iPhone 3.1: Unresponsive and No Vitals, But Not Dead?
iPhone coma. Two words you never want to see in the same sentence! Yesterday I went to pick up my phone, and it wouldn’t unlock. Weird. I figured maybe the battery had died. That’s a common problem with the 3.1 iPhone software update. After 15 minutes I still had no response. What is even stranger? MobileMe said the phone was online, so I went ahead and called it. My iPhone never rang, yet the call didn’t go to voicemail until the fifth ring.
As Zapp Brannigan might say, “Kiff, we have a conundrum.” And it turns out I am not alone.
Apparently one of the new “features” of the iPhone 3.1 update is severe narcolepsy, colloquially called “the iPhone coma.” iPhones running 3.0 or 3.0.1 software are not affected, and the coma appears much more prevalent on the iPhone 3G than the 3GS. This issue seems somewhat widespread and there are several threads about this issue on the Apple discussion boards.
My particular situation of a locked phone that refuses to wake up or ring is but one of the many manifestations of this bug. Depending on when the iPhone becomes comatose, the screen may be on or it may be off. If the screen is on, the display may continue to update (i.e. the time changes) but the phone can’t receive incoming calls, nor do the physical controls or the touch screen actually respond to user input. If the phone is in locked mode (i.e. screen is off) then a comatose phone will show itself as being unable to be woken up by clicking the physical controls. In other words, it will have a black screen.
Triggering the problem is random. Since I updated to iPhone 3.1 on Sunday night, I’ve had the problem about three times a day. It’s never been in the middle of a call and it’s always been as I pick up the phone to make a call that I notice it won’t turn on. My observations of randomness and repetition are consistent with other reports on the web.
The short term fix to resolve the problem is to force a hard reboot by holding down the top and home button down for 10 seconds until you see the chrome Apple. This does not erase the data and the iPhone will reboot and be able to receive calls after a couple minutes. Removing the SIM card or restoring the iPhone from backup had no effect. Unfortunately, Apple does not provide any supported way to revert the phone to the coma-free 3.0.1 software, so unfortunately, iPhone users stuck with narcoleptic iPhones will need to wait for the bug fix from Apple.
If you rely on your iPhone 3G and haven’t installed 3.1 — wait. You’ll miss out on a few new features until Apple provides its fix, but that is a small price to pay for a reliable working phone! Those of you running 3.1, has your phone gone comatose or has it happily remained fully conscious since the update?
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I’m running 3.1 and haven’t had any problems with a comatose iPhone. I have however had an issue with battery life which was mentioned by Darrell Etherington on September 21.
I’ve had the coma-phone. Not sure if it’s related or just coincidence, but it happened 3 or 4 times a day at first and now only happens once in a while. the only difference is I freed up more space on the hard drive, so *possibly* that makes a difference, but more likely we are all waiting for a bug fix instead.
Yep, seen this on my 3G. Exactly the symptoms you’ve described. Thanks for checking out doing a full restore, now I guess I’ll just wait for the new update.
I had the same problem, when I first updated to 3.1 on the day it was released I had it happen almost twice a day for the first 3 days…but after that it hasn’t happened again so it might be an initial thing???
Same problem here with the 3G. It happens 2-3 times per day with no warning. Also, the phone gets very hot when this happens. As soon as I pick it up and notice how hot it is, I know it’s in a coma.
This happened to me when I was running iPhone 3.0 on my 3Gs. I thought the phone was bricked and took it into an apple store and when they plugged the phone into the mac it showed that the battery was just dead. Which made no sense because the battery had 80% left before it went into a coma.
I think it has to do with the light sensor on the phone. I had this issue, covered the sensor and hit power. The phone came back on with no problem. Not sure, maybe that was a separate issue. 3.1 FTMFL
Yes. Happened to me – plus the geo location is off, voice mail doesn’t show up (or is days late) and sometimes it just won’t ring to tell me I’ve got a call even though I’ve got the person standing next to me… dialing right there to test it.
Oh – and AT&T ’nuff said.
I wish I’d not updated to 3.1. Heaven forbid my iPhone will be there for me to oh… make or receive phone calls? Nyahh… that’s asking so much, but it’s a pretty phone, isn’t it?
/irreverent sarcasm
Has happened to me multiple times. It is very annoying.
Some problem here with my 3G. This issue happen 3-4 times for day. I hope than Apple fix this bug quick.
And here my jailbroken phone works just fine. It’s just enough of a PITA to go through the process again that I haven’t bothered going beyond 3.0 and having to reinstall everything, especially with Cydia crashing on every second or third install.
Never had a problem on my 3G and I have been running 3.1 since the day it was launched.
I’ve had that problem so many times…..
