What's the difference between a "hard reset" and powering IPhone 3G off?

rimshaker; Your are right. Anytime you do a "hard reset" as compared to a "soft reset" all devices on the PCB, that have reset functionality will be reset and the BIOS will run it's entire initialization. I believe that is what I said.

But the "power down" of the IPhone 3G is not the same, I suspect, as a soft reset as I do not believe that any hardware gets reset. It just gets put to sleep. A "hard reset" on the phone will cause all hardware devices that have reset capability to get reset and re-initialized, and this explains why it sometimes fixes issues that just powering off the phone does not.

Thanks

The Omega

billygoat; When you just hit the sleep/off button on the top it just turns the display off. It may also reduce some devices to a lower power mode, such as the GPU. This mode reduces power to a degree and wakes the phone back up the fastest. When you hold down the sleep/off button on the top more than just the display is powered down and the devices are put into an even lower power down state. This saves even more power but takes longer for the phone to come back up. The third one, holding down both the sleep/off and the home button actually resets all the hardware and forces the computer to reboot, i.e. re-initialize the device. This takes the longest time to reboot, but is the most likely to clear up problems with the phone.

I do not believe that number 1 and 2 reset any hardware devices but are instead different levels of sleep modes. 1 is like your computer monitor going to sleep after the screen saver has timed out. 2 is more like hibernate mode on a computer where many devices are powered to a low power state, such as the hard drive. 3 is like pushing the reset button (if you have one) on your computer which resets everything and runs the initialization from the beginning.

I hope this answers your question. If not, please let me know.

Thanks

The Omega

You are right when you say i don't have a Mac. As a result I cannot speak directly to the Mac OS. I can, however, speak directly about how ALL PCs work, including the Mac from a hardware perspective.

There are several low power modes on both PCs and the IPhones. Yes, if you hold both keys on the IPhone it will do as you describe because you are continually reseting the hardware. Intel has presently 5 different low power states on their chip sets and they are adding a sixth. Now I know that the IPhone does not, that I have seen, have Intel chips in them but I can assure you that the IPhone has multiple low power states. Just pushing the sleep/off button and the display shuts off is one of these low power states. In this case nothing is getting reset.

I had some discussions just today, in a meeting with several Intel engineers out of Cupertino, regarding some new mobile chip sets. Just pushing the sleep/off button versus pushing and holding it and then swiping the off slider and pushing and holding both the sleep/off button along with the Home button all put the IPhone into different states. That last one is the only one that actually resets the entire phone.


The Omega

The difference in what you posted and what I posted is that mine was a brief and accurate explanation of what happens when the user does one of the power down options. If you read any of the post, other than your own, you will see that people like agent_s87, just as an example, appreciated my explanation of what happens.

As far as helping people, in the little time I have been here I have helped a dozen or more people, and given many more information that is useful, valuable, and appreciated by most who have read it.

I suggest you stick to what you know, as your explaining doesn't make a great deal of sense.

The Omega