How to reboot/restart a crashed or frozen iPhone
By John Pospisil
As much as I love the iPhone 3G, I do find it quite bizarre that it seems to be so prone to crashing. What’s even more bizarre is that Apple doesn’t provide any information on how to reboot the iPhone in the included “Finger Tips” instructions.
Yes the instructions provided tell you how turn your iPhone on and off (hold the On/Off button), but not how reboot after a crash.
While at a family function a week ago, my iPhone suddenly stopped working. The screen showed the contacts list, but I wasn’t able to go to the Home screen. As I much as I tried every possible button-pressing combination, I just couldn’t work out how to reboot the iPhone. It was only later when I got home and to my PC that I was able to resolve the problem.
And more recently, I arrived at my daughter’s kindergarten to pick her up, only to find one of the carers pulling her hair out trying to get her iPhone to work after it had frozen. She’d already called the support service for her carrier, but was still unable to unfreeze her iPhone after getting advice from support staff.
Luckily I was able to step in and help, since I’d had a very similar problem.
So what’s the trick?
Basically all you need to do is to hold down the button on top of the iPhone (the On/Off button) and the button just under the screen (the Home button), at the same time, until the screen goes blank.
You should then be given the option to “slide to power off”. Once you’ve done this and the iPhone is switched off, you should then be able to turn it on by holding down the On/Off button.
You’ll then see a white Apple logo, which indicates that the iPhone is rebooting.
Hopefully, the need to reboot the iPhone will reduce as Apple updates and refines the operating system – and gets all the bugs out. I’m sure that Apple doesn’t want the iPhone to become the “Windows” of the mobile phone world.
Until we get to that point I suspect many more new iPhone users will tear their hair out trying to work out how to restart their iPhones after they crash.
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on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 2:13 am
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Read more entries by John Pospisil.
Stumble It!
September 12th, 2008
“It just works”
September 18th, 2008
THANK YOU for this submission.
September 19th, 2008
Thanks!!!!
September 20th, 2008
dude, i cant thank you enough,
ive been trying to fix my phone for hours,
and you helped alot!
September 23rd, 2008
Thanks man. I was looking all over how to do this.
September 28th, 2008
thankyou !! this helped me alot my screen was frozen for ages before
September 30th, 2008
oh thanks alot !!!!!
exactly the same problem happend with my iphone and i’ve been searching for the solution on the internet for about 4 hours and now… my iphone is back…
thanks alot man
October 1st, 2008
OMG ….. thank you so much !!! u just saved my job .. i needed to contact my bosses client and i didn ‘t write down his ## and then my iphone froze gosh i almost pull my hair and be fired
altho thx to you
November 5th, 2008
I’d like to thank you too all the way from New Zealand. I spent hours trying to fix it to the point of throwing it out the window…lol. With my old phone I’d pull the battery out then put it back in to reboot but since the battery on the iphone is built in I was only holding down the top button which wasn’y working. I knew someone out there knew how to fix it it just took me awhile to find you on the web.
Thank you again and all the best
December 26th, 2008
thanx it really works
December 26th, 2008
im 13 years old. if i hadna found this website i would be in trouble. my parents dont know about this. i want to thank the man who gave info on what to do
December 29th, 2008
Thank you sooo much for posting the rebooting instructions. My son thanks you too. He was having serious text message withdrawals.
January 5th, 2009
Thank you so much this helped me out so much!
January 19th, 2009
ah, dude thankyou, my work… well everyone i know couldn’t get hold of me! thanks alot!
January 28th, 2009
Um, you don’t need to hold both buttons at the same time. Just hold down the top one by itself. The same thing happens.
February 2nd, 2009
Cheers mate it worked, i had to hold both buttons simultanously.
Strange that it crashed.
April 14th, 2009
I browsed the Wallpapers Folder of my iPhone 3G ver 2.2.1. I added my own Wallpapers. All worked fine.
Then, I decided to remove and backup some of the original Wallpapers of my iPhone.
Now, it freezes, showing the white apple. I tried to switch off and reboot, but it still freezes, showing the white Apple.
Can Somebody help me with rebooting. I cannot restore either because itunes cannot detect the iPhone.
April 14th, 2009
Judex: That’s very similar to what happened to me. Except I made the mistake of letting someone “jailbreak” my phone and last night I was removing a lot of the installations that I didn’t use. So now I’m stuck with a white Apple symbol and I’m ready to throw it against the wall. ahhhhh Today I am stuck with my 11 yr old daughters phone with a pink cover with silver stars! haha
Let me know if you figure anything out.