I want to revert back to 3.0.1, but Apple doesn’t sign the old FW files anymore, so im out of luck. Thank you Apple
This exact thing happened to me several times after I updated to 3.1. A bit of research led me to believe that it was related to the new Safari anti-phishing feature trying to update it’s list. I disabled that feature and it hasn’t happened since.
Coincidence? I don’t really care because I have my iPhone back and coma free!
How do you turn off the anti-phishing feature?
I also came to suspect the anti-phishing feature. Turning that one off did decrease the incidents but they still happen. I think that turning notifications, syncing etc off would remove this “feature”. This seem to happen only for 3G only and i’m pretty sure it happens when sceen is suppose to do something like show notification or in coming call etc. That could be that device runs out of memory. Strange that Apple removed all memory apps couple weeks before 3.1. Luckily i have one and that one shows real weird amounts of memory after update, sometimes more than it’s possible (physically). I have seen that this bug has been reported to Apple since first beta in iteration 3.1. So it must be something hard to find but on the other hand they should have found it or push release futher
Has happened to me multiple times.
This has been a known, wide-spread bug for weeks now and Apple still has not acknowledged it.
I suspect that the acknowledge battery issue could be the same problem, since the iPhone Coma could be draining juice while in the comatose state.
I am now certain that the Comatose status and the battery drain are related. The battery is getting drained while it’s in this Coma status. Some process or network search or something is running constantly, hogging the whole CPU, not allowing any of the interface screen or buttons to respond. I did one time push the home button and got no response and set it down and then like a minute later a slowed unlock screen came up, as if it took a minute for the home button push to take effect.
I’m going to try turning of 3G and see if that eliminates the problem as some are suggesting.
Yep. Mine started goin’ coma 3 days ago. Right at about 50% battery. Nothing can bring it back except my iMac. Plug it in for about 10 minutes..charge to full. Back up and running. Driving me nuts!
I had it happen to me twice but I could have sworn it was with 3.0 rather than 3.1.
I’m getting this too. It’s real evident when my bluetooth cuts in my car while my iPhone sits idle.
What I’ve been noticing on my end is that if I leave an app open and lock the phone, I’ll have a chance of it unable to wake up. But if I make an effort to go back to the home screen and lock the phone, it wakes up every time.
At first I thought it was the Facebook app, but other apps, including mail, were also culprits.
I am glad I am not alone, but that’s all there is to be glad about :-(
Happens to my 3GS once every one or two weeks
1. How could Apple have missed this bug. If my phone doesn’t work, I don’t make money. This is a big enough problem for me to quit the iPhone if Apple doesn’t fix it fast..
2. Apple hasn’t even acknowledged the problem. Do they have their head in the sand?
I had all the 3.1 upgrade problems with my 16GB 3G, tried a restore as new phone, didn’t work, took it to the Apple Store told them what I had already done and they replaced (with another 3G, not Gs) it citing a hardware problem if the restore didn’t work.
This happens to me 2 or 3 times a day. Iphone 3G running 3.1. It *seems* to happen mostly when I turn off the screen while sending or receiving a SMS message. Holding Home & Power button always reboots it.
Definitely frustrating, I figured there would be an update within a couple days.
I have had all the issues with my G3 iphone with the 3.1, really bad battery time and the coma thing that I had to reboot it!! I also get 4 of the same text message at times, and calls never make it to my phone. People say they called me but my phone shows no missed calls or anything like that.
i had this too right after updating to 3.1. it happened 2 or 3 times a day at first, then up to 4 or 5 times in one night. after reading the support forum (1000+ post thread) it seemed like nothing was helping anyone so i didn’t fiddle with it. i haven’t changed a thing (i haven’t even synced with itunes, bought apps or done anything else other than normal use) and haven’t had a coma for 3 days now. who knows.
i was a bit freaked because i had to be on call for work for the past few days and was terrified about missing calls at 3am.
I’m lucky enough to have the trifecta.
1. Hit the home button and nothing. Then I hit it again, and nothing. I try to reboot it, nothing. It’s like it’s fully dead. Put it on the charger, still nothing. 5 minutes later, it’s fine and 100% battery.
2. One night at 100% charge I went to sleep. Woke up, same thing, this time though the battery was gone. Not even enough juice to SHOW me that it needed charging. Not good to have your battery die from 100% over about 6 hours with the iPhone sleeping.
3. Phone functionality stops working. Just won’t work. Happened 2 times now on me since 3.1. I have rebooted this phone more times in the last 2 weeks than I have in the previous 3 – 4 months.
Have u figure it out? THis is exactly what’s happening to mine. Ive reboot my phone more times in the last 2 days that i have never reboot it it before! Its driving me insane. I thought it was just because i charge it with my mac, but even if I charge it the normal way, still wont work!! Agh Im going cuckoo!!!
I wish Apple would allow us to roll back. These problens are so frustrating. I will never rush into an update again.
I’d have to add some wording to your post @Chris…
I will never rush into an update again, after 3.2 fixes these freaken problems.
