IOS 8 landscape bug

Hi Anthony, you seem to be alone in reporting this behaviour, I will strongly suggest you book a Genius appointment at an Apple store as I think you got a hardware problem.

I probably will take it in. I'll have to schedule my wife's phone to go in too as its happening with hers since the update as well.

My iPhone is running 8.3 and it's having the same problem, which as others reported started when I installed iOS 8 months ago. I don't use FaceTime, so that's not the problem.

If I turn the phone, nothing happens. I have to wait while it tries to figure things out and then finally switches to landscape. By then I've usually given up and switched back to upright, which means that just when the screen finally shows up at landscape, it realizes it's got to go back. This process takes minutes, not seconds, and it's extremely annoying.

Like others, I've powered off then on; done a hard reset; restored from backup. Nothing helps. It really has reached the point where I'm ready to throw the phone against the wall.

Here is a possible solution.

I had this problem with my iPad after updating to IOS 8.4

I read on another thread a suggestion to toggle Setting>General>Accessibility>Reduce Motion to OFF

So far, so good.

I have a 128GB 6 plus and only encountered this issue after updating to IOS 9. I found a work around that has resolved the issue for me 100% Hope it helps you too.

Symptoms:

• Seemingly on a random basis, when unlocking my phone or returning to the home screen from an app, my iPhone will flip into landscape mode and get stuck there, even if the phone is physically in portrait orientation.
• If I then physically rotate my phone to landscape orientation and then back to portrait, the home screen does not respond to the rotation, it stays in landscape.
• If I launch an app such as Mail, rotation response is normal. I can go from portrait to landscape and back as expected. If I flip to portrait in the app, then hit the home button, my home screen will return to portrait orientation.
• Bottom line is that the accelerometer responds inside of apps, but not on the home screen when the phone is in this error state.
• Once the phone is in the error state, there doesn't seem to be any combination of settings, etc that can return it to its proper state.

Work Around:

• Shut off your phone (I don't mean lock the screen, I meet hold down the sleep/wake button until the power off slide shows up and shut the phone down.
• Hold the phone in portrait orientation and power the phone on.
• Keep the phone in portrait orientation until it is fully booted, then unlock the phone to go to your home screen.
• Now rotate the phone to landscape mode. If it responds normally and goes back and forth to landscape and portait as expected, you're not in the error state and the home screen accelerometer will continue to function normally until you have to do a reboot.
• If when you power the phone on and unlock the phone it is stuck on portrait mode and will not rotate into landscape mode on the home screen, the phone booted into the error state. Power it off again and power it back on in portrait orientation. Repeat until it boots into a non-error state.

Bottom Line:

Problem seems to be on accelerometer calibration for the home screen during start up. If it self calibrates during startup, you're good. If not, reboot in portrait mode.

Hope that helps, I haven't had to deal with this frustration since.Side Note:

• When I updated to IOS 9, I started the update and put my phone down on the table through the entire process including when it booted up. That's when all of these issues started.
• When I updated to IOS 9.0.2, I made sure the phone was in portrait orientation and physically vertical through the entire update and boot up process. Haven't had the issue return since.