Voice memo crashing on iphone & sync session failing

You might try force-closing the Voice Memos app if you haven't already. To do this, double-tap the home buttton, locate Voice Memos in the list at the bottom, tap and hold it until it wiggles, tap ➖ to close it, tap the home button. Now see if Voice Memos will open without crashing.

Have you tried restoring your phone?

Restoring your phone replaces the iOS with a fresh copy in case the iOS has become corrupted. At the beginning of the process you will be given an option to back up your phone. Choose this and you will be able to restore to this backup at the end, returning your data and settings to your phone. This guide will show you the process: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414 (perform the backup at step 6). After the phone restarts at the end, you will go through the activation screens again and will be given the option to Restore from iTunes Backup. Select this and restore to the backup you made at the beginning. Finish by syncing with iTunes to transfer back your iTunes media (apps, videos, music, etc.) back to your phone.

Before doing this, import your photos and videos to your computer (see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4083), sync with iTunes (to transfer any recent purchases) and back up your contacts separately (by, for example, syncing them with iCoud: Settings>iCloud>Contacts>On). These are precautionary steps as photos and contacts can go missing when restoring from backup and you don't want to lose them.

You can back up your phone and transfer you purchases without syncing by doing the folloiwng:

1. Without connecting your phone, open iTunes on your computer and go to Preferences. On the Devices tab check "Prevent...from syncing automatically".
2. Connect your phone to your computer, right-click on the name of your phone when it appears in iTunes on the left sidebar and select Transfer Purchases (to transfer any recent purchases to your iTunes library prior to restore from backup).
3. Right-click on the name of your phone again and select Backup.
4. Import any photos and videos to your computer and sync your contacts with iCloud
5. Go to the Summary tab of your iTunes sync settings and click on Restore to restore your phone.

Other shouldn't be more than about 1GB. An "Other" of 7.5GB indicates there is something corrupt. Try restoring your phone again.

It must be happening because you had corrupted data on your phone which is contained in the backup that you are restoring from. (This corrupt data was probably the cause of your original problem.) When you restore to this backup it simply returns the corrupted data to your phone. To resolve this you will have to save as much of your data as you can and then restore again, but this time as a new iPhone without using your backup. You will lose your text message conversations, app data recent phone call and favorites lists, but not much else.

Sync your mail, contacts, calendars, reminders, bookmarks and notes with iCloud by turning these to On in Settins>iCloud. (Then go to icloud.com to verify that your mail, contacts and calendar data were successfully uploaded.) Voice Memos can synced to your computer if you phone is syncing now (or emailed to your self by tapping the Share button). You can take screeshots of each of your screens and import these photos to your computer along with your other photos and videos if you want to use them later to recreate your screen layout. You can write down your phone favorites list to recreate that as well. If you want to save a copy of your text message conversations you can either take screenshots or use a 3rd party program like PhoneView (mac) or Touch Copy (pc or mac); you won't be able to sync these back to your phone. (These programs will also save your voicemails and other data.)

When you're done saving your data, restore you phone as new without using your backup, then sign into your iCloud account and turn on syncing again in Settings>iCloud to download your contacts, calendar and other data (if prompted, choose merge). Finally, sync with iTunes to return your Apps, Music and other iTunes media to your phone.

Forgot to mention, I would also suggest you email copies of any important notes to yourself as a precaution.

I REFUSE TO reinstall my phone from scratch as a new phone because the voice memo crashes. This is a RIDICULOUS option, only for people that have nothing to do with their time.

This year I bought a new MacBook Air and the iPhone 5 and it was all problems. Apple is definitely pushing products to the shelf without the rigurous tests they used to do... Shame on you Apple!

I've spent days reinstalling my Mac, creating new users to isolate problems and still I may have to re-install it from scratch because I migrated a user from Time Machine AS RECOMMENDED BY APPLE. And I even remember genius bar employees telling me that it would be piece of cake bringing my old machine to my new machine with Time Machine or Migration Assistant.

Now with the voice memo crashing I hear the same story: you may have corrupted data in your old phone so don't backup! Just re-install... you know what? THAT'S MICROSOFT TALK... the solution is always reinstall.

I refuse to keep on reinstalling products and configuring everything again for days...

ENOUGH APPLE! Please spend at least two years until you lunch new products. This crazy new rhythmn of one update a year (macs, ipods, phones, O.S.) is going too far with very low quality updates and tons of trouble.

I solved this problem without having to reinstall by deleting the voice memos and the voice memos database ("Recordings.db") from my phone using iFunBox. I found that I had over 3400 voice memos on the phone, the vast majority of which were duplicates (I probably had less than 100 original voice memos). I had seen some of this duplication in iTunes, but nothing on the scale of what I found on the phone. I suspect this was the result of a sync problem. Anyway, deleting the memos and the .db file then re-syncing with iTunes to restore the memos I wanted to keep got me back up and running. The usual caveats apply about messing around with files on your phone, of course.

I got this tip from a comment thread on this blog.