Sleep/wake button stuck

Apple's philosophy, people will buy anything they sell. I have had two fail now, the second one is out of warranty. At least my 2nd gen Ipod Touch is still working great! I'm sure they will find a way to make sure the new Touch does not last as long.

My iPod Nano broke too! I have had it for only two years and the button just stopped working the other day randomly. I saw this message board and tried looking into having it fixed, but they were going to charge me $87! I might as well buy a new iPod with that! If this is as wide-spread of an issue as it seems to be, they should make a recall on these models, because you shouldn't have to pay for a brand new iPod when it is bound to fail and then you'll have to buy a new one. Apple has over-priced, over-enthused products and they don't even have to integrity to own up to a manufacture error. I will not be buying any more Apple products if I can help it.

Same problem, same experience! Paying premium prices for inherently defective products is NOT a good business practice when trying to keep us locked in to Apple's premium ecosystem. I'll definitely reconsider purchasing future Apple products.

I Have now gone through two iPod nandos and both times the sale/wake button has been the problem. I think it's the fact it's very fragile however it is a major design fault if its happened to lots of people. I took the first one back to my nearest apple store and they said they couldn't repair it so I had to buy a new one however they did knock a lot of the price off. Now it's happened to the replacement!! I was so annoyed but as its happened to lots of people I just think that's its more that apple are doing something wrong rather than me! 🙂

Same position here, of course I've had my Nano now for just a month and a bit outside of the 1 year limited warranty. Funny how that works. I really haven't used my Nano all that much (I use it mainly for working out and well, I haven't been as diligent as I should have been). I did nothing to cause the issue. I'll be contacting Apple customer service, but after reading the comments I'm not expecting much. This is why I am just not an Apple fan.

Me too! This is my second one, same problem with the sleep wake or on off switch not working. I can still user if I plug it into power to start it up. When the first one broke after a little over a year, I was told to get a refurbished one that the problem was repaired on the refurbished ones. So thats what I did. I believed. Well, the new refurbished one lasted 5 months. I love the design of the nano 6 with the clip and small size but obviously the design defect is not fixed in refurbishment. The woman on the phone today at Apple this time, had never heard of the problem! Really, maybe her first day. She also said I could back it up and would send instructions. The instructions were for Iphones, Ipads and touch, not nano. Can't back up a nano. Maybe it was her first day. Another recent experience with an IPhone problem the tech support was absolutely wonderful. I have an appt. tomorrow to take it to the store, under one year, I am expecting a replacement!

My second iPod is having this problem. The first had it as well and was replaced under warranty. Unfortunately, replacement devices are only warrantied for 90 days so they will not replace my broken replacement device under warranty. This appears to be a very widespread problem due to faulty design.

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No proplem getting a replacement at the store, 5 months into the 1 year warranty. Everyone in the store was great! So I now have a third nano, 6. Fingers crossed! Such a nice design, when it works! Too bad it seems to be plagued by this button problem.

Add me to this growing list. Grrrrrrrrr. As a runner I liked this product size, design (well not so much now). Would like to see a recall/fix initiated by Apple. DO THE RIGHT THING.

It seems I've just become a member of a large club of iPod nano 6th generation owners with an on/off switch that's failed. It's actually the one I bought as a present for my wife just over 2 years ago and she's really dissappointed.

I tried to fix it, but no luck, so then spent a couple of hours reading dozens of posts on a variety of forums all saying exactly the same thing.

There is clearly a fault with the design and/or manufacture of the switch.

Apple - if anyone with authority reads this can you please think hard about just how let down customers feel when an otherwise good device simply fails because of what looks like the poor design of the vital on/off switch.

I'm sure you care about your reputation and I know that you make huge profits so come on, play fair and deal with this problem properly, don't just hide behind limited warranty rules.

I don't expect to get a positive reply to this but you never know............... ?

I have had my nano for 2 years, and take very good care of my things, so was quite upset when my sleep/wake button became unresponsive, thinking I had done something wrong I took to the support to see if there was any resolution, and now after reading everyone else's posts I am quite irritated. It doesn't seem fair at all that this is clearly a very common complaint and apple seemed to have done nothing to rectify it or help users like us, who are out of the warrenty period to aid the nano repair at maybe not such an astronomical cost? As it stands if I want to get my nano's button fixed the quoted fee is £74 which is over more than half of what I actually paid intially. Surely if this is a fault that Apple are aware of (and judging by all these posts they should be) shouldn't there be a free service or if necessary a vastly reduced servicing fee?

I wait in hope that Apple do truely care for us the consumer and maybe offer a better resolution to fix this problem? As to be honest I adore my nano and am a little lost without it.

VP1979. I had exactly the same problem about a week ago my sleep wake button packed in after only 14 months of pretty faithful service. Im not an apple advokate my self and never have been but the 6th gen nano at the time was the largest flash based device going and my hand was forced to switch to apple. Ive regretted it ever since, and this particular fault made it worse.

There is a solution however, The problem with the button is a very small piece of rubber wears down inside the ipod. You can do this fix yourself you need a bit of 3m 1mm adhesive strips and you can order the button assemblt from ebay for £5. All in all the fix cost me £12 and an hour of my time. The are many teardown videos on you tube that show how to get at the bit you want to fix. Follow them and add in the part youll have a working ipod in no time.

I should note that this completely voids all warrenty if you do this, but the issue arises as you have no warrenty anyway. I thought it was either give it a go or buy a new mp3 player. I'm happy that my fix worked, as it just goes to show how appauling apple customer care is when it comes down to faults with their product. Their genius' wont do this fix either.

Congratulations on your fix, Shacklepants! I tried this with my first one which was out of warranty. In the process I messed up the display and made it totally unuseable. So to others prceed with caution, but what the heck, worth a try, maybe.

Thanks 789789

You have to be quite cautious when taking the screen off, I happen to have a few safe case opening tools used for mobile phone repair but again you can buy these on the internet. Or use a guitar pic. An easy way of lifting of the screen once you have separated the glue is with a small suction cup (the type you use to stick things to windows).

To all other readers of my post, I should back up what 789789 says. Do proceed with caution when reparing any device. But as I said before its worth the effort rather than buying an all together new unit. Because your market becomes very limited when (as I have now) you completely rule out apple.

i have gone through 4 of these shittily designed ipods. Buttons break left and right from everyday use. costs 75 dollars to send it in a get a new one that lasts even less time.

First 6th gen: lasted a little more than a year before sleep/wake button broke

second: lasted a little less than a year before the sleep/wake button broke

third: lasted about 6 months before the volume up button broke

fourth: lasted 3 months before sleep/wake button broke

all of these costed 75 dollars to replace.

My advice buy one, final ipod 6th gen. Buy a warranty for like a year or so. Use it for almost a year. Manually break button by overusing it on purpose. Send it in for another one for free.

Im sick and tired of these ****** designs, i swear to god they purposely add in mechanical flaws to their designs so you have to replace continuously.

-****** off customer