ios 11 update phone freezing

I am using iPhone SE 64GB with latest iOS 11.0.3. I am not seeing a crash or freeze anymore and the overall system is stable and running smooth.

Here is what I did and I strongly feel that the freezing is related to location services: [Before making following adjustments, my iPhone used to crash or freeze many times]

1. Make sure under Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services, choose "While Using" or "Never" depending on your preference for the apps. Try to set "Never" for apps which you need location service. Avoid "Always"!
2. Under Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services, turn off location service for all system services [under PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT section too].
   • I kept following turned on as I need them:
     • Compass Calibration - For Google Maps, to get the direction arrow [blue one]
     • Emergency SOS
     • Find My iPhone
   • For every other system services, I turned off location service.
3. Under Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services, turn on "Status Bar Icon" so that you will see if any app/service is trying to access location and find out the culprit when your iPhone is freezing or crashing.
4. Delete apps which you don't need!
5. Under Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh, turn it off.
6. Under Settings -> General -> Handoff, turn it off.
7. Under Settings -> General -> Date & Time, turn off, "Set Automatically" if you do not travel often.
8. Try to turn off other services or settings, which you do not.

Re: If you've tried everything and it still doesn't work

Firstly, it appears we are the unfortunate segment. I've been warning all my iphone users not to upgrade but it appears many have already upgraded but don't experience this freeze problem.

Thanks for all the brilliant suggestions. I tried the various ideas ...

1. @ToxRowlang's idea to Reset Location settings back to original. It worked for 3 hours, then slowly degraded over 24-48 hours back to horrible freeze.

2. Later I tried @JesperDenmark idea which is to delete Tinder. I don't have Tinder - but I deleted all third party apps (anything that Apple did not provide as part of basic phone) - and reinstalled only if needed. Phone is 50% better but still occasionally lagging and freezing but at least not indefinitely or not as frequent.

3. I had enough and tried to downgrade to 10.3.3. At first I hit error 4000 (so I updated iTunes, turn off firewall & virus protect). Then I hit error 3194 (which means Apple doesn't allow downgrade ie 10.3.3 is no longer signed off the firmware).

4. I have tried @tushar_mehta's ideas of messing with selected Settings but didn't really help.

My current conclusion and options:

a) Wait for Apple to really fix it with a working iOS

b) when I have time, I'll hack away error 3194 to downgrade to 10.3.3 and stay there.

c) change phone to X, or more likely Samsung S8 or Note 8. I like Apple a lot & I understand technical blunders happen but this lack of accountability (quiet, no acknowledgement, etc) from them really frustrates me.

Will also keep trying your hacks guys. Thx.

I have the same problem. The home button seems unresponsive as well when it freezes. I have found if I touch the seemingly unresponsive home button and say Hey Siri, Siri will respond and it wakes up my phone. It works, but not an acceptable solution !

This has also been affecting me, and just since the iOS 11 upgrade. I'm using an iPhone 6 and an iPad Air 2, and it happens on both (though more frequently on the phone). The frozen white screen (or black screen) that is unresponsive to incoming calls (although I can still hear the ringing), apps that hang as soon as I try to open them (including Mac apps - Settings, Music, Mail, Safari), exactly what others have reported here. I find that I now have to restart both of my devices every two days or so, and I've had to resort to hard resets on both on multiple occasions. Prior to iOS 11, I think I had to perform only one hard reset in the past four years. Likewise, I typically had to restart my devices only once or twice a year.

I run lean, with few non-mac apps that get used with any regularity. 90+% of the use is Mail, Calendar, Safari, Notes, etc. All old 32 bit apps have been removed. I've installed every iOS 11 update as soon as it is released. The problem isn't location services per se (or at least not exclusively, as I don't have this switched on for my iPad, which still suffers. However, I think that the problem may be linked to WiFi in some way, because when I turn this off (i.e., really turn it off, using the Systems app, not the control panel), I don't experience any hangs. Of course, I can't run forever on LTE (for the phone) or with no internet (for the iPad). The problems seem more acute when I move from one WiFi zone/system to another (e.g., at work), or when I'm driving and the phone randomly wants to connect to the WiFi networks it encounters during the trip. I've taken to turning off WiFi before I leave my house (which seems to fix the problem), but when I forget (like this morning), it's hang-time. It's a rather a bit of a hassle to have to do a hard reset just because the phone rings. I've submitted a feedback report; I'd recommend that others do the same.

If this doesn't get addressed soon, it'll be back to iOS 10 for me. Interestingly, my wife's iPhone, which is a 6SE hasn't had these issues. Of course, she barely uses it...

Any Apple folks monitoring this thread - help?

