My iPhone 6s home button is really hot and the device won't turn on

Same thing happened for me: Screen black, hot home button. Siri still works, so it's not like the phone is off. As reported, doing a hard reset takes you back to normal operation. Can we get an official Apple response to this issue please?

Im having this issue too, screen dead but burning hot home button, wouldn't turn on for about 35 mins but continued to burn away.

it physically stung to touch. Has only done it about a week and a bit back. Spoke to Apple the day it happened, they claimed it was the first they had heard of it and to go back to store. With all the complaints I've read now, I find it tough to believe it's the first they have heard of it!

Now it's just generally overheating.

on charge tonight for example I picked up the phone and it was super hot on the back.

We have a heat gun so I checked the temp 44.1c (111F) that's not right at all. VERY uncomfortable to hold.

My hand still hurts 20 mins on from holding it :-/

This phones going back!

Thanks botsmack for the info.

Everyone, simply complaining on the community will not help at all. And it is hard for Apple to go through all the posts to extract useful information. After we put our post here, if we all can provide some feedback information to Apple(http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html), please do so. Helping Apple collect the feedback information, and they should be able to tell the problem at some point. I am sure they will do some data mining after a lot of information are collected.

My suggestion to everybody is to provide the following information, the reasons are that they are all running at the background whether your iPhone is sleep or not. And if this happened to you like 10 days ago, and you couldn't remember anything, please do so the next time it happens(hopefully there will not be a next time).

1. Briefly described what, when, where, how(if possible) it was happened.
2. Background App Refresh: on or off, what are the apps. (this could be helpful to determine if the background app refresh is causing the problem)
3. Last time backup to iCloud (was it because of the backup?)
4. Running apps after reset (iPhone will restore the apps to their status before the crash, this might be helpful)
5. Alarm (could be the trigger?)
6. Do not disturb
7. Bluetooth: on or off
8. Location services ( list the apps that has recently used your location (solid purple arrow) or used your location within the last 24 hours (solid grey arrow)
9. Air drop status
10. List of apps that may sync their data in the background

That's all I can think of based on how I use my iPhone. You can add more information if you like because everybody uses the iPhone differently.

Then let's just hope this issue will be solved very soon.

I agree that Apple possibly isn't scraping these forums looking for issues. I opened a case online reporting the symptoms but so far I have decided not to replace the phone itself as at least for me, switching up to 9.1B4 has "resolved" the problem in that it hasn't returned in at least a couple of weeks. I don't know if that's statistically significant but no other changes have been made, I haven't changed any alarms, background app settings, bluetooth etc. I did not do a wipe and restore either, I just updated. So my feeling is this is largely software and if the TouchID is getting hot, that suggests to me (along with reported battery drains) that it's in some kind of software driven loop running for much longer than designed. Maybe something triggers the "there's a finger" code and it's a false alarm but an edge case where it doesn't give up. This might explain why laying face down on a desk, or being in your pocket are relevant when something comes into "contact" with the sensor.

I haven't seen anybody comment on whether they swapped out their phone and that resolved it for them. Honestly if it were pure hardware I would expect it to fail pretty much all the time.

My 2c.

I'm all for trying to help Apple fix this but it has been going on way too long. If this happens to me a second time after the reboot work-around/fix, I'm at the Apple store next day and not leaving until I have a new phone. And if it happens within the 14 day return period, just return the phone and then buy another one.

It would be great if the Apple fan-boy and Apple fan-girl web sites like www.iMore.com and www.9to5mac.com would start tracking and writing about this problem. There are now multiple threads on this board and also their own board that just continue to grow with folks reporting this issue. The problem is that they're just too afraid to be critical of Apple as then they will shut down their access to the mother-ship and all of the review units, invitations to announcements, special access to Apple soldiers, etc.

..but what makes you think a new phone will fix it ? There's been a lack of positive comments that I can see saying "hey I swapped out my phone and it's all good now...."

I'm not convinced yet either way - whether it's software or hardware. Some users on other sites have noted that public beta 5 (latest) reduces occurrences but doesn't entirely fix the problem. Either way it is possible it's hardware, and that the beta is just brute-forcing a fix around a hardware issue. Who knows. If purely software, I'd expect the problem to be much more widespread. So I'm ware of any claims about a software fix, even if they come from apple.

