IPhone 4s unresponsive stuck on the spinning wheel of death.

Question

IPhone 4s unresponsive stuck on the spinning wheel of death.

Hi,

My 4s has gotten progressively more unresponsive for the last few days. It worked flawlessly for two weeks or so, but the last two or so days have seen it getting weird.

Symptom 1 appeared 2-3 days or so ago: Facebook started getting freezy. 50% of the time it would take after opening it would take 15-45 sec to become to finish loading and become responsive to touch commands.

Symptom 2 happened 2 days ago: The phone froze for 15 or so seconds, went to black screen, showed the spinning wheel of death, and then rebooted to lock screen very quickly.

Symptom 3 happened 4 hours ago: The phone was searching for the carrier when I took it out of my pocket. Other iphone users in the room had perfect reception. I solved the problem by turning on airplane mode briefly and then turning it off again.

Symptom 4 happened just now: I was playing music, paused with the earbud control, switched to a different set of headphones, pressed play on the lock screen and got no response. Realized the phone was frozen. It stayed that way for 2-3 minutes, went to black screen and the spinning wheel of death, but then the spinning wheel of death froze as well. It has been in this state for the last 20 minutes.

I will be happy to post time-stamped photos of the locked up phone if anyone needs proof.

A hard-reset solved the problem. For now.

Any advice on what this could be? A software setting? An app interaction?

Any advice on if I should return the phone and get a different one?

Thanks!

--Jason

Posted on Jan 11, 2012 11:56 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 16, 2012 9:52 PM in response to Jason Fleischer

New problem today: The phone didn't have data connection for an unknown length of time. I only discovered it when trying to use siri. However during this outage the 3G symbol stayed on and I had both adequate reception and could make voice calls.

Turning on and off airplane mode did not fix it.

Turning off ONavo didn't fix it.

But turning on and off the phone did fix it.

Is this starting to sound familiar to anyone?

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Answer 2

Jan 16, 2012 10:33 PM in response to Jason Fleischer

Hey sorry to hear about your frustration.

A couple of things.

First, Facebook is known for causing issues on iPhone. It takes up a lot of memory and has been known to crash a lot. It has gotten a lot better with time and updates but can still cause problems. I tend to manually quit it from the App-switcher/multitasking tray.

Second, the reception issue you mentioned ("Searching", lack of data connection) sounds like it might be similar to some of the reports on this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3511559?tstart=30#3511559

Personally, I've been having the same problems on my 4S with reception as well as Siri being unavailable in spite of having 3G and being able to make/receive calls.

Thirdly, now that you mention it, I have noticed lack of responsiveness to touch input at times. Sometimes when my phone is locked, I'll press the home button or the wake button and it will take quite awhile before the phone reponds amd the screen turns on. Sometimes it doesn't at all and I have to press the button multiple times to get a reponse.

So, yes, many of your issues sound familiar. Unfortunately, I think I share some of them with you.

One thing you might want to check is what software version you have. The most recent is 5.0.1 build 9A406. If you have 5.0.1 build 9A405 you're not running the most up-to-date software. In that case, update by backing ul and restoring from iTunes (sofware update on the phone will not show the update; it has to be done via backup+restore in iTunes). To check what version you have, go to Settings>General>About. Scroll down and check what it says under "Version".

I hope that helps somewhat.

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