iOS8 / iPhone 6 Landscape Text Problem

Hi UGADog,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!

If her new iPhone 6 is not going into landscape mode, the first thing I would suggest checking is the orientation lock. Please review the following article that explains orientation lock.

iOS: Screen does not rotate

Have a great day,

Joe

My iPhone 6 plus has this problem. When I turn my phone to landscape none of the buttons will register, I have to turn the phone to portrait mode type one letter then it will work in landscape. Very weird and very annoying. This is true even after updating to 8.0.2

Hey UGADog,

Thank you for the further information. In a situation like this, I would suggest restarting the phone and testing the issue. If the issue remains after a restart, I would suggest resetting the phone and testing again. Neither a restart or reset will affect any of your data.

Turn your iOS device off and on (restart) and reset

Have a great day,

Joe

I can't speak for UGADog but I have tried restarting (powering of and back on again) and rebooting (holding the power and home button until restart) and neither has made a difference to the problem.

I've been experiencing this problem as well on a new iPhone 6. Tried resetting the settings as well as rebooting to no avail. It's very strange because for some reason the problem only seems to happen when I rotate the phone in iMessages from portrait to landscape mode such that the home button is on the left. The screen will go black for a couple seconds before landscape mode shows up and then the keyboard will be unresponsive. Other times, the screen will go black and then I'll hear a beeping noise and—quite inexplicably—the phone will have somehow engaged the new send a short audio message feature despite the fact that my fingers were nowhere near the microphone button when I rotated it. It's very frustrating. Any idea on what could be causing this?

Clyde,

I have the exact problem as you! I've reset, rebooting -- even went so far as to completely wipe my phone & reinstall from scratch. Nothing helps!

I am up-to-date on iOS 8.2 and it is a brand new 128g iPhone 6.

I'd also like to know what I can do to fix this - other than to return my phone!

Clyde: I've seen this as well on my iPhone 6 iOS 8.0.2. Both the screen going black and recording an audio message thing.

It's only happened a couple of times, and I've rotated it in iMessage mode many times, so it's not very frequent. But it does happen.

Thanks for the responses. I haven't been able to find other people having the same issue in my searches thus far, so good to know it's not just me. I mean, it really isn't the biggest problem, but it can be pretty annoying. It doesn't seem like something that is a hardware issue but who knows. It's also very odd that it only happens when I rotate the phone in that specific direction. However, I've noticed that if I've already entered some text before rotating the phone, it doesn't happen. Probably just some weird software glitch—hopefully the next iOS update fixes it.

I'm having the same exact problem as you Clyde with the black screen and the texting in landscape. It also sometimes happens when I'm in Safari, I can't click on any links sometimes in landscape. With a 6 128GB, it's very annoying.

I am having these same problems on my iPhone 5S after I upgraded to iOS8 (now on 8.0.2 and problems still occuring) so it's not a hardware issue, it's definitely a software issue.

To try to get rid of the many bugs that was supposed to be fixed with 8.0.2, but still very much remained on my phone, this is what I did.

I contacted apple support and was told to do a full update and recovery with iTunes, basically wiping the phone and installing 8.0.2 directly, without any upgrading from earlier versions, that may cause issues and leave trash code/bugs. I did see a couple odd things on my phone that may have been caused when updating from first iOS 8 release to current 8.0.2. One thing was two camera storage folders when looking at the device from my PC, in which were many shortcuts to some "Drive" or something. Could not be accessed, could not be deleted. No matter.

Anyhow, I'm now done restoring my backup and all music/apps, and it seems to have gotten rid of an issue where landscape viewing photos or photo folders froze the screen/touch. This was easiest to test since it appeared every time for me. It may have gotten rid of (some of or all) the other issues too. Non responsive keyboard when writing in landscape, screen flickering black when rotating, or my favorite; recording an audio message when rotating text screen... to mention some. I'm sure there are many more I hadn't seen.

