they will provide updates for the iPhone to fix all of the bugs...so I don't regret buying my "1st gen" for $646.77. And I don't think the prices will drop anytime soon either.

Everyone can talk crap about the iPhone, but everyone knows, it's still bad ass. :-)

[it's all design?]

Sounds like crappy little device, if it has to be manually soft-booted almost daily basis. All other mobile OS:es (Windows Mobile, Symbian and Linux (e.g. Maemo)) are inherently more stable than that. Manual reboot is rarely needed with those (with latest OS versions), if ever. I would like to see the faces of guys in AT&T/Cingular, when the customers start returning the iPhones: Cingular has stability requirement, which may be overlooked by them in the case of iPhone if the findings mentioned earlier in this thread are true.

Could someone tell me, what new iPhone will bring to this world? In addition to UI design, of course. The concerns:

1) MP3/4 and DRM was de facto already last year iTunes is just propietary method to create similar feature. The (un)famous Motorola ROKR was 1st iTunes enabled handset, not iPhone.

2) In latest Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms you can update phone SW over the internet.

3) Symbian 3.1 DO HAVE Safari browser (e.g. Nokia, Samsung, SonyEricssson, Motorola). According the analysts, Symbian version is better, than iPhone version.

4) Nokia has also introduced Web 2.0 for its phones earlier this year, so no industry first there either.

5) Windows Mobile and Symbian have heavy security shemes in all levels. Contrary to those, there has been heavy doubts about iPhone security.

6) There is even vendors implementing services and devices targetted to enterprices, but Apple has explictly said that it will not create iPhone apps/devices for bussiness users.

7) YouTube content has been open to other mobile platforms for a while, also. There is also phones with integrated GPS and native/OEM navigation system around.

8) iPhone's reported talk- and stand-by times are poor to average when compared to the la(te)st 2G phones around. When the 1st iPhone batteries wear out in next few months to the "normal capacity level" the reality of battery it's performance will be revealed: there is owners complaining about battery performance already!

9) Apple recommends to set native e-mail client to poll e-mail every minute. That will be totally different scenario compared to the "lab measurements" they are referring to in www.iPhone.com pages. This scenario is almost as harash to the battery, if there would be real push e-mail on it. And most likely that is reason, why there is no push e-mail client in iPhone.

10) According to Apple have to shovel 70$+ (30$ extra for a swap phone) in order to refresh iPhone with new battery (costing Apple less than 10$). You have also to wait at least three days just to get that battery changed! Also (any) non-warranty repair will be quite a expencive: 200$ or 250$ for each repair. 90% of which will most likely be reprogramming with R&D level programmer. That can most likey be attached to the bottom connector and therefore the whole operation will take maximum of 10 minutes to complete. Good deal - for Apple.

11) Has anybody found, how to *turn off* iPhone, if the UI jams: there is only touch screen and soft buttons on it - and you can not remove the battery...

12) have the Apple boys and girls ever tried to browse over EDGE, while roaming? Most likely not, as it is mentioned as valid use case in the User Guide. Even in home network the troughput is usually way too slow to have pleasant user experience.

[J Good]

To Mr. Design: Although I am not claiming the iphone is the top dog, what other phone contains the exact equivalents? BTW: the SLVR L7 was the 1st to have iTunes and no wonder symbian runs safari better, its v3.1! Of course 2G phones have more life because they all have less apps than the iphone, although most pda phones are 3G, true. Don't forget that the product is targeted more to the personal aspects rather than professional, as well. What part of BFE do you live in that you are going to be using the internet on your phone? Only one reason why else, so use a road map. It isn't nice to act like a know-it-all if you really aren't one. I confess, I have never owned an iAnything before, but it seems that most of the phone's problems are typical of any 1st gen, pda phone. It appears Apple works at patching things up if it ain't right the 1st time, but I still don't think I can wait that long. tick tock tick

[Yanick Kleyman]

The iPhone is one of the bestpieces of technology I have ever gotten my handson...maybe. Yes it has alot of great featuresand has taken the lead in the PDA world. But it is really hard to overlook the glitches. I bought my iPhone on June 29th after waiting in line for a good twelve hours. It has been about three weeks now. After two days, I was showing a friend of mine pictures on the iPhones camera roll when it suddenly froze, and no matter how many times i tried to reboot it, nothing happened. Then, about seven hours later it went back to the menu home screen on its own. Of course my friends got agood laugh out of it but it happens. Then a fewdays later i was listening to the ipod feature and all of asudden the screen froze and the speaker began emmitting a constant beeping sound that did not stop until i restarted the phone. No big deal simple restart. But the thing that is really bugging me now is that the sensitivity of the screen seems to be decreasing. When I go to slide the phone to unlock it, there is a very noticeable delay between the time I slide my finger across the screen and the phone unlocking. And this seems to come and go...sometimes its fine and sometimes the iPhone seems abit hungover.

