I'm with robdubious that there does seem to be something to toggling the silent switch. My iPhone5 died suddenly this evening with approximately 80% of the battery left. I tried pressing the two buttons to reboot multiple times in an effort to bring my phone back to life, but nothing happened regardless of how long I held them. I had resigned myself to having to take the phone in to be looked at tomorrow morning, but decided to research the issue online in the meantime when I came across this thread. It didn't work for me when I toggled the switch only the two times, but after a couple more tries of toggling the switch multiple times (approximately 6-10 times) and then pressing and holding the two buttons for a few seconds, I was relieved to see my iPhone finally started to reboot! Thank you for the great tip, RJM...you made my Friday evening a much happier one than what it had been before I found this thread!
For those of you who keep track of all of the other little details, here's some background info about my user style/habits IOS version, and performance observations:
- This is my first iPhone and I've had it approximately 10 months. I have always used IOS 6 until just recently; I updated to IOS 7 the day after it was released. I close out my extra apps several times a day and would rarely have several apps running at once or any apps running that have been active for multiple hours.
- I do not typically use the silence switch but rather will usually just turn the ringer volume down with the buttons instead. (I'm hesitant to use the switch because shortly after I first got my phone, I missed a few phone calls because my phone hadn't rung. One of my coworkers came to my rescue that time by figuring out the problem...the ringer switch didn't appear to be in the silent position (no red showing), but it wasn't 100% clicked back over either and my phone was indeed in 'Do Not Disturb' mode!) I'm not sure if this is coincidence or not, but for the first time in months, I had actually flicked the switch over to silence my phone a few hours prior to it dying. The switch had been flicked back to the normal position though and the phone was still functioning approximately 3 hours later. It was approximately 1.5 hours after that though (4.5 hours total), that I discovered that my iPhone had died.
- For the most part, IOS 6 ran fairly well for me. I would get the occasional little glitch where apps would start to crashing, or my iPhone itself would suddenly flicker and/or reboot itself, or else my iPhone would freeze without warning. I learned quickly, however, that if I stayed on top of closing down extra apps that are running and powered my phone off completely 1-2 times a week that the glitches I was experiencng were dramatically reduced.
- Since updating to IOS 7, I have been encountering several of the glitches that I described above and, both out of frustration and necessity, have been rebooting my iPhone a minimum of once a day. On an average day, I would guess that I have been rebooting my iPhone 2-3 times. I've been vigilent about closng unused apps and making sure that I follow as many of the 'best practice' guidelines to preserve battery life and improve performance, but these 'best practices' don't seem to help the way they did in the previous IOS version. The bottom line is that my daily user habits are actually better since updating to IOS 7, but my overall phone & battery performance is significantly reduced in comparison to IOS 6.
- I've experienced my phone freezing and becoming unresponsive before, which is why I knew how to do a hard reset. This is the first time, however, that my iPhone has suddenly died like this! I have read my manual, I 'baby' my iPhone, and I fully realize that it contains a computer chip and will be subject to unexplained glitches. That being said, I don't think that it is acceptable to have a dramatic increase in the number of glitches that occur after updating to a new IOS version that has been Beta tested and is supposedly ready for General Release. I also don't think that it is acceptable for there to be a known issue affecting multiple IOS versions that cause the iPhone to suddenly shut down and become non-responsive. Yes my home computer will freeze sometimes or it may even start to reboot itself, but it has never shut down without warning and then not respond when I press the power button or Ctrl-Alt-Delete! I'm thrilled that the issue was resolved in a relatively short and painless amount of time, but this incident has negatively impacted my trust in Apple and has me feeling particularly nervous because the end of my warranty period is lurking just around the corner!
