"Phone" app freeze on iOS 10

This worked for me as well. Unfortunately I can't go tell a company of 140 people (all iPhone Users) not to sync their Exchange contacts. Apple needs to get on this ASAP.

Hi, since I disabled my exchange contacts ( we use lotus notes in our company) that solved the problem for me.

I am syncing my notes contacts via a program called awesync , with my google account. This way I have all my contacts synced with my phone And no more problems with frozen apps.

Go to settings, then icloud and turn off contacts. My phone works fine now.

Someone upthread said the same thing, but I'm sorry to Apple- turning off Exchange contacts for most companies using enterprise mail servers isn't exactly an option. I don't see my boss being thrilled when I tell him not to sync well over a 1000 contacts to his phone in order to stave off it's freezing.

When you turn off contacts it will ask you if you want to keep them on your iphone, just select that option and all your contacts will stay on your phone. When you have new contacts to add to your iphone, turn the contacts back on and select merge. Let them merge and turn them back off again. Until they fix this problem with an update it lets your phone work.

I tried this , But I it still hangs! I am afraid , this does not work on iPhone5s iOS 10.1.1

Hi Guys,

I had this problem too on both my iPhone 5s and 6s, I did all the usual steps and most of the recommendations on this and a few other sites with no success. 4 days ago I SOLVED IT finally !!! I did this by 1. Disabling the phone from searching for contacts in apps (a new feature it seems) and 2. Disabling the phone from syncing non relevant contacts folders the additional email accounts I have on my phone, leaving only my primary one - I posted a step by step with the other things I tried on my website which should help you 🙂

https://www.101it.co.uk/solved-iphone-contacts-freezing-phone-hanging-after-ios- 10/

I wonder when apple can fix this issue. its really frustrating!!

This has been going on over a month now. It happens randomly and at very inconvenient times. Unfortunately the messaging app and others also freeze or run slowly at times. The tremendous lead iOS had over its competitors, from a usability perspective, is being compromised. I'm concerned this will be going on for quite some time without any complete resolution across the various parts of the OS. Technology influencers from large companies are frustrated and are losing their faith slowly in the product though Apple has traditionally been good about correcting isdues. To the uninformed these slowness and freeze problems look like a method for Apple to encourage people to upgrade to the iPhone 7.

I can say it has nothing to do with Exchange contacts. I only use the native Apple app for email. It was pre-installed. I only use it for email from my ISP account, no Gmail, etc. Apps such as FaceBook experience the same hangs as texting in iMessage. The difference is that FaceBook will never recover and always crashes (totally disappears). Google search app is the same, and so is Google Maps (GPS directions). I have been in software development and systems programming since MVS OS2 in 1981 and involved with PCs since the Commodore P.E.T. (ROM BASIC OS) in 1977 and the Osborne I using CPM OS in 1982. I've seen the disasters of making OS such as W95 run on every vendors' hardware and every chip manufactured at the time. This error is not specific to iPhone5c or iPhone6... it is pervasive and it will eventually impact iPhone7. The initial reason it is not apparent on iPhone7 is likely just the great increases in available memory. Memory management in multitasking OSs is a real problem and Apple has allowed someone in their development team to change something that worked into a disaster.

I got a message from the engineering in Apple's Bug Reporter saying that the problem is a duplicate and it's state is closed!

Let's hope that it's indeed solved 10.2 when it's released!

Wow, really helped thanks a lot.

I also have this issue. The phone app freezes indefinitely. I have to use the home button to shut down the app and restart to be able to make a call.

Even, I am facing the frequent hang issues and feels like I'm using some cheap class phone. I have tried restoring my iPhone 6 using iTunes and still facing this screen non-responsive issue randomly. I have freed up phone memory to 50% of it total capacity but yet no improvement. Wish I should have not upgraded my phone to iOS10.

Same problem here with brand new 128gb iPhone 7. Had the same thing with my 6. Thought upgrading to the 7 would certainly solve my problem. It hasn't.