New iPhone 4S unresponsive, requiring a hard reset on several occasions

Wanted to post back with an update. Black 64GB 4S.

Made a Genius Bar reservation just over a week ago. Printed out all 6 pages (that's how many there were at that time) of this thread and took them with me as corroborating evidence.

Wasn't necessary in the end. The Genius at the Bar listened to my timeline of events (detective story really) and promptly brought out a replacement phone.

I asked the question (new or refurb?) and got this response."A) Too new a device to be a refurb, and B) we only give out brand new phones at this Apple store, all the refurbs go to AT&T and other outlets."

So I went home fired up iTunes and did a restore, put all the passwords back into the email account settings and after a little over a week haven't had one lockup at all. Not even a weird little glitchling (technical term for small nuisance fault).

I have learned some things from the news and various tech sites about turning off unneccesary location items and turning off push.

And I haven't tried to use Siri since I got the replacement phone (there was a reported outage last week).

So far so good.

I think it was an iOS fault all along, not hardware.

We'll see.

S.

fixed typo.

I have a 16GB iPhone 4s not upgraded from a previous iPhone, this is my first one, and have had this problem with the screen just going black and the phone "dying". It happened about 4 hours after I got the phone, so I just let it die over night and recharged it. It has been occuring on average about 2 times a day I'd say. Half the time pressing the lock and home buttons at the same time will make it turn back on, and the other half it doesnt. Also, sometimes it's warm, sometimes it's not. there seems to be no correlation as to what turns it off, and I read the location services could do it and that has been turned off for a week now. 2 days ago It stayed off for an hour, and now it has been about 3 hours and 15 minutes.... Every other time it has come back on the battery has been at the same level it was when it turned off, so i dont think its a batter issue. I am taking it to the Apple store tomorrow, so if I get seen I guess I'll update back. Any advice though? Even though it sounds like there's none...

Went back to the store in Southampton again on Saturday morning and the genius was brilliant, looked at diagnostics, listened to problem and swapped out for a new one straight away. I did it as a new phone and put nothing on it - just iCloud, email and upgraded to 5.0.1 direct on the phone. It was fine all day and overnight so I put music and photos on. Again was alright all today so have put a few apps on too. So far so good.

It happened to me for the first time last night in stand-by. I tried to unlock when it went into shutting down mode and stayed there for 11 hours. I have 4s with 16 gig and using at&t. Thanks for the helpful advice. I didn't lose anything.

4S 32 GB same deal frozen screen no response and very hot on the back of the device. So glad i ran across this thread thought i was going nuts. Have done completly new device dance and no difference still crashing and locking up. Going back to store again and this time pushing for a swap out.

Incident Identifier: 406766AE-88CC-4179-90AF-128F4F8031F5

CrashReporter Key: 2edc84da096fcb18a9ef574e13152665d8f35fb9

Hardware Model: iPhone4,1

Date/Time: 2011-11-15 07:40:58.536 -0600

OS Version: iPhone OS 5.0.1 (9A405)

panic(cpu 0 caller 0x8007de74): undefined kernel instruction

r0: 0x81e89600 r1: 0x802f5130 r2: 0x8e55da8c r3: 0x801e5555

r4: 0x00000001 r5: 0x81e89600 r6: 0x00000003 r7: 0xd270be30

r8: 0xe00002c2 r9: 0x00000000 r10: 0x8e55da8c r11: 0x8e55dab8

12: 0x00000003 sp: 0xd270bd48 lr: 0x801e556d pc: 0x802ffd4c

cpsr: 0xa0000033 fsr: 0x00000000 far: 0x00000000

Debugger message: panic

OS version: 9A405

Kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 11.0.0: Tue Nov 1 20:34:16 PDT 2011; root:xnu-1878.4.46~1/RELEASE_ARM_S5L8940X

