Did your shiny new iPhone 5S Freeze or crash? Don’t worry. You’re not alone. Due to the completely redesigned iOS 7, there are still some software bugs that may leave your phone frozen for extended periods. Here are the short-term and long-term un-freezing solutions.
In particular, I found that iOS 7’s mail app seemed to have a memory management issue that caused it to freeze.
The Quick Un-freezing Fix
What we’re going to do to fix your broken phone is called a “hard” reset. It doesn’t actually reset your phone’s software, or affect data. It just quickly quits out of any active operations, restoring your phone to normal.
Note: You may notice that your iphone 5S’s home button and lock button don’t seem to work while frozen. This is because all operations are frozen by the hung memory.
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Hold down the home button, and lock button (top button) together. Nothing will happen at first, but keep holding.
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Hold for 15 seconds, and if this doesn’t work, hold a second time for 20 seconds.
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Put phone down.
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Wait for the Apple logo to pop up. As your phone quickly resets and restarts the operating system, the screen you see when you start up your phone will appear.
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In a few seconds, your homescreen (A.K.A springboard) will appear, and you’ll be good to go, until it happens again. Read on to find the permanent solution.
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Good Luck! Leave a comment with your issue, and what worked for you
SEE: Our List of the 10 best games for iPhone
The Permanent un-frozen Fix
Unfortunately, if you do nothing, your phone will keep freezing until they fix the bug that caused the freeze. So how do you unfreeze permanently? Use the method on the next page to fix the freeze completely.
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First we’re going to try a settings reset, to save ourselves any hassles we can. On your iPhone, go to settings<general<Reset<Reset all settings. Wait for this process to complete. If this fixes your phone, fantastic. You don’t need to do anything else. If the freezing issue happens again, you’re going to have to take the next, more drastic steps.
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Plug your iPhone 5S into your computer, and open up iTunes.
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Click the button in the top right area with the name of your iPhone (i.e Michael’s Awesome iPhone).
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Back up your iPhone. DON’T FORGET THIS STEP, because if you do, you’ll lose data. Make extra sure that you’re backed up fully, either to iTunes, or iCloud.
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Now go to the summary tab, and choose restore. Restore your iPhone. This will reset your software, and clear up any software bugs. Reload all of your data from your backup onto your phone.
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If this doesn’t fix it, use your warranty. Apple offers 90 days of phone support (1-800-apl-care), and 1 year of warrantied hardware. Call up, or bring your phone to any Apple Store, explain what you’ve tried, and eventually they’ll repair or replace your phone for free.
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