iphone is broken. kindof.

[SPNarwhal]

so i have an original iPhone, and it has worked completely fine forever.
yesterday i was using it, and i got a text from someone, and i sent them a text back. when they text me back, my phone vibrated in my pocket, so i took it out and tried to read the text but my screen won't turn on. it's just completely black.

it's not that the screen is broken and not showing up, but i can't even do anything blindly since there's no touch. it's almost as if the phone just won't come up from sleep or whatever you would call it.

if i call or text myself from another phone, it will still ring / get texts. just that the phone will not turn on or anything.

has this ever happened to anyone before? what is the protocol?

i was thinking about letting it die and then charging it again to see if that would help. i'm afraid that if i force shut it down, i won't be able to turn it back on ever.

s.o.s.

 

[Kyotoma]

Restore or try a hard reset by holding the lock button and home button.

 

[SPNarwhal]

i don't really want to restore since i have some really important stuff on this.
i mean, it's not the phone that's the problem, i could always just buy a new one. but i don't want to get rid of my stuff on it.

it's unlocked to t-mobile also, so i can't even back anything up.

 

[SPNarwhal]

fixed it. sorry for the trouble and thanks for the help!

this thread can be deleted if mods want to clear up a tiny bit of cyber space

 

[iceterminal]

Great to hear. But since you "fixed it" why not help others that might have this same problem and post up what your resolution was.

 

[Kyotoma]

Great to hear. But since you "fixed it" why not help others that might have this same problem and post up what your resolution was.

+1. I would love to hear how you fixed it just in case I run into any issues myself, although I just recently went from a 3GS to an iPhone 4.

FYI, a hard reset won't wipe any of the information on your iPhone. Its equivalent to shutting down your computer and leaving it off for awhile then turning it back on. Clears the memory and such.

 

[Kyotoma]

Oh, and you might also want to rename the thread title to your original issue so that if someone searches on here looking for a fix for the same issue then they will see the steps to fix the problem.

 

[darkside flow]

Had this happen with my gf's 3G. We even went so far as to call it a day and buy her an iPhone 4. Low and behold, a few days later the screen turned on. I don't think there's an exact science to it, but maybe loose wiring, got bumped, generally old phone, OS froze for a while, etc. Her phone would still ring and she could unlock it and try to do stuff, but the screen just wouldn't turn on.

I think the answer is a few hard resets and patience.

 

[SPNarwhal]

yeah, it just took a hard reset.
this has happened before, but always fixed itself mostly.
it usually just took putting it on the charger a few times to make it have some activity and it would wake up.

thanks for the help everyone.
i've done a hard reset before, but for some reason i was thinking instead of it doing a hard reset, that it was a hard shut down. and i was scared of doing a shut down because i didn't know if i would be able to turn it back on, so i was thinking i would just let it die and charge it again.

but this worked

thanks again!