May 14th, 2009
Thanks for this info, helped allot I was about 2 minutes away from using the iTunes restore option. But this advises help resolve everything. Will take note next time this happens (have had the phone for 6 months & it’s the 4th times it’s happened).
May 15th, 2009
Thanks alot. I have been messing with this for hours and it finally worked. Thank you so much. Should i bring itto the apple store for a replacement or is this going to be a regular thing regardless?
I havent had the phone for more then 2 weeks yet. lol
Thank you
May 27th, 2009
thanks heaps!!!
May 28th, 2009
Thanks, it helped me as well.
Within a week after I ran into freeze issue 3 times, most recently it got stuck in the contacts screen.
I find Apple to be a bit arrogant for not publishing the hard reboot instructions. Hey Apple: Just because you don’t publish hard reboot instructions you dont become better than Windows, actually you are worse than windows. At least, microsoft has enough guts to provide a reboot. Hopefully you will fix all the crappy bugs. iPhone has been out for a while and you dont get the newbie free ride anymore:-)
May 28th, 2009
Thanks!
June 3rd, 2009
Thank you!
You saved my life
June 13th, 2009
Thankyou!! I have been going mad for hours trying to work it out!!!
June 13th, 2009
This helped, as well as the following… I tried to run QuickPwn on my refurb G3 to jailbreak it. Used the latest 2-2-1 version, got as far as rebooting to recreate the new ram image, and the drned thing froze solid – rebooting constantly with the white apple only. After 24 hours (yep, you read that right) I rebooted the phone, reran Quickpwn and put the phone back into rescue mode, disconnected, closed quickpwn, and reconnected in ITunes. From that point (lucky, but works if you’re persistent) it was a simple matter to reload my last backup. Now I have a day’s work putting the apps back in the order I had them – but the phone now works! I’ll try the jailbreak with the new software and with a new GS in my hands, not before… talk about sweating for 2 days!
June 13th, 2009
I forgot to point out I ran this with ITunes 8.2. Turns out that Apple rewrote code pertaining to the way 8.2 reads and accesses the USB code, so if you jailbreak (yes, this is slightly off topic, but relevant if the phone freezes, yes?) under 8.2, you get a frozen IPhone. Use the fix here, reset the phone to rescue, then reload your backup, and wait for IPhone 3.0.
June 13th, 2009
Hey thanks man from Ireland – was close but couldnt even use power off slider, did both together for 10 seconds and presto !
July 20th, 2009
Thank you so much!
My alarm was going off at 7.30am as planned and it wouldn’t stop…..screen frozen !
Thank you so much!
August 10th, 2009
Many thanks. It’s done…..
August 22nd, 2009
Whoa. Lifesaver. Thanks.
August 29th, 2009
Thankyou!!! Saved my life
September 6th, 2009
omg it pulling my hair out big time really helped thank u sooooooooo much xxxxxxxxx
September 9th, 2009
Thanks Dude- no one here in South Africa seems to know how to reboot an iPhone ( except me now!!)
thanks again…
September 17th, 2009
Thanx, you prevented me from ripping the rest of my already thin hair out!
September 20th, 2009
good fix! I had a similar problem, except the screen wouldn’t show anything at all, about 5secs of holding both buttons resulted in the apple logo and a restart, thanks!! =D
September 25th, 2009
Definitely it works but still it takes to long to reboot.
October 2nd, 2009
You are wonderful. Thank You.
October 3rd, 2009
Thank you soo much, this helped me a great deal
x
October 6th, 2009
thank you!!!!!!!!
October 6th, 2009
Thank you so much – you made my 12 year old daughter smile again!!!
October 12th, 2009
how to reboot an iPhone? please help me… thanks in advance
October 14th, 2009
Worked for me! Thanks
October 21st, 2009
Tip top, thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 28th, 2009
Thank you so much. I had a really important client meeting to go which was scheduled as an all day event but my iphone had frozen in the morning when the alarm went off. Nothing was working – except the alarm on vibrate. How annoying would that have been going off all day. Thankfully it is working now. Although it took a long time to reboot so if anyone else has similar problems, be patient.
November 4th, 2009
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I love my iPhone, but it’s like taking care of a newborn sometimes