To do this you need iTunes on a computer, and preferably a full updated backup of your phone. Backup passwords and secure stuff by encrypting the backup in iTunes (option on iPhone summary tab). Transfer purchases is a good idea to not have to re-download apps etc. Also manually or with other software sync or backup your photos/videos taken with your device (iTunes does not sync this). I do this by accessing the phone storage directly in Windows 7, it appears as a unit in My Computer. Similar ways in different OS:s. After backup is done do following (will wipe phone of all data, need to have SIM card PIN and everything afterwards):

EXTRA NOTE if you have SLOW-MO VIDEOS: you may need to save your pictures/videos to iCloud for the slow-mo vids to work in slow motion after all this. Just a heads up.

1. Completely shut down phone by holding sleep button until you get option to drag on screen to shut down. Wait 30 seconds just to make sure it's fully off.

2. Hold down home button on iPhone, while plugging the USB cable into your computer (may need to have iTunes running if it does not auto-start correctly). Do not release home button until you get an iTunes logo on the screen.

3. In iTunes you should now see a message about updating and recovering your phone. Follow the instructions. After it's fully complete (phone appears in iTunes again and no action is happening in activity window in top of iTunes) you can eject the phone and take the USB cable out.

4. Set up your phone again as if it was new, enter you SIM card PIN, WiFi-password if needed, iCloud etc. At one point it wants to either be set up as a new phone or restored from a backup. Either iCloud or iTunes. Select iTunes if you have followed this. Plug USB cable back in. Follow instructions in iTunes, select the backup you made earlier. Enter password if encrypted.

5. After restore is done it should sync with iTunes (manually select sync if it doesn't) to restore apps/music/books and everything else checked. Except camera photos, which works differently. This may take some time depending on how much data there is. Expect anything from 10 minutes to over an hour. Progress shows in iTunes at the top. Also, this is a good time to untick some apps in the app tab in iTunes under your phone, that you do not use any more. I'm guessing there may be some old ones. If you happen to want some of them again you can always sync it or re download it later again (and things you buy is linked to your account, you don't have to pay twice).

6. Not sure about the camera pics/vids. Seems the official way to do it is to always use iCloud for photo-storage. I don't do this, so this is what I did. To get the pictures/videos back on the phone make sure you have all the pictured/videos you want to sync back to the phone in one folder on your computer. Everything in this folder will get synced, so if you have other junk there, create a new folder first for the sync and move the photos/videos you want synced there. A parent folder to sync with sub-folders for different albums may work, but I haven't tried it. Then select that folder in iTunes, your phone and the Photos tab. I checked "Include videos" too. Apply at the bottom so it syncs. THIS DOES NOT SEEM TO WORK FOR SLOW-MO VIDEOS however, as they get bumped back to regular speed when synced back. I'm sure they still are 120/240 FPS, only played back wrongly. I would call this a software issue from Apple that needs to be fixed. Maybe it can be fixed with a paid sync app or something, I'm not gonna bother with it now.

7. Hopefully enjoy iOS 8.0.2 without the MANY INCREDIBLY BAD BUGS that was in the initial release.

Buggy forums wont even let me edit. Step 4 was confusing.

4. Set up your phone again, enter you SIM card PIN, WiFi-password if needed, iCloud etc. At one point it wants to either be set up as a new phone or restored from a backup. Either iCloud or iTunes. Select iTunes if you have followed this. Plug USB cable back in. Follow instructions in iTunes, select the backup you made earlier. Enter password if encrypted.

Do not set up as a NEW phone.

I have also had the same issues with texting in landscape mode. I haven't tried resetting yet but reboot makes no difference. It sounds like resetting is similarly ineffective for this issue. I don't remember having this issue when I bought the phone (1 week ago) but a day later I got the update to 8.0.2 so I can't say for sure. It's an irritant but I'll have no complaints as long as they fix it in a timely manner. Strange that only one of your phones has that issue.

Good call NerevarReborn, this seems to have resolved the issue—although I won't be completely sure until I've been using the phone for a little while. I didn't follow your instructions exactly but I did a "restore iPhone" in iTunes which wipes the phone and then freshly installs the most up-to-date software and restores from your backup. I think the problem was indeed caused by trash code/bugs leftover after updating to 8.0.2 from 8, as it seems that everyone on here who's experiencing issues updated as opposed to starting with 8.0.2. Weirdly, after doing the restore everything seems a bit snappier on the phone as well.