Comments on: How can i restart my iPhone if my lock button doesn't work?

Question: How can i restart my iPhone if my lock button doesn't work?

Silky Slim — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:39:09 -0800

How can i restart my iPhone if my lock button doesn't work?

It's been broken for about two months now. It's surprisingly non-essential. The only times I ever miss it are when I want to take a screenshot (sadly impossible at the moment).
Anyway, I just installed an app that asks me to restart my iPhone to complete installation. Is there a way to do that?

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:42:25 -0800

Go to the Settings app, dig down into the bit where you can "Reset Network Settings" and do that. It'll restart the phone. All you'll lose are, well, your network settings (wifi connection, etc) but you can quite quickly redo those.

By: samsara

samsara — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:44:05 -0800

You can hold the home and power buttons simutaneously for about 10-15 seconds and that should cause a full reboot as well (unless the home or power button are what is broken..).

By: Silky Slim

Silky Slim — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:47:55 -0800

Yeah, the broken one is the lock/power button.

By: General Malaise

General Malaise — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:00:03 -0800

This happened with my old 3G - what I found best to work was to do a backup and restore from backup in iTunes. Took a few minutes, but worked like a charm.

By: Silky Slim

Silky Slim — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:02:05 -0800

wackybrit - thanks for the tip, it's slightly scary, big red button pops up... Waiting to see if there's any other way, otherwise I'll do it.
General Malaise - That would take over an hour...

By: rhapsodie

rhapsodie — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:29:37 -0800

Can you run the battery completely down and then plug it back in? I would think that would essentially be a restart.

By: dirtdirt

dirtdirt — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:40:50 -0800

My power/lock button is gone too, but I find if I press the of the phone against a hard surface (I use the side of my kitchen counter) and really press the hell out of it, I get it to register. Enough to restart it, anyway, and enough to put it to sleep if I am too impatient to wait.

By: ts;dr

ts;dr — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:43:34 -0800

got the same problem: resetting the network settings restarts your iphone too, you'd just have to re-enter your wifi passcodes.

By: ts;dr

ts;dr — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:47:48 -0800

(oops, just saw that the first answer already got it right)

By: dreamyshade

dreamyshade — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:51:23 -0800

If you're using slightly old firmware (4.0.1), you can jailbreak your phone by going to jailbreakme.com in mobile Safari, and after that you can just install a program to give you on-screen buttons for rebooting the phone and for taking screenshots. (Newer versions of the firmware currently require holding down the lock button as part of the jailbreak process...)

By: Silky Slim

Silky Slim — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:55:54 -0800

I guess resetting the network settings is the easiest way... Just did it, worked like a charm. Thanks, wackybrit and ts;dr

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 18:02:10 -0800

the easiest way is to jailbreak you're phone (any version but the one that was released the other week). once you do that, go into Cydia and install Springboard. this is a utility you can open with a swipe across the top of the screen, that has shortcuts for settings including an option to lock, shutdown, and even reboot.

By: dreamyshade

dreamyshade — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 19:25:07 -0800

(Mach5: sounds like we're both thinking SBSettings...)

By: henryaj

henryaj — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 04:13:43 -0800

nthing jailbreaking and installing SBSettings. It's by far the fastest way of sleeping/rebooting/shutting down without a working Sleep/Wake button.