My iPhone Freezes

September 13, 2011 1:19 PM

Help, my iPhone freezes!

I have an iPhone 3G running the latest OS. In many functions, particularly maps, it tends to freeze. It will take a minute to get the application to where it will accept input. Sometimes the app will freeze in the middle of typing, and only unfreeze 2 or 3 minutes later.

I've read that one solution is to go back to an earlier OS, but this seems risky because the apps are meant to work with the current OS.

Do I have to buy a new iPhone 4 to get my apps to work normally?

posted by musofire to Technology (12 answers total)

My wife was having this issue, and I came to find out she never shut down her phone. Like, ever. It's a little computer, so if you're not periodically shutting down and restarting (like where you see the Apple logo), you should try that.

Also, I hope this didn't sound condescending, because it's not meant that way. Best of luck.
posted by jasondbarr at 1:32 PM on September 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

If jasondbarr's advice doesn't work, take it to an Apple store or AT&T store. You could possibly have a hardware issue. I suspect jasondbarr's advice is correct, though. Hold down the power key until you see a red "swipe me" strip on the top of the screen. Swipe it. It will shutdown the phone. Wait until the screen goes black then hold down the power key again.
posted by blob at 1:35 PM on September 13, 2011

Depending on which iOS you are running, you can double tap the Home button and bring up the app switcher, hold your finger on one app until they all start jiggling and then kill off the apps.

I do this pretty regularly on my 4 and it seems to speed it back up. I also shut down my iPhone from time to time and will sometimes leave it powered down overnight to give it a "rest" but I don't think it really needs that much downtime.
posted by fenriq at 1:39 PM on September 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

You could also try shutting down all open apps. To do this double-click "The Button" you will see a row of apps at the bottom which you can slide left and right. All of these apps are open. Touch any app icon for about five seconds, they will all start to wiggle and will show a little red circle w/ white bar in the upper left corner. Press each little red circle on each app icon. This will close the app. Close them all. Then shut off the phone as jasonbarr describes. Then restart it.

Also, closing all those apps will help your battery life.
posted by pandabearjohnson at 1:42 PM on September 13, 2011

fenriq beat me to it by 3 mins. Damn. And in one sentence!
posted by pandabearjohnson at 1:43 PM on September 13, 2011

There's no user-facing multitasking on the 3G, and therefore no way to "close" applications. is this slowness a new thing for you? The 3G isn't particularly fast and even running the old 2.x and 3.x versions of iOS it would bog down occasionally.

Though this isn't relevant to the OP, closing all apps and restarting the phone doesn't do anything that simply restarting the phone won't do. Those "open" apps are not necessarily running, it's just a list of apps that you've used recently. I have apps in that list that I haven't usedin many months and I guarantee that they aren't running or consuming any memory or battery power.
posted by The Lamplighter at 1:47 PM on September 13, 2011

- Depending on which iOS you are running, you can double tap the Home button and bring up the app switcher, hold your finger on one app until they all start jiggling and then kill off the apps.

- Also, closing all those apps will help your battery life.

OP has an iPhone 3G, which doesn't support multitasking. And even if it did, routinely killing "background" apps is little more than a placebo, as the vast majority of those apps are frozen and not consuming any resources. The multitasking switcher is really just a "most recently used apps" list.
posted by Nothlit at 1:49 PM on September 13, 2011

Best answer: I realized I posted without fully addressing the OP's question...

I think The Lamplighter is right. The iPhone 3G was technologically very similar to the original 2007 iPhone, just with a 3G cellular chip and GPS added. So you're talking about 4-year-old hardware architecture trying to run a much newer mobile OS. In the mobile world, that's ancient. I really think Apple should never have let the 3G run iOS 4 in the first place. I think your best bet is to find a way to downgrade back to iOS 3.x (yes, losing access to any iOS 4-only apps in the process) or sell your phone and upgrade to a 3GS or 4.
posted by Nothlit at 1:55 PM on September 13, 2011

This may or may not be helpful. I recently had an issue on my 3G where I had to basically wipe it and reinstall/sync all my data from scratch. I lost all my texts as well as pictures that I had not backed up (so if you go this route, be sure to back up!). However, after the sync the phone is running much faster.
posted by zoetrope at 1:56 PM on September 13, 2011

Response by poster: I've tried restarting the phone, also wiping it and restoring it, incidentally, but that didn't speed it back up.

How do I degrade it back to iOS 3?
posted by musofire at 3:02 PM on September 13, 2011

Try deleting your newest app and see if that helps. (You can always reinstall it.) That has solved the problem for me in the past. Some apps just aren't designed well, even if they come from big companies.
posted by MexicanYenta at 8:07 PM on September 13, 2011

I have this problem with my 3G, and something that helped a bit was to go in the settings and reset location warnings. Connecting with the satellite (or whatever it does) to find where you are is what takes FOREVER and makes it hang. So when you reset location warnings, it will start asking you "This app would like to use your location..." and you'll want to tell it no unless you really need it to.

It helped mine a little - good luck.
posted by TallulahBankhead at 6:27 AM on September 14, 2011