[Mike]

iPhone's official SAR values are 0,974 W/kg to head and 0,694 W/kg to the body. Sounds like ancient fiqures to me. Basicly this means, that iPhone radiates to your ear nearly 2,5 times higher intensity than a modern 3G handset in European markets. E.g. Nokia N95 (FCC: 0,42 W/kg head 0,60 W/kg body). I think, it was late 90's that near 1,0 W/kg SAR fiqures were a norm in Europe, but not nowadays.

iPhone copes with FCC standard, though: the FCC SAR limit is 1,6 W/kg. And most likely it will pass EU's SAR requiements too.

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iPhone_Product_Info_Guide.pdf

vs.

Highest (the worst) SAR fiqures / UShttp://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6602_7-5020357-1.html?tag=lnav1. Motorola V195s 1.62. Motorola Slvr L6 1.583. Motorola Slvr L2 1.544. Motorola C290 1.535a. Samsung SGH-C417 1.515b. Motorola V365 1.515c. RIM BlackBerry Curve (aka BlackBerry 8300) 1.518a. Palm Treo 700p (Sprint) 1.488b. Palm Treo 700p (Verizon) 1.488c. Motorola Slvr L7e 1.48

Lowest (the best) SAR fiqures / US1. Motorola Razr V3x 0.142. LG KG800 Chocolate 0.143a. Samsung SGH-t809 0.323b. Samsung SPH-M510 0.325. Bang & Olufsen Serene (Samsung SGH-E910) 0.336. Sanyo RL-4930 0.3747. Nokia N95 0.388. Helio Drift 0.419. Nokia 3250 0.4410. Samsung Sync (SGH-A707) 0.48

[allstar18]

What can i say people iphone is the best phone ive ever had. Yes ive had the blank screen ok freak me out but the soft reboot help out but from what ive read is that user arent shuting down the apps right. To shut apps down right you have to hold the home button down for 4 sec. Really if you open all the apps in any computers all together of course it would crash. so just a little suggesting before people saying the i phone has problems. Internet is fast if you have a wireless network of course it slow with a phone service internet but really most places have wireless hotspots. Draw backs that is being fixed is the ringtone problems what is it no ringtones that not cool. Another thing is video capture what happen their. overall it a great piece of tech..

[Jim6554]

This phone is pretty good overall. I have several complaints though as many others do. Most of which have already been listed I am sure. But, after paying $600 and then another $35 for the phone and activation (which took over 3 days by the way) not to mention the $70 phone plan where text messaging (unlimited) is yet another $20 on top of that. One can not over look the many issues people are having with the phone, and the service (or lack there of) that is being provided.

1. The coverage of Cingular/AT&T for the areas I travel in are junk. I never had any problems when I had my Verizon linked units.

2. Edge network is slower than molasses,..on a good day.

3. Sometimes the phone just will NOT hang up. I am talking to someone we say our goodbyes and I click "end call" the button animates and turns grey or whatever to signify that it did receive the command and then just sits there. It could sit there with an open line for upto and sometimes over a minute. It does this quite often considering.

4. What I can only assume are crashes and recovery of applications. Specifically in Safari, Google Maps, Ipod, photo viewer, and the contact list applications it just locks up. Then goes to a black screen for 5-6 seconds before finally going back to the main selection screen.

5. TOTAL LACK of ability to add your own ringtone. (Seriously...not so revolutionary of a device when you are locked into several poorly chosen ringtones that are stuck with the phone. Yea, I hear they are going to "allow" you to change it...but I already paid my $650+ dollars for it...

6. Poor calculator,...is there even a tipping function? did I miss it? (Not that it is hard to calculate it how...but common let's give the user some candy here...)

7. Inability to sync with more than one computer and transfer data between both (Fails as a business device right there).

8. The home screen icons...hey those are cool. But, Why can't it show the ACTUAL time on the little clock in the lower left corner??? Mine has never shown anything but 10:15. Yea, the time is at the top of the screen but still. That is not that hard to do. Same with the temperature on the weather icon. They did it with the Calendar...why not fully take advantage of these icons???

9. Text messaging - Running conversation....I LOVE THAT. Just scroll up and WHAM! you know what was said earlier no mistakes.

10. Voice Mail - LOVE THAT pick and choose which you want to listen to in whatever order you want to listen to them. No complaints here really. See, it isn't all bad!

11. Non-user replaceable battery with a life expectance of 300-400 charges? What is that...1 year of business use? 2 years of average consumer use if you are lucky? Tighten the thumbscrews more for the battery being absurdly expensive as far as handheld devices go let alone the fact you have to "take it in" to have it done.