Iphone 4 Home button not working after upgrade to OS 4.3.1

I've noticed that I have this issue when I use any USB cord/charger that is NOT an Apple product or the USB cord/charger that came with my iPhone 4. I've cleaned (vacuumed and swabbed lightly with rubbing alcohol), reset all settings, reinstalled software and all that jazz and this is the one consistent reason I seem to come up with. The various resetting of the home button techniques in these various posts work but only while I have it plugged in to a charger (any charger seems to work for this). Once I unplug it then it seems to have a 50% chance of working again if it wasn't an Apple charger. Hope that makes sense and someone else has seen this same pattern.

I have upgraded to 4.3.4 and it is still there. Intermittent problem. Button works sometimes and then does not work. It's frustrating. Apple, please fix this!

I have the same problem and now it is continuous. Only soft rebooting gets me back to home screen.

same problem but with apple cable too with my old ip4.

I call applecare at 19.30 the day after at 16.00 pm i have new iphone (italy) with new serial no refurbished, no home button issue (at this time sgrat sgrat) 🙂

Anacoreta Cenobita wrote:

I've noticed that I have this issue when I use any USB cord/charger that is NOT an Apple product or the USB cord/charger that came with my iPhone 4. I've cleaned (vacuumed and swabbed lightly with rubbing alcohol), reset all settings, reinstalled software and all that jazz and this is the one consistent reason I seem to come up with. The various resetting of the home button techniques in these various posts work but only while I have it plugged in to a charger (any charger seems to work for this). Once I unplug it then it seems to have a 50% chance of working again if it wasn't an Apple charger. Hope that makes sense and someone else has seen this same pattern.

Yup.. This was my problem too.. I started having problems with a cable I got with my car audio integraion kit and just never put two and two together. Confirmed that when using that cable with my iPhone 4 it seems to start intermitantly and then the problem persists until I plug into a better cable. Strange but true. Maybe something with the resistance built into the cable. Why would it effect the home button I wonder?

Thanks for the insight..

I've been having the same problem. I haven't read all the posts, but I haven't noticed anyone with an iPhone 3 complaining about it. I wonder if it has something to do with multitasking; I noticed that I often get the problem when I'm running several apps and switching between them. simplyshervin's advice seems to work well (thanks a lot!) and I've started using that recalibration procedure on a regular basis, even when the problem is not occuring. For convenience here it is again:

"You probably need to re-calibrate the home button. To do so follow these steps

1.) Open an application

2.) Press and hold the power button until the slide to shutdown swipe bar appears.

3.) Release Power button

4.) Press and hold Home button Lightly until screen returns to icon screen

Finished, your home button now works as good as new."

no.. not helping

HOME BUTTON PROBLEM HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IOS. YOU JUST CONTACT APPLE AND THEY WILL REPLACE YOUR PHONE.

Re-calibrating instructions do not work.

I start the "clock" application and follow the steps to the letter. Lightly (or abusively) pressing the home button does not return you to the home screen. You need to press the Cancel button to resume or slide the slider to turn off the phone.

Here are the pertinent phone details:

iPhone 4

Version: 4.3.5 (8L1)

Model: MC605ZA

If some of you are saying the calibrating instructions work, then Apple must have released 2 versions of the iPhone 4 without telling us!

Home button appears to have something to do with iOS because why else would the problem occur for me only over a long period of time after the last hard poweroff/restart of the phone?

Symptoms to indicate it is not hardware related:

1. If it happens and I turn off the phone and restart it, the problem GOES AWAY!
2. The phone's home button then behaves for quite some time...sometimes as long as a month before the problem comes back again.
3. Repeating step 1 fixes the issue again.

The above is not systemic of a hardware issue. If it really was a broken or dirty home button, the problem would occur:

1. Intermittentedly every day when dirt gets in front of the contacts
2. All the time when the home button would just not respond because of excessive buildup of dirt
3. Would occur regardless of a power off

I do not dispute that some of you may have a real home button hardware issue as that could happen but I also believe there is an iOS memory/buffer issue that is causing the subroutine to handle the home button interrupts to stop working.

I am experiencing all of the same issues being described here. My home button only functions intermittently, often not registering single clicks, or interpreting a double click as a single click.

Something I haven't seen mention of, though... my battery life also greatly declined around the same time I noticed the home button issues. By the time I go home after a day at work, barely having touched my phone all day, it's often at 20% whereas it used to remain mostly full, even using it throughout the day.

I'm inclined to think it's a hardware issue, so I'll be going to AT&T to try getting my receipt reprinted, since when I input my serial number online it's falsely telling me it's out of warranty when it is in fact less than a year old. Then off to get a new phone...

I'm not sure yet if those "calibration" instructions actually cured my trouble, but when I pressed and held the power button until the shut down screen came up, I "lightly pressed" and held the home button. It took a out 4 or 5 seconds (maybe longer) and that screen finally closed and I found myself at the "desktop".

Out of all these relatively "high tech" suggestions a variation on yours worked, I simply lightly tap the button end of the phone on my desk and the button works again. I now say it's a hardware problem.

Loki001 wrote:

I've had the same problem off and on through a couple of firmware updates. Recently I found a "fix" by accident. When my phone was not responding, I dropped it on a carpeted floor and it started working again. Worked fine until today when I mowed the yard with it in my pocket. So when I finished I went inside and dropped it from about waist high again, and it's working again. 2 for 2 so far...

I've tried all the other things in this post with mixed success.

Since I made the origianl post, I've had about a dozen more opportunities to implement my "fix". I have started using the variation that you are using and it works everytime. I agree, it's a hardware issue, that I'm willing to live with as long as the bump technique works. It's less trouble that driving to an apple store to get it fixed.

I was convinced this was a software issue and in my last post talked about how I found 3rd party sync cables to be causing issue, however I have also found the bump solution. Looks like this might be hardware afterall..

My new theory is that since the dock connector and home button are so close together, physicly, one may be effecting the other. The issue seemed to happen when I pugged in a cable, and more often, a cable with locking clips. Maybe the connector housing is loose and putting pressure on the home button or connection to the logic board. Posible? I'm about to go check out a teardown and see what I can find.

I can seem to bring it back to full function with a solid downward smack to the bottom of my phone. Those sync cables seem to push it up so I'll just keep smacking it back down until I talk to Apple. Luckly I'm close to one here..