Q: iPhone 4 Home button issue...

How long will it last before messing up or will it stay fixed? Does 100% work the best?

Took IPhone 4 to Smart Phone Medic and had button cleaned.  Worked for a day. Took it back and he checked all connections, but could not find anything that looked loose.  He put in a different battery.  It worked much better but still had delays in starting up when home button activated.  Took it back and he checked wiring harness. Replaced battery (a used one from another phone).  Once charged up, it has now been two and half days and no delays in start up.

I did not that when it will not start up, it will also not communicate with my car bluetooth so it is not that it is just not coming on, it is dead.  Sounds a lot like a softeware issue that it would simply delay start up for a long period of time.  It acts almost like it might be processing something and too busy to fire up when asked.

Not sure why it is now working.  I think the tech must have jiggled something that was a bit loose.

Fingers crossed that it keeps working.

My home button has been slow to respond (or not responding) for about 6 months, and I just did the following:

I just got a ball point pen and ran it around the rim of the home button, fairly fast, about 10 times.  Took me 5 seconds, and now it is fixed and resonsive on every touch!! 

Try it!

Problem returned.  I note now that when depressing the home button and no immediate response, I can double tap the screen with two fingers just above the home button and the screen will activate within six seconds.  Annoying but it is working for me.

I am having the exact same issue and it seemed to get a lot worse after installing the iOS 6 update. I have tried numerous quick fixes and one or two of them have seemed to help quite a lot (such as re-calibrating the home button and resetting the phone). However, it is still not 100% working so I am thinking about taking it to the apple store. Does anyone know roughly how much they would charge for something like this? (As the phone is no longer under warranty and I do not have any applecare subscriptions). I would just like to have an idea before I take it to the store because I don't want to be wasting my time if they are going to want a small fortune for doing it.

I have the same problem. iPhone 5. I discovered than the problem goes away when the phone is flat on a desk or table.

its a german video, but this stuff helped me very well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b-AmgpsWHc

Wow! That was easy. Works now. Hopefully it will work the next time I run into the problem.

It worked like a charm! Greatly appreciated!

Hi,

I work as a repair man for various models of mobile phones (almost all kind) and the iPhone 4 has the hardware issue which was surely fixed in the iPhone 4S related to the home button.

Moisture and dust (and sometimes misalignment due to heat) are the reasons why the iPhone 4 home buttons stops responding. In iPhone 4S there is a rubber gasket that prevents those factors to mess with the home button.

It is not necessary to open the iPhone 4 to fix this at least in light cases.

One thing you can do is fastly and firmely press the home button many times in a row and the points where the internal metal makes contacts will clean itself. Tested many times but the problem will reoccur in the future in every iphone 4. When it does just do the same and it will be ok.

cheers:

-Tom

I visited the Covent Garden Apple Store Genius Bar and the 'genius' suggested the following workaround for iOS7 with my iPhone 4:

Go to Settings / General / Acessibility / Assistive Touch and turn it on. A button will appear on your screen. Press it and you can use your home button from there.

I know this sounds totally weird but since updating to ios 7 all of my home button issues have disappeared and it is now responsive.  I have cleaned it in the past with rubbing alcohol and it did improve things but at the moment it is working fine.  Lucky me I suppose.

Rubbing alcohol worked like a charm. I had some Chivas Regal whiskey! Got some onto my finger and rubbed the home button in circles. I shut down the phone first. Once it dried up, I continued to rub the button whilst holding it upside down (ie: face down) until all remaining alcohol from inside the button came out or dried up completely and no more alcohol was oozing out from inside. Turned the phone back on and voila!! Works flawlessly. Thanks for whoever suggested this. The button feels really smooth and quiet too when I press it.

Hi, my iphone had the same problem. what i did was i took a small drip of water and pressed it once then wiped it and pressed it hard. Then it could go to the home. then i pressed it  couple of times and it worked, it changed back to normal

So I foudn this post, which sounds promising, and I hope it works for me. My only concern is this, and it's been like this for a long long time. My home button has to be pressed relatively deep and hard to work, thats my issue. Does this mean that the metal "dome" thing has alrady been damaged as stated by the 5th post. Although I must say that there is other times when the button works smoothly and lightly, which makes me think that it is indeed just a dust/dirst issue.

What do you think?

Also if poster Hul1gn could respond as well I would appreciate it.

Regards