Iphone 4 Home button not working after upgrade to OS 4.3.1

I have been having the same issues with the home button and had it replaced it did not fix the problem the phone only lasted 2 weeks and I had problems again.

I have tried so many things and nothing lasted but today I turned off shortcuts on the keyboard and it is working fine will keep everyone posted but I think this may be the solution.

How do you turn off shortcuts?

I find my own experience to be interesting... The problem had become a major pain - with the home button not responding at least 75% of the time. Always, a light tap on the front right beside the button, then the button would respond great for a while...

Updated to iOS 5, and the problem completely went away... for about 2 weeks, then it began coming back and now the home button no longer responds about 50% of the time. The same tap near the button brings it back to functioning.

So I am puzzled and still believe there is a combination of issues going on.

Its an industrial design failing which is exacerbated by age and also how heavy you might be in pressing the button. The design of the iPhone4 (and 4S) uses two mini screws in the lower antenna ring to lock the lower portion of the phone in place, with heavy use or just thru age, these two screws can work their way out slightly and hence induce flex in the baseplate under the home button switch. You can see the two screws either side of the connector slot inboard of the microphones.

Please be very wary of attempting the below without the appropriate screwdriver or star driver, Apple Genius Bar will examine screw heads for tampering and may reject phone with botched heads!

If very careful (and you'll require a tiny 000 screwdriver), lay the phone face down on a flat surface, you can release the screws slightly (for 4x that I've done this on, they were already loose), then place a flat spludger inside the connector slot placing a small amount of pressure on the inside of the slot (ie. the back of the button plate), then whilst maintaining the pressure, cinch up the two screwheads. This will re-torque the button baseplate in place and you should hopefully be fine for another couple of months.

The reason some people see good success with USB cables attached (especially some non-Apple slightly badly toleranced ones), is that most of the cables both fill the slot and happen to strain the cable downward and hence lever upward pressure against the back of the button plate ... hence good success whilst connected to the USB cable, it probably maintains the plate in the "up" position as well for a little while until thumb pressure on the button overcomes the screws grip again and the baseplate drops yet again.

I don't doubt that some of the memory hungry apps (or poorly written, leaky apps) happen to slow down the system, but with the above fix in mind my 18mth old iPhone 4 is back in perfect working health and so are those of three other friends (various ages from 18mths to 1mth old).

HTH

Craig

PS. iOS versions from 4.3 thru 5.0 and GMs, obviously this is a h/w fix and OS release is irrelevant

Message was edited by: SilverMog — added iOS releases for clarity (fix is irrespective!)

This is the first plausible explenation so far if you ask me - like I mentioned before My iPhone was replaced. But this was after days of various software bug hunts, resets and calibrations... Good work!

A shame that Apple don't have the balls to admitt it. Strange I still actually like the product :)

I tend to agree with Noejda - this is a very plausible answer. This would particularly explain why light rap to the front glass near the home button seems to be nearly 100% effective (though very much temporary).

As far as the "fix", I will give it a shot when I have a bit of time. Hopefully others will try it and chime in with their experiences (and hopefully - testimonies of this working!).

Wow, I had no idea this was a widspread problem. I can tap my home button 6-8xs before it responds on my iPhone 4. I bought the 4s on release day but went back to my 4 three days ago and returned my 4s. I don't have any tools or screwdrivers that small, not even optical ones for glasses will do. This makes total sense though.

Well - got out my tiny screwdrivers and sure enough - both screws were very lose! So I backed them out a bit more and used a guitar pick to press where these instructions indicated, and tightened down the screws. We shall see what happens...

Hey guys silvermog is kinda right but don't take ur phone apart. Instead do this. This works so good it's kinda scarey.

http://www.tipb.com/2011/01/04/tipb-bug-home-button-working-iphone/

please help spread the word of how incredibly awesome killer woo is :D

It's just a minor design flaw. The housing for the button kinda bends down over time. Harder u pressing the worse it gets. Use woo's trick to push the housing back up and then just be gentle with it from then on and it will be like butta

i am having this problem for sometime now.. n i am sure its a hardware problem... i face this problem once in a while.. i jus tap the phone lightly on my palms a few times n the button starts working again.. worked everytime.. do try this technique.

1. Open any application on the iPhone
2. Press and hold the Power button till the ‘Slide to Shutdown’ screen appears.
3. Now release the Power button and gently hold the Home button.
4. In all probability, your Home button would start functioning normally again!

In the case that it fails to do so even after all this, you’ll definitely need to check out the hardware part. If you have just recently bought the device, then you get a replacement warranty so you can make use of that to get a new device quickly.

In case your iPhone home button has become less sensitive or is even broken, iOS 5 has come up with the great solution named ‘AssistiveTouch’ feature. Assistive Touch is one of the accessibility features in iOS 5 that can be served as a workaround, if your iPhone home button is broken.

How to Enable Assistive Touch to Access Home Button from Screen in iOS 5:

Got to Settings -> General -> Accessibility. Scroll down to bottom and tap on “AssistiveTouch” option. Set it ON to activate the option.

After setting AssistiveTouch to ON, you will see a transparent round button at the bottom right of the screen. Tap on that round button to bring the touch menu.

You will find the Home button option that works just like as the physical home button.

Hope, latest iOS 5 AssistiveTouch feature will bring the intended results.

I cannot speak to the many others who have posted on this now old thread... but the "fix" for me was the one posted some time back that inovlved the two little phillips screws near the dock port. I didn't have to loosten them, they were already loose! I pressed the inner part towards the screen and tightened the two screws and haven't had a single issue with the button not responding. All the other "fixes" at best were short-term helps.

There is an alternative though...check out the link and share. Thanks

http://zytecworld.com/2011/11/25/iphone-home-button-not-working-herss-how-you-fi x-it/

I could not get my iphone home button to work....I tried everything I knew to do. I did a reboot 3 or 4 times and that didn't work. Then, I restored my phone...took everything all off and back on again. THEN, after much trying to figure this out...I remembered one time I had an issue...I blew into the place where the charger cord connects....and put the charger cord in and out several times really hard and it worked...did that and my home button immediately started working!!!! Not really sure why that worked, but it has 2 times already for me on 2 DIFFERENT problems.

Then, I remembered my home button didn't work after I plugged it up to charge in the car and then unplugged. Before that, it was perfectly fine...who knows...technology!! 🙂