I've been approved for replacement, so I'll see how that goes. In the last 5 hours alone, I've had the issue probably 5-6 times, sometimes only a few minutes after a hard reset.

Got a replacement phone from Apple on Oct 8, and haven't had the hot button issue happen on the new phone. BUT it took 10 days for my first 6S to start acting up so I won't consider the swap a success until the end of the month.

Something else I noticed -- on the original 6S the Touch Id on the Home Button didn't work very well. Half the time it didn't recognize my finger print, but on the replacement phone the Touch Id works perfectly.

The more phones Apple is replacing the more priority, focus and attention this issue will get from the various Apple engineering orgs. My big hope is that this is not a design error baked into the silicon in the new TouchID button or the power interface below it. Hopefully it is iOS software or firmware somewhere in the unit that can be fixed.

Question: is this happening to you when the phone is face down?

Alternatively, for those of you who see this occurring often, can you try setting you phone with your screen face down?

In my case both of the times I’ve seen this, my phone was face up or jiggling around on a car seat.

The reasoning behind my question extrapolates from these two assumptions of mine:

1. In IOS9 Apple now “saves battery” by not turning on the phone’s notifications when the screen isn’t visible. So let’s assume that maybe, just maybe they actually plumbed this through to other subcomponents. In that case they may also save power by not triggering the Touch ID sensor.
2. The 6S’s Touch ID got updated to recognize the finger print faster. Well, what if this is a combination of SW + HW by which the sensor’s “on” time got reduced by some predictive enabling of the sensor via gyro position, etc. IF this is the case, then the issue might be that the sensor is essentially turning on looking for a finger under some circumstances that are likely to encounter a finger, but for some unfortunate code path isn’t running off… OR if this is a machine learned algo, maybe the classifier always returns true (finger likely coming) which is an unfortunate endless loop which then triggers more bad thing throughout the stack.

Anyways these are wild stipulations from my engineering brain… but if any of these are correct, we may see a software fix for this. Actually even if I’m wrong, the sensor might have a temp sensor around on the board or even a “frame counter” that could be queried to trigger some reset, etc.

I just hope Apple is aware of this and working on it. We understand secrecy, but just tell us you are ;-)

I do have a replacement phone that I’ll setup over the weekend, but per the complaints on this board, I start to doubt that this is purely a case of “early sensors” being bad or having premature failure, etc. I really think this is algorithmic, but no matter what I’ll report again is I see it on the new phone – though maybe “face down” approach could mitigate this.

It would appear that in that thread, that persons account is far more INFREQUENT than ALL the other accounts since 91.b4 that prove otherwise.

Like I've said several times, since 91.b4, this is now nearly 10 days, on two phones, NO HOT BUTTON and NO CRASHES.

Not saying this to @cchandl specficially, but to ALL the other people continuing to come to this thread and say they have had the problem and complain and want to return the phone. That is fine, return it, but you're most likely going to have the same issue as this is almost certainly a software issue since betas since 91.b4 have cleared it up for the MAJORITY of testers.

if one doesn't want to download and install the latest public beta, that's fine too. but returning the phone is most likely not going to solve it. Wait till 9.1 GM or upgrade, for the time being those are the only choices.

My wife just had he hot touch id button happen today. 6s 64gb rose gold bought on 9/26 launch day. So, 10 days in and first time it hapened. She had it in her purse at work and went to check the time. She said the home button was very hot and the phone would not start up. I got on the phone with Apple tech support and she said she was very suprised. She had never heard of theis issue before. She also was very offended when I told her there was a dedicated thread for it on Apple support. Any way, she didnt offer a fix other than to say she logged it on my account and that since it is working after the hard rest there should be nothing else to do. Debating on making the 2 hour drive to the Apple store to swap it out or holding out to see of it happens to her phone again.

This just happened to me, I too had to hard reset. I wasn't charging it, I wasn't using it and then when I went to check it the screen wouldn't turn on the home button was blazing hot. If this is a hardware problem should I get a replacement before it turns into something worse? I think I'm going to call apple support or set up an appointment at the apple store.

I Received my iPhone 6s plus 128 GB with a TSMC CPU last week. I experienced exactly the same behaviour as described earlier. Home button burning hot and the device off. Only way to get it on was by a hard reset.

I'm curious about the solution.

Did anybody got theirs exchanged fir a new one????

I have the same problem. I found a video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzBpj2Qqpr0 .I had iOS 9.0.2