Well … the Genius Bar guy saw the stalling, stuttering, and freezing touchscreen on my iPhone 6/128GB. Diagnostics showed no hardware problems. They erased the phone and set up as new and kept the already installed iOS 11. And … with no restore or apps installed, I could barely enter my new password because of the stalling, stuttering, and freezing touchscreen. They gave me a new iPhone 6, which happened to have iOS 10.3.3 installed. I took it home, and restored with a pre-iOS 11 backup, and viola! Problem solved

But now the IT folks at work say I have to have at least 11.1 installed to get critical security fixes.

So now I have a choice to be non-functional because I can’t get to meetings or email at work, or to be non-functional because Apple breaks my touchscreen with their iOS update?

I could not agree more. Plus, the ability to revert to IOS 10 was taken away very quickly. A friend recommended the tips found here which helped a bit: http://osxdaily.com/2017/10/06/ios-11-slow-speed-up-performance/

It may be also that offloading my camera roll freed up enough memory to help because my slowness and freezing has been improved or cured (I hate to say this prematurely!

Turn off all notifications and update to 11.2. Then turn notifications back on. This is only if you are experiencing the black screen several times a day with the spinning circle. This happened on my birthday 12/2 they released a mass email and put the instructions on apple supports first page.

Firstly I have cleared around 3500 emails from my folders, and removed my pics and placed them in the cloud off my laptop.

I did a full factory reset on my iPhone 6 Plus and have also changed my screen protector.

It seems to be running a lot better now .

Haven’t had an issue for a week now.

Fingers crossed it’s fixed.

Hope this helps.

No to the dating apps, but clearing my widgets and removing most 3rd party apps seem to level it off for a day or two.

Upgrading to iOS 11.1 seems to have fixed this for me 🙂

I’m not an expert on this, but your phone freezing could have something to do with storage (updates use storage). If your storage is full you could perhaps delete some apps or photos and see if that works?

I upgraded my iphone6s from 11.0.3 to 11.1 on 01.11.2017, than the Phone app refused to start, it appears as blank, and disappear after a while ( 30seconds). I can't make a call any more. -:)

The solution is: Backup your phone first, "Reset All Settings". the Phone App starts to work.

I have isolated my freezing issue when I manually update apps. 100% of the time when I update apps, the update finishes, but the icons have grey areas around them as though the update is not complete. The phone is then essentially frozen and a hard boot is required. Once I reboot the updates are finished and the phone seems to be ok until the next update.

THANKS FOR THIS THREAD: I appreciate seeing this thread to validate that it is more than just me having this issue.

My iPhone 7 has been freezing up since I updated it to iOS 11 in late Sept. I have been working with Apple Support since then to supply them my personal documentation, videos capturing the behavior and iPhone diagnostics/logs. Obviously, it still is not solved.

I have updated my iPhone to the latest iOS on the day it came out for all iOS 11 incremental fixes. None have solved the issue.

My observations on my iPhone 7

(I observed a similar pattern also on my iPad Air ONLY ONCE after upgrading to iOS 11):

TIMING:

- Issue occurs about 3 to 4 days apart on average (have also seen it occur twice within 24 hours)

WHEN:

- Device freezes completely when I open an app (e.g.: Settings, Safari, etc) and only displays the app's solid background color, but never loads the app fully.

- After the freeze occurs, the phone is unresponsive except for the haptic feedback when pushing the Home button (but still stays in the solid background of the app)

CLUES (my personal theory):

+ Just before many of the freezes, I have noticed that Apps are being updated but appear to stall (on Home screen the App icon is darkened with a progress circle in the middle that is transparent). The App update stalls when the transparent progress circle is at 100% while still showing the App icon shaded on the outside of the circle. (I have captured this behavior in a video that I uploaded to Apple.)

+ Many of the other freezes have been discovered in the morning as I remove the iPhone from the charger. Knowing that the iPhone updates apps at night when plugged into a charger, this supports the theory that it may be related to app updates.

+ I have also observed the behavior above and the resulting frozen phone occur within minutes of my manually selecting to update apps from the App Store. This does not always reproduce the issue.

+ I started personally testing this theory by disabling automatically installing updates in hopes that I would not encounter any more freeze-ups. It worked for a few days, but unfortunately I started some further troubleshooting activity with Apple Support that made me abandon this testing.

ACTIONS

- Apple support has me taking a screen capture (timestamps log), sysDiagnose (collect and store app memory) requires the phone to sit idle for 10 minutes, and then upload files to them for analysis.

+ Force a restart (Sleep/Wake + Volume Down button on iPhone 7) is the only way I can restore my phone to working order again.

I'm afraid that Apple is pumping out incremental updates so fast that they don't have time for me to reproduce the issue multiple times and upload it to them to study long enough before the next iOS update comes out. Their standard answer is the upgrade to the latest and we think it will fix the issue. But of course, there has not been a fix yet.

I had this freezing issue whenever I used Tinder (I’ve posted about it to this thread earlier). Today I reset and recreated my Tinder profile, since then my iPhone hasn’t frozen even once. i didn’t delete & reinstall the software itself (tried that earlier several times), only deleted and recreated my Tinder profile.