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iPhone 4 - home button not working properly

M

MarkyN

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 2, 2011
35
0
North Wales, UK
I am sure i read somewhere on this site how to fix this but i cant seem to find it.

when i press my home button it doesnt work, then next minute it will but it pops up like i have pressed it twice for the tray to open up, then it wont work again.

Any way of fixing this?:confused:
 
This is a known and widespread problem with the iPhone 4. The non responsiveness comes on around the 12 month of use. Some people have noted some success with various techniques, but the only consistent way to "fix" this is to buy an iPhone 4S. I hope to God they fixed this problem for the new iPhone.
 
oh am not buying the iPhone 4s any time soon, i got just over another year with this iphone 4 yet. The phone itself is spot on, just this button doesnt work sometimes and sometimes it does?! like there might be dust build up behind it or something?! am thinking maybe take it all apart and give it a good clean but then again i dont want to go braking it even more :eek:
 
I'm having the same problem with my iPhone 4 purchased on launch day. I made an appointment at the Apple Store on Monday. Hopefully they can/will fix it. I've had very good luck with them fixing/exchanging my iPhone in the past, at no charge.
 
My 3G did this and so does my 4. It's very common. I actually had to jailbreak my 4 just so I could use the home button less (double tap the status bar to open multitasking).

I'm worried that with the 4s this will happen even quicker. In addition to how hard the home button already works we will now have Siri which requires us to use it even more.

I don't think it's really a design flaw, it's more of a wear and tare issue. But most people don't have a warranty by the time this starts happening.
 
w00t951 said:
The Home button was never meant for constant double clicking and heavy multitasking.
Click to expand...
Translated: don't expect to receive a premium experience from your iPhone. It's only meant for light use.

Be sure to hold it properly so it will make calls.
Be sure to lower your expectations as to its useful lifespan.
Be sure to remember that despite the claims it's a sub par phone.

Oh, and me? I've had four iPhone 4's replaced free since Apples genius freely admits it's a problem. If this was an Android the forum would be on fire with haters bashing it's "old school mechanical button."

Thankfully it's an iPhone made by a company with masterful skills at weaseling out of responsibility. Backed by a never ending stream of Apple excuse makers & apologists. It's good to be Apple :)
 
vitzr said:
Translated: don't expect to receive a premium experience from your iPhone. It's only meant for light use.

Be sure to hold it properly so it will make calls.
Be sure to lower your expectations as to its useful lifespan.
Be sure to remember that despite the claims it's a sub par phone.

Oh, and me? I've had four iPhone 4's replaced free since Apples genius freely admits it's a problem. If this was an Android the forum would be on fire with haters bashing it's "old school mechanical button."

Thankfully it's an iPhone made by a company with masterful skills at weaseling out of responsibility. Backed by a never ending stream of Apple excuse makers & apologists. It's good to be Apple :)
Click to expand...

I don't believe for one second that you own any Apple products....
 
Yep, the Home button is the only problem I've eve had with the iPhone dating as early as iPhone 3.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

Go see a genius about it. I had my iPhone 4 replaced for this reason.
 
My home button has shot it to! Works now and again and apple don't want to know....

I think it's a widespread problem I'm considering sellin it on eBay and replace it with a 4s :)
 
The answer:

Hold phone in a tight grip and whack it against your thigh 2 or 3 times.

You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. It has worked for tons of people, including me. Last thigh whack - maybe 5 months ago? Has worked perfectly ever since.
 
solutions for home button unreponsiveness

to do two things:

1. To close some of the programs running in the background that slow down the phone (seem like the home button is not working, but it is actually the phone runs too many program at the same time). To do that, you double click the home button, when you see the row of icons at the bottom of the screen, press and hold on one of the icon, when you see the signs "-" with a circle around it, press on the sign and you will close the program. Do this periodically.

2. If #1 does not solve your problem, restore your phone will. The Apple store on line has instructions for that.
 
Last edited:
greytmom said:
The answer:

Hold phone in a tight grip and whack it against your thigh 2 or 3 times.

You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. It has worked for tons of people, including me. Last thigh whack - maybe 5 months ago? Has worked perfectly ever since.
Click to expand...

This is so funny, I literally LOL'd. I gave the iP4 a good thigh whack. Can't be any worse than anything else I've tried (replaced unit, reinstalled iOS). Why not!
 
My iPhone 4 is whacky too. Sometimes I'll single click and it will double click. Or I'll double click and it thinks I triple clicked. It'll open the multitasking bar and immediately close it. I always thought it was a side effect of jailbreaking, but I'm not so sure anymore. Hopefully they fixed it in the 4S.
 
I took mine into the Apple shop, fair play the Genius was as helpful as he could be and cleaned it out. It was then far better for about a week or so but has since become unresponsive again. This is one of my reasons for changing to a 4S.
For those of you in the UK this company in Leeds does Home button repair and replacement:

http://www.ipatchonline.co.uk/iPhone_4_repair_prices.html
 
Most home button problems are software related from what I've heard. And bot so much a dust, faulty button issue. I had the same problem on my 4 and thought it was the button itself. I cleaned it, tried the banging, the blowing, and everything else. And still, it would work fine sometimes, and sometimes not. It was weird. But what I didn't know at the time was that when the button was acting up, continually pressing it would only make it worse. Because every time you tap the button (even if it does't respond) it is registering a "click". so while you are tapping away and nothing is happening, you are actually making it slower to respond by registering so many clicks. best thing to do is close out apps running in background when the button starts acting up. if that doesn't help, restart the phone. That always worked for me. Just don't keep pressing it.
 
I had the same problem with my iPhone 4 a few months ago. Sometimes home button would not work, sometimes click once and get a double click. The problem come on slowly over a couple of months with the double click happening later.

It was a little over a year old but I did purchase AppleCare just before the 1 year warranty expired. So I made a genius bar appt and once they were able to see the problem i got a replacement pretty quickly.
 
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