iPhone Freezing and Multiple Other Usability Issues

Summary:

Ever since upgrading to iOS 9.x, I have been having a whole host of issues with my 128gb iPhone 6, which led me to engaging with Apple support and eventually having the phone replaced under Apple Care. The reason for opening this support thread is that the exact same issues have now come back on the replacement iPhone 6.

Here are the issues, most of which require a reboot of the phone to temporarily fix. Some of them cause the phone to freeze completely resulting in having to force reset the phone:

Spotlight Stops Working: Pull down spotlight search becomes unresponsive- no results show up and there's no "search web option”. Spotlight won’t work again until I reboot the phone. Screenshot: (https://monosnap.com/file/M0Xl2bdFphrHRCXjJUMBzXjpqdEm38.png)

iMessages Freezes: Most frequently happens when I receive a text in my pocket and I swipe open the notification to go directly to messages. When this issue happens, I’ll start typing a message and the whole app will freeze up. I can’t delete the message, can’t send it, can’t return to the index of messages.

Unlock to Black Screen: This happens when I unlock the phone after a period of inactivity using TouchId. Rather than unlocking to the apps, the phone will launch to a black screen. Requires a force reset.

TouchID Won’t Unlock Phone: TouchID becomes unresponsive and the only way to unlock the phone is using the passcode. Also, double tapping the touchID (without pressing the button) stops sliding the display half way down.

No apps will launch: I can navigate the home screens, but pushing an app just turns the icon slightly darker but doesn’t open the app.

Case History

Mid October 2015 (original phone):

Restored from iTunes Backup: With the original phone, I first tried restoring it from a local backup. The issues persisted.

Restored from iCloud Backup: I then engaged with Apple support and was asked to try to restore again using iCloud instead of iTunes. I did this, and the issues immediately persisted. Apple agreed that the phone was not working properly and allowed me to continue getting the phone replaced under Applecare.

Early November: Received replacement iPhone

New Phone- Restored from iCloud: Same Issues

Here’s where things got strange: I got the new phone, and restored it from my previous phone’s iCloud backup. And just as before, the same issues came back that I was having before.

New Phone- Complete Restore (Set up as New iPhone)

Realizing that there must be *some* software issue.. maybe something to do with my apps, and what is running, I decided to take the plunge and completely restore the iPhone to factory settings, setting it up as a new iPhone, but not reinstalling my apps or settings in any way. I plugged the phone into iTunes and chose “Restore”. A fresh copy of iOS 9.1 downloaded and installed. I started from scratch with re-installing apps, settings, etc.

This seemed to solve all of my problems. No more freezing or issues. I did manually reconfigure all of my settings and brought back only about 1/4 of the apps that I used to use. Things were working fine for about 2 weeks, and then..

ALL of the issues have come back. I can’t think of anything that I did to the phone configuration to cause them to come back (nor can I get them to go away by uninstalling anything). I’ve tried random setting changes, such as turning off all background app refresh, and quitting all running apps. Nothing seems to stop these problems from happening.

Now I’m at a complete loss about what to do. I feel like I’m cursed. I really don’t want to keep restoring my phone to factory settings to get these issues to go away, but at the same time the phone has become really unreliable.

Is anyone else experiencing anything like this? Is there anything I should try now that I haven’t tried before?