iBoot version: iBoot-1219.43.32

secure boot?: YES

Paniclog version: 1

Epoch Time: sec usec

Boot : 0x4ec1ce61 0x00000000

Sleep : 0x4ec26b38 0x0002d55f

Wake : 0x4ec26bd0 0x00000009

Calendar: 0x4ec26bd0 0x00002120

Task 0xc085ed20: 9523 pages, 119 threads: pid 0: kernel_task

Task 0xc085eac0: 185 pages, 3 threads: pid 1: launchd

Task 0xc085e600: 896 pages, 8 threads: pid 12: UserEventAgent

Task 0xc085e3a0: 255 pages, 3 threads: pid 13: notifyd

Task 0xc085e140: 524 pages, 11 threads: pid 14: configd

Task 0xc085dee0: 8505 pages, 21 threads: pid 15: SpringBoard

Task 0xc085dc80: 155 pages, 4 threads: pid 16: syslogd

Task 0xc085d7c0: 1279 pages, 20 threads: pid 18: CommCenter

thread 0xc0e1e610

kernel backtrace: d270bac0

lr: 0x8007bccb fp: 0xd270baec

lr: 0x8007c2cf fp: 0xd270bb1c

lr: 0x800165f7 fp: 0xd270bb3c

lr: 0x8007de74 fp: 0xd270bbe0

lr: 0x80079118 fp: 0xd270be30

lr: 0x8006bbad fp: 0xd270bf18

lr: 0x8001846f fp: 0xd270bf3c

lr: 0x8000d57b fp: 0xd270bf6c

lr: 0x80013b57 fp: 0xd270bfa8

lr: 0x800791e8 fp: 0x00b08ec8

user state:

r0: 0x00b08ee0 r1: 0x00000003 r2: 0x0000005c r3: 0x000010bc

r4: 0x00003503 r5: 0x00000000 r6: 0x00000000 r7: 0x00b08ec8

r8: 0x00000000 r9: 0x00b0a050 r10: 0x00000003 r11: 0x00000000

r12: 0xffffffe1 sp: 0x00b08e8c lr: 0x3364e20d pc: 0x3364e010

cpsr: 0x60000010 fsr: 0x00000807 far: 0x007cc010

user backtrace: 0x00b08ec8

lr: 0x37792f11 fp: 0x00b09fd0

lr: 0x3776433f fp: 0x00b0a044

lr: 0x37764527 fp: 0x00b0a068

lr: 0x377661ed fp: 0x00b0a08c

lr: 0x377648b1 fp: 0x00b0a0b0

lr: 0x37d8df43 fp: 0x00b0a1c8

lr: 0x37d98553 fp: 0x00b0a1d8

lr: 0x37d984f5 fp: 0x00b0a200

lr: 0x37d97343 fp: 0x00b0ae84

lr: 0x37d1a4dd fp: 0x00b0af4

Same issue here 4S 32GB - Worked fine for about a week then happened twice in one day.

I have had the same issue, but it's only happened twice so far. I have a 64 Gb 4S. I had to reboot it twice on 11/12. Screen was black and unresponsive. Since then I've been okay.

New phone and 48 hrs no crashes, was even able to go use to my old back and run fine on restore. very convinced this was hardware issue.

same issue for me tonight and I have a 16G 4gs. First time it's frozen like this since I got it on release day.

Same issue for me. Black AT&T 64GB iPhone 4S, iOS 5.0.1. Received the phone 3 days ago, happened for the first time this morning while playing a game. The screen just went black during the middle of the game. All buttons were completely unresponsive. A hard reset brought it back. Just found this thread, and I knew nothing of this issue until I began researching it after my phone locked up. Oh, and one more thing, my battery life is sub-par.

Got 4S 16G last Friday and have now had 4 instances where it locked up and would refuse to respond. I do not recall what I was doing the first two times, but was attempting to use the camera, and configuring the VPN settings the two most recent times. Everything just freezes, and initially it will not even respond to a hard reset.

(32GB 4S, AT&T)

I finally called support about this, got told to set the phone up as a new device. This appeared to work, but about 4 days later, another panic occurred. Called back, got escalated to a senior adviser, who set me up with the nearest Genius Bar to replace the phone. Fingers crossed.

iphone 4s with ios 5.0.1 here. I've been having the same issue for the last two weeks. I would find the phone dead, blank dark screen, as if it had ran out of battery and died. Had to press home and top button to do a hard reboot. Under General->About-Diag & usage, I see plist and message states anywhere from cpu 0 panic to MDT ... etc.

Happens around once or twice a day, apparently its been happening since I check for crash dump daily and it seems to have been able to reboot and comes back by itself sometimes. So this could have been happening from day one as far as I know.

Restore the phone as new, same thing. Booked an appt with Genius bar this evening and they listened for 2 mins as i explained (they asked if I did a restore) took the phone to the back and immediate offered a swap, no questions asked.

horray to apple support!

I'm having the same problem with a 64 GB AT&T iPhone 4S running iOS 5.0.1. I have had the phone replaced this weekend and had a freeze again that evening. My symptom is that I get a freeze and the entire phone becomes unresponsive (even animations on the screen freeze up) and then about a minute later the phone attempts to shut down but freezes on that screen (with the circular twirling animation even freezing). I have to press the front and top buttons to reset the phone.

It's nice to hear that they are replacing many problematic units upon visiting a Genius Bar. What would be even nicer is to learn of a solution that doesn't involve a 6 hour round trip drive.