Donot Haveone

Q: iPhone4 Voice Control turns on by itself

New problem today with my iPhone4, which has been very reliable except for the power button having died 6 months ago:  today, Voice Control keeps spontaneously activating when I am doing something with the phone (and I am definitely not holding down the POWER button long enough for normal Voice Control activation).  I powered down the phone and it went into restore mode (again, I'm sure I did not deliberately do anything more than power it off and then plug in to turn it back on).  During the long 1st sync after the forced restore to my backup, it spontaneously turned on voice control without me touching the phone in any way.

 

Is this a sign of the Home Button dying, or a classic sign of impending phone failure?

 

I have no desire to update my phone as it otherwise has worked just fine, and a new model means new connectors (having to carry separate cords for the phone and pad when traveling with both), and other new compatibility problems.

 

The key question is, take to 3rd party to have buttons repaired/replaced (Power and Home at one go), take to Genius (will they do anything try to sell me an iPhone 5?), or....?

 

I did scout the forum for iPhone4 & Voice Control turning on spontaneously, and see some threads suggesting cleaning ports for short-triggering lint etc.  After the very very long sync is done, I may try that, but I'm reluctant to mess more with it because tomorrow I will be in need of a reliable phone for long duration hands-free use session--don't want to risk another restore going wrong and having a dysfunctional phone for the day. 

Posted on Jul 14, 2014 6:55 PM

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Q: iPhone4 Voice Control turns on by itself

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  • by Donot Haveone,

    Donot Haveone Donot Haveone Jul 14, 2014 8:40 PM in response to Donot Haveone
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 14, 2014 8:40 PM in response to Donot Haveone

    Ok, it's more than a Voice Control problem.  The phone is going into recovery mode over and over again--one time time triggered by my inability to stop it from making face time calls to people when Voice Control starts up.  It was restored, working on the long slow sync of my image library, and I had to power it down to get it to stop.  On power up it went into recovery mode again.  I restored it, got the 'hello' screen, set to restore from backup, and after restore from backup said it was ready to go, I hit the home button, saw the white-on-black apple, and got a recovery mode screen again.

     

    Any hope that it's not toast?

  • by techeadred,Helpful

    techeadred techeadred Jul 14, 2014 8:54 PM in response to Donot Haveone
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Jul 14, 2014 8:54 PM in response to Donot Haveone

    It sounds like the backup that you have is corrupted. This corruption can occur over long periods of time, but it causes the Spring Board to crash, meaning an Apple logo for a few seconds. Not as long as a boot logo.

     

    I would recommend trying to restore as new to try something different. Just to see if the issue persists. If it does fix your issue, and you are using all of your iCloud settings there are only three things you would lose.

     

    1. Text Message History

    2. In-App Save Data

    3. Photos(Conditionally if you haven't imported them recently)

     

    If your worried about the Apps themselves, I could recommend taking screen shots so you know what Apps you have. Good luck.

  • by Donot Haveone,

    Donot Haveone Donot Haveone Jul 14, 2014 9:06 PM in response to techeadred
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 14, 2014 9:06 PM in response to techeadred

    Actually, you're missing the biggest loss of all:  my time in restoring all settings for all apps, and the time that the phone is out of service.  It takes days to get things right again.  That time is far more valuable than any bit of data that wasn't yet synced to the computer.  But I'll check for an older backup first. 

  • by Donot Haveone,

    Donot Haveone Donot Haveone Jul 15, 2014 9:00 AM in response to techeadred
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 15, 2014 9:00 AM in response to techeadred

    It looks like going back to an older backup might have worked--no more random Voice Control activations.  I haven't put it into heavy use, because it's spent all night slowly slowly slowly syncing my music and photos again, but that I've made it so far without a problem is a huge relief.  Thanks!

  • by techeadred,Solvedanswer

    techeadred techeadred Jul 15, 2014 3:23 PM in response to Donot Haveone
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Jul 15, 2014 3:23 PM in response to Donot Haveone

    Well that's great news. Now what computer specs do you have? iTunes shouldn't take too long, it takes my Mac less than an hour for syning my 5,000 song library.

  • by Donot Haveone,

    Donot Haveone Donot Haveone Jul 15, 2014 3:41 PM in response to techeadred
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 15, 2014 3:41 PM in response to techeadred

    I fill my phone with 1800 songs (10GB); 11,000 photos (4GB); 28 apps (3GB); 2.5 GB of other, and less than 1 GB of books & documents.  It's the 11,000 photos that take a stunningly long time (overnight+)--something is wrong with that, and I can't tell what; it used to be 1-2 hours.  Now it's many hours.   All photos in my library transfer over, no ghost images are present, and that particular library works flawlessly for all of my manipulations on the Mac.

  • by Donot Haveone,

    Donot Haveone Donot Haveone Jul 17, 2014 1:18 PM in response to techeadred
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 17, 2014 1:18 PM in response to techeadred

    Really the specs aren't the solution--the idea of the corrupt backup was key, as phone has been fine since restored to an older backup.  But I couldn't say it was the solution becuase I'd already awarded helper points.  Thanks!

  • by dixiewun1,

    dixiewun1 dixiewun1 Jan 10, 2015 9:46 AM in response to Donot Haveone
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 10, 2015 9:46 AM in response to Donot Haveone

    Same with mine the voice control will go off in the middle of my school classes. You don't know how many time my phone has been taken away because of this. How many times its been taken away over 30 times because of this stupid thing and I have the IPhone 4. Please help me turn it off or get rid of voice control. And when I take my Ipad mini the siri will go off for no reason once again taken away to many times I know how to turn off siri but not voice control please help. I have tried everything and all it says is "You must use a mac for this action". I don't have a mac I have a Toshiba windows 8 computer.

  • by roadcrew10,

    roadcrew10 roadcrew10 Feb 25, 2016 3:15 AM in response to Donot Haveone
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 25, 2016 3:15 AM in response to Donot Haveone

    I have had  this problem on my iphone 4 for a couple of weeks. Tried so many ways to stop it. In the end went to the bottom of the settings list and activated " reset. " Seems to have worked fine, and didn't lose any data. Hope this helps someone else as it was driving me mad.