IPhone 4 screen orientation won't rotate

This began happening to me today. Home screen and most apps won't rotate on my iPhone 4S with iOS 6.0.1 even though some apps like Waze and the default Maps app rotate fine. What hasn't worked so far is toggling the Orientation lock multiple times, rebooting, powering off with the Orientation Lock on, toggling the Ringer button, shaking the iPhone in my hand, deleting the Pandora app I just installed, and rebooting again. Since the rotation works in some apps, it seems this has to be a software issue. Any more ideas, or am I doomed to another trip to the Genius bar?

Thanks so much! Worked like a charm. Was going to bring it to genius bar but last time all they offered was "lets completely restore your phone". Not good. But this did the trick!

The Genius help me understand (diplomatically of course) that mine was a dumb user error, or misconception. I came from the iPad first, and had wrongly assumed that the iPhone home screen and all iPhone apps would flip to landscape. I now know better!

Hilariously shaking my phone fixed it when absolutely none of the other suggestions did. lol

:D

All good, the off/home button method worked for me!

Thank you!

But

: (

now i am all sad coz i can't do the hilarious phone shake method

I just found this thread, and I don't know if other people are having this issue - My phone just started randomly going into landscape mode and getting stuck there. Like I'll be in portrait, and then suddenly and unexpectedly, it will switch into landscape for no reason - I'm not even holding the phone horizontally or close to it. Then no matter what I do, it will stay in landscape, even if I'm holding the phone completely vertical. I turned on portrait lock to keep it from doing that. Anyone know an easier solution? Help!

Mine stopped rotating probably a year ago. No biggie. Not until I now have an app that needs to be able to read the angle I put the phone on. It used to work now it don't. It's all part of the same problem, I'm certain.

Carrollt, thanks, this worked!

Hah, made my day, tried everything, lock on/off, reboot, deep reboot - nothing worked. But then:- Shake phone hard as you can, bingo! - your sister is a genius, cheers mate

Reference page 25 of the iPhone Users Guide at https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1565/en_US/iphone_user_guide.pdf:

To access the portrait orientation lock, swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen to open Control Center. The portrait orientation lock icon appears at the top right. If the background circle for the portrait orientation lock is bright, it is on. If the background circle for the portrait orientation lock is dull gray, it is off. Text appears at the top of the Control Center screen showing the current status of the portrait orientation lock each time you tap the portrait orientation lock icon to switch from off to on or vice versa.

iPhone4 users: To unlock screen orientation, swipe up from bottom of screen. Last icon on your right at top of screen is image of lock surrounded by an arrow. This is your orientation lock. Press it to lock or unlock orientation.

My problem was I couldn't get INTO landscape mode to text. In 10.0.2, I finally figured out that there is an icon in the far lower right corner of the graphics screen that popped up every time I turned the iPhone SE to landscape, that is meant to represent a KEYBOARD!! Touching that gets rid of the weird graphics screen and the text box and keyboard appear in landscape orientation. THAT was what I needed to know.