The most common iPhone crash is one where the application you are working in suddenly ceases operation, the screen momentarily turns black, then the iPhone home screen appears. In a slightly more serious manifestation, the crash will result in a complete freeze where the iPhone is unresponsive. Your initial reaction could be... simply yank the battery to cut the power and reset the phone, but there is no batter! But let me remind you that before you do anything to your iPhone, finding out what causes the problem is necessary.
I've encountered this problem before... I thought that Apple must have some sort of a contingency in place for lock-ups, and I was right. In this article I will state some tips and tricks on how to troubleshoot your iPhone. YOU will learn how to fix your frozen iPhone or other problems that may arise. Yes YOU! Really amazing that you don't have to be a tech-savvy person to do this. Here are the options in a nutshell.
The very first thing to do is to make sure that your iPhone is fully charged. You can charge your iPhone by using your iPhone AC adapter or with a high-powered USB port. Make sure that the USB port is high-powered, otherwise your iPhone will not charge. Your keyboard USB port is an example of a low powered port. If you see the red part of the battery image flash three times and then the screen goes black, this means that that the iPhone is not charging.
If recharging your iPhone doesn't solve your problem try this one - Restart. Try restarting your iPhone but if your iPhone is locked up or an application was frozen, you need to cancel the frozen application first before you can restart. To cancel the frozen app, press the home button and hold for about 6 seconds. You should be able to cancel the program that is locked up. Then restart your iPhone. To do this hold the sleep/wake button and wait for a red colored slider to appear. Slide your finger across the slider to turn off your iPhone. Before you turn it back on, wait for at least 10 seconds. To turn your iPhone on, hold the sleep/wake button until you see the Apple logo.
If recharging or restarting your iPhone doesn't solve your problem try another solution - Reset. To do this, hold the sleep/wake button and Home buttons simultaneously for a few seconds. The display will quickly wipe itself and you should see the black background and white Apple logo. Just ignore any other symbols that may appear. It is important that you wait for the Apple Logo before releasing the two buttons. The Apple logo signifies that a reset is well done.
But then again, if recharging or restarting or resetting your iPhone doesn't solve the problem, you may also try another way - Remove. More often than not, your iPhone will not work as you expect, if there is content that is not properly synced. This will require more than a restart... you may need to totally remove the problematic content. You may try to remove certain content such as contacts, calendars, songs, photos, videos, or podcasts. Such content may be causing your iPhone not to sync properly. To do this, connect your iPhone to your computer and go to the iTunes site. Change your sync options for each of the following categories: contacts, podcasts, calendars, etc. Click on the iPhone in the Source list, then select each tab to change what content is synced, and then click apply.
But if recharging,restarting, resetting or removing content from your iPhone still doesn't solve the problem, try another one - Reset Settings. There are two ways to reset the settings of your iPhone. First go to settings and then general, then reset, then reset all settings. This will reset everything but no data or media will be deleted. Second, go to settings, select general, select reset and choose erase all contents and settings. This will unfortunately remove all of your saved files, folders, and content, so do this with caution. You may want to backup all of your content before attempting this. The second way will put your iPhone back to the state when you first bought it. Again, use the second option with care.
Restoring your iPhone is your last option to fix a frozen iPhone. To do this, use the latest version of iTunes, then connect your iPhone. When it appears in the Source list, click on Restore in the Summary tab. This will also wipe the iPhone and all your information on it.
Fortunately, the third option here fixed my problem and I'm enjoying my iPhone again as I write this. There are many ways fix a frozen iPhone and yes you can troubleshoot your iPhone by yourself. If these options here do not solve any of your issues, it is better to go to Apple.com. The iPhone troubleshooting section of Apple's main iPhone support site contains a walk-through for situations like this and other common issues. They have an enormous amount of information out there for you.
David Chan shares his first hand experience working on the iPhone and the ways for troubleshooting your iPhone. Find out more about how to best use the iPhone and even how to win one for free at http://everypathnbeyond.com.