Phone app freezes/gets stuck since iOS 12

Solution found.

All:

I have an SE that the phone app freezes on.

Contacting Apple support got an almost pathetically Microsoft bad answer: backup, wipe, install, restore.

I told them it had been two weeks since this mistake on their part crippled our phones. They suggested as a workaround, using Siri ("Hey Siri dial XXXXXXX") or Contacts to make outbound calls. "Hey Siri check my voicemail" can also be used to access voicemail!

Apple support was not able to help with fixing this problem. However, while chatting with a tech by the handle “Mikey” last night I found a solution. The key nugget of info was this:

-> Updating over WiFi only changes the sections of the iOS code on your phone that has been changed In the new version.

-> Updating over a wire with iTunes REPLACES the iOS entirely on the device.

So if your phone is jacked up, here is what you do:

1) Update iTunes on your desktop/laptop. You need the latest version.

2) Connect your iPhone to your desktop/laptop.

3) Backup your phone to your deskto/laptop.

4) Leaving the wire connected, hard reboot the phone:

- iPhone SE and older, hold down “home” and “power” for 45 seconds or longer.

- Other newer models do the vol up, vol down, power, hold for 45 seconds.

5) Phone will reboot. KEEP HOLDING!

6) iTunes will say “there is a problem with the iPhone...”

7) Click “update”

8) iTunes will download an update and will install when download complete... mine was about 2.8 Mb.

9) Your desktop/laptop will decompress the file and then start pushing it to the phone.

- “iTunes is preparing to update the software on the phone”

10) Wait a bit

11) “iTunes is updating the software on the phone”

12) you will see the “Apple“ screen in your phone with a progress bar below the Apple showing how far the installation has progressed.

13) When the update is finished, it will say “Verifying the updated iPhone”

14) Phone reboots

15) When your phone wakes up, you will have to unlock your phone for the push to continue.

16) When it reboots, you will see “Syncing iPhone”

Now your phone app should work.

So the lesson learned is to push iOS updates over a wire with iTunes rather than downloading over WiFi.

I am not sure why Apple could not figure out this smoking tire fire of a disaster, but based on my experience this solved the problem.

Hi there, Valentinissimo!
Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities! It sounds like you have issues with your Phone app freezing and I am happy to help! You’ve tried excellent steps so far and, at this point, it would be a good idea to be sure there is not a software issue as the root cause of this for you.

1. Check out this article for the steps for How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
2. Use this article for the steps to Use iTunes on your Mac or PC to restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings.
3. Once that is done, set the device up as new and test to see if the issue is still going on. Then, follow this article to Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup

This is an update to my earlier post...I have a 5SE with 12.0.1 installed and for the past 2 weeks my phone app was frozen on 'Recents' whenever I tried to open it. I finally solved the problem by going to Settings/General/Rest/Reset All Settings. I did this over wifi, and when the phone restarted it asked me to enter my password to install updates. For about 1 hour the screen just showed the apple logon on the screen. After an hour I did a second hard reset and the issue was fixed upon startup. My best guess is perhaps the 12.0.1 update didn't install properly the first time. Ridiculous that this is what it took to fix it, but at least now my phone is a phone again!

I am delighted to report that the most recent update, 12.1.1, appears to have fixed this issue for me. For the first time since I received this iPhone my visual voicemail works, everything about the phone app seems to be functioning normally.

I turned the automatic updates off so I could process updates via iTuneS, and so this one was manually run last night. It did take longer than usual to download the update and to install it in the iPhone, but I think it worked, I am very happy. This was an amazingly annoying problem.

I was having the same issue. I realized that the contacts app can be deleted, and this DOES NOT delete your contacts, just the app. So I deleted the app, downloaded it again from the app store, and then it worked again, and all of my contacts were still there!

I've had this same problem and found the quickest way to restore phone app function without rebooting or resetting the phone is to do this:

1. Kill the app (double tap home button and swipe up)
2. Switch the phone to Airplane mode. Wait 10-15 seconds, then switch out of airplane mode
3. Open the phone app and it works normally

I've tried all the previous steps including installing the iOS 12.1.2 update from iTunes and I continue to have this same problem. The above procedure works so far, and hopefully this will be resolved in the next iOS update.

Have you tried updating to iOS 12.1? I had the same issue with 12.0 as well as 12.0.1. I was skeptical about 12.1, but so far after almost 2 weeks, the issue hasn't returned.

I accidentally stumbled onto an easy fix.

While in the frozen contacts screen, touch the "Groups" link at the top left. I was surprised to find the screen immediately was unlocked.

Hi - i just tried this solution last night and it worked ok. iTunes didn't detect any errors on my iPhone X but i was able to force a complete download of IOS 12. I think I clicked on the update button. It takes a long time to download (around 25 mins), and if you click on the icon on the upper right towards the top a bigger window pops up with the download status. If you don't click on the icon in the upper right hand corner it actually looks like nothing is happening.

Darin

I just wanted to give an update. Ever since I did these 2 things (not sure which one worked), the problem did not arise in the past week.

1) Settings->General->Reset->Reset Network Settings

2) Did the force update of IOS 12 from iTunes (wired to computer). This apparently did a full IOS download and deploy to my phone rather than the partial update from the air.

I have 256GB iPhone X.

So far the phone app has remained functional (unfrozen) since I reset the network settings for a day now. This is the longest it hasn't froze since I did the iOS 12.0.1 update. So, no I haven't had to as of yet.

Bruce’s easy 10 second fix. Get a SIM from a friend with a phone on another provider. Insert into phone. Reboot. Shut down. Insert original SIM. Restart. Voila. Mine has been perfect for one month. Feel free to ignore. I didn’t hit on this idea. Bruce did accidentally and like any good idea it’s been ignored by virtually everyone.

Happy holidays!

Thanks, Bruce!

Did you install the update by WiFi or by iTunes? I had to turn off automatic updates and do it connected to iTunes. Which was a pain in the neck as I hadn’t connected a phone to iTunes since I had a 4S.

My understanding is WiFi only does changes while iTunes does the whole thing. Since my phone had a system glitch the WiFi didn’t address it. It took two manual updates on iTunes to get one that worked. Since this last one, it is working as expected. No more weird phone issues.

Rahul,

I also have not seen this happening associated with charging. There seems to be more associated with voice mail.

By the way, I have not seen this problem in a while now. But since I don't have a reliable way to recreate the problem, I don't know if the problem is gone for good, or just not happening for the time being, but will come back (likely at an inopportune time). I did upgrade to iOS 12.1.4 (using iTunes and a wired connection to my iMac).

I do suggest that people try to delete most or all of there voice mail messages and see if that helps.

David

@jffbrowne2, have you done the iOS 12.1 update? I had the same issue after updating to 12.0 and 12.0.1, and finally no issues after 12.1.