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How to Reset a Frozen iPhone – Tips and Tricks

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iPhone Guru

January 13, 2015

How to Reset a Frozen iPhone – Tips and Tricks

The iPhone is a small computer and though it doesn’t look like your desktop or laptop, sometimes it will freeze up in the same way your desktop does. Often times, you will need to reset your iPhone to fix a frozen phone.

How do you reboot or restart a frozen iPhone? Apple explains how to turn off and reset the iPhone in the manual for each model, as well as on the company support site. However, since this is one of the most popular questions we receive, we want to help you on here as well!

A restart: turning the iPhone off and back on again should be the first effort to resolve a frozen device. To restart it, press and hold the On/Off Sleep/Wake button until the red slider appears. Slide your finger across the slider to turn off iPhone. To turn your iPhone back on, press and hold the On/Off Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.

If turning the iPhone off and back on again doesn’t fix the issue, or if you can’t even get it to respond while trying to turn it off, you’ll have to reset it by doing the following:

Press and hold the On/Off Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
Force Quitting an App on an iPhone.
If you have a single misbehaving app on your iPhone, you can “force quit” it by doing the following: Press and hold the On/Off Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds until a red slider appears, then press and hold the Home button until the app quits.

If none of the above solves the problem, you may try and restore your iPhone to its original factory settings. Keep in mind that restoring an iPhone will wipe all of your data, such as photos, videos, apps, songs and so on. If you decide to wipe your phone, you’ll have to start from scratch after restoring the device. You must back up the latest version of the content on your iPhone before restoring it.

Apple’s instructions to restore an iPhone are as follows:

Connect the iPhone to your computer.
In iTunes, select iPhone in the Devices list, then click Summary at the top of the screen.
Click Check for Update. iTunes will tell you if there’s a newer version of the iPhone software available.
Click Restore. Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the restore process.

When restoring, you should back up your iPhone as soon as you are prompted. When the iPhone software has been restored, you can either set it up as a new iPhone, or restore your content from a backup.

If after trying all of the above and your iPhone is still is misbehaving, it is very likely that you have an issue with your hardware. If this is the case, visit an Apple guru at the service ivory tower nearest you.