iPhone 5 home button issue iOS 8

I'm skeptical that any change in case will have any lasting effect.

All mechanical switches (and the Home button is a mechanical switch) create "bounce", where for microseconds when pushing and releasing the switch its "state" is not settled. Analog solutions (e.g. capacitance) can be used to address this, but software solutions would be more common in an application like this. A software solution involves analyzing the "pulses" when the switch is pressed and released, and then making decisions as to when and how many times it was pushed and released since there are extremely fast pulses on the leading and trailing edges of the switch actuation. It is this software solution that can be corrupted, or implemented incorrectly upon revision. As the mechanical structure of the switch may be different between models (e.g. Touch ID or no Touch ID) I could see how iOS 8 could affect the iPhone 5 but not 5S or later.

To me it is clearly a software change that is not compensating for the Home switch performance as well as it did in the past, hence the sudden change in performance with iOS 8 with no other changes in environment. This will hopefully be corrected in an upcoming release.

I just took mine in to the Apple Store, and of course the bug stopped happening as soon as I was in the store.

On their advice, I wiped the phone and set it up as a new phone; I did *not* restore from backup.

So far (a half day later) the problem appears to be gone. We'll see if it stays gone. If so, I guess a fresh start on the phone is the price I pay for this behavior to go away.

On the up side: suddenly I have tons of free space on the phone. 🙂

I wiped my phone a week ago and that did not fix it for me. Say what one will, but mine works flawlessly out of the case and so far, since my last post, flawlessly in the Otter Box. It will not work in the Lifeproof case after upgrading to iOS 8.

Yeah I don't use a case so that can't be the issue for me.

When you wiped, RScottC, did you restore from backup? Or set it up as a new phone?

Wiping did not work for me when I restored from backup. Right now, so far, wiping-and-setting-up-as-a-new-phone seems to have worked, but it might just be a temporary phase of not seeing the problem; we'll see.

I restored from iCloud to save my critical data. All my apps restored over WiFi. I then synced to iTunes to get my music back. I think Podcasts were downloaded from the iPod application which recalled the episodes I was subscribed to and had not yet listened to.

OK. That's not the same thing I did. I actually set it up as a new phone, and lost any data that wasn't synced to iCloud. The phone was great for about a day and a half -- it didn't display the bug.

Then this morning it displayed the bug once. I thought "OK, I guess that didn't solve the problem" and I restored the backup and got all my data back again.

First time I opened an application and hit "home" I found myself in the app switcher. 😟

So maybe the full wipe just made the issue less frequent? Or it was just a coincidence that I didn't see it for a while after the wipe? Whatever, I just restored from backup and got all my data back, because why not.

Bottom line the bug seems to be sporadic enough that there are many things you can do to "fix" it and chances are that any of them will look like they "worked"... for a while. 😟

I Fixed it!!!!!!!!!

I bought an iPhone 6!!!!

I'm of a 6 as well. Have to wait until Nov 3. My 5 is still working flawlessly in the Otter Box Defender. I think the astatic rubber button is the answer here. I'm carrying it without a holster to see whether I'll like carrying the 6 plus around...LOL.

I upgraded my iPhone 5 to iOS 8.0.2, then home button started to degrade then no longer working. I had to use the assistive touch.

I finally figured out how to "fix" it. Go to setting then turn off the backgrounding app.

My home button is now working, but not with backgrounding app turned on :/ Apple please fix this...

Apple is not here. Send feedback to:

Apple - Feedback

Cheers,

GB

I fixed it with the following steps:

STEP 1: Open an app. Any default iOS app. (Weather, Clock etc.)
STEP 2: Hold the Sleep/Wake button (Power) till the ‘Slide to power off’ appears.
STEP 3: Now press and hold the home button till the slide goes away and you get to the homescreen. Done. You’ll notice that the app is closed.

This should fix the calibration issues and make the Home button work on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

got it from here: http://ios8release.com/how-to-recalibrate-to-fix-home-button-problem/

I think you'll find that like all the other "fixes" we have tried, this fix will make the problem go away long enough for you to post to the forums saying "Yay it's better!" and then it will come back. Because the problem is sporadic.

The "recalibrating the home button" thing is a myth.

niwen wrote:

I fixed it with the following steps:

STEP 1: Open an app. Any default iOS app. (Weather, Clock etc.)
STEP 2: Hold the Sleep/Wake button (Power) till the ‘Slide to power off’ appears.
STEP 3: Now press and hold the home button till the slide goes away and you get to the homescreen. Done. You’ll notice that the app is closed.

This should fix the calibration issues and make the Home button work on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

got it from here: http://ios8release.com/how-to-recalibrate-to-fix-home-button-problem/

Please stop spamming this thread with that garbage which does nothing to fix the issue and by posting links to your website you're trying to promote which is in no way affiliated with apple. This is spam and should be deleted if this forum actually had moderators.

Actually that helped me out so I shared it with you. Sorry for that.