My wife’s 3G did this today, she picked it up and it was dead, no amount of button pushing could bring it to life. 1/2 an hour later with no additional charge it worked as normal. It hadn’t powered down just wouldn’t wake up. My 3Gs hasn’t had any such problems.
We installed 3.1 on both phones on the day of release.
My 3GS is now suffering from terrible battery life, my wife’s 3G is the same as before.
My Apple bluetooth headset, even when fully charged shows as in the red on the 3GS all the time.
Sort it out Apple…Please.
My wife and I have both had the same problems with our 3G’s. I had 85% battery life and had to re-boot the phone. As soon as it re-booted, it was at 15% battery. I also have re-booted more since the 3.1 update than in the entire time I have had the phone, which is over a year. We have an appointment at Apple tonight and I hope they can come up with a solution.
It is hard to work without knowing if the phone is working or not.
I had this problem for about a week. I would do a complete reboot about 4 or 5 times a day. I even did a complete restore. After doing some research, I did a reset of my network settings which did the trick. I dont know if anyone else would have the same results however, I did it about a week ago and the sluggishness has yet to return.
I get the problem probably around three to four times a day. It’s worse when I get an incoming call and it rings and I slide the screen so I can answer but it locks up and just keeps calling. Losing all faith in iPhone technology!
It happened to me once since the upgrade. I had to hard reset.
I’ll join the parade too … it has happened at least 3 times since I upgraded a week ago. I also experienced the dreaded battery drain once: 95% to about 10% in only an hour or so.
I have two iPhones – one personal and one business. The personal is working absolutely fine, but the business piece has a problem with its battery way before I upgraded it to 3.1. If I have my push e-mail enabled, a fully charged phone turns in to dead meat with in a couple of hours irrespective of my usage. Thats weird.
On the other hand, my personal line has all pushes and pulls to it and it works absolutely fine. Super weird :P
Funny, I read this post three hours after it happened to me today. I too thought the phone was dead, kaput, joined the choir invisible. But no, eventually I got it running again. Annoying.
Exactly the same (3G); a much shorter battery life and numerous episodes of coma as soon as I (hastily) upgraded to OS3.1. Frequency of coma has become less recently, but the battery life is terribly short. It does not last even a day… I wish I could get 3.0 back!
I just got back from the Apple store and they are painfully aware of the problem. They are sure they are tied together, but they do not have a fix as of yet. They did tell me that a work-around is to turn off 3G and just use the Edge network. This should slove the coma issue and also will extend the battery life. They have seen it many times on 3G but never on the Edge network. I have mine set and we will see what happens.
Good luck all…
I have Iphone 3G 16GB. Upgraded it to 3.1. Bam!! Iphone coma twice a day. Sucksss! Had to do a hard reset, then it’s all good, but missed so many calls :( Anyway, I have read it somewhere in the net, that switching the auto lock to 5 minutes will help solved the problem. (at least for the time being, until they release the next update). Try it! It worked for me. No more coma iphone.
I’ve got the 3gs and I haven’t yet had full blown coma, but I get regular narcolepsy- turn it on and it takes 5 seconds before the slider is responsive. General sluggish performance- the keyboard even momentarily hangs while i’m typing. Yesterday I had three pop up letters showing for a couple of seconds while it glitched.
It’s obviously a problem with a system process taking too much time, running too often. That would explain battery issues as well. Background stuff should get way lower priority than the ui though. The beauty of the device. Is that it’s so smooth to use. This is just crap.
And the fact that it’s no longer easy to downgrade is especially frustrating, cause that would be an easy fix.
My iPhone 3G 16GB just got out of it’s first coma. I had to do a hard reeboot. It freaked me out.
Hmmm – popular thread. Yep – I’m one of those with a narcleptic iPhone. Not finding it a big deal, but then I’m learning to livemy life without WiFi, no video (my cruddy little Razr V8 had video for heaven’s sake), slow synchornicsation, short battery life, dodgy touch screen (in the corners), new apps that won’t work on a 3G, etc. etc. but I do have minigore!
I’ve been using the new 3.1 firmware in a Jailbroken iPhone 3G for a week now, without any issues. The battery it’s as bad as before…
UPDATE: I turned off Setting>Notifications and Settings>Safari>Fraud Warning. So far, so good. No coma yesterday.
I’ve had this happen a few times in every version of the iPhone I’ve owned (and I’ve owned everyone of them). I’ve also had it happen with every cellphone and computer I’ve ever owned. And every software I’ve ever used. And just like everything else, I solve it with a soft reset. (Or when all else fails, by turning the device on and off: Didn’t y’all see the episode of South Park?) As the iPhone doesn’t have a hole I can stick a paper clip into, I googled ‘how to soft reset an iPhone’ and learned it takes about five seconds and is a lot easier than writing a 300 word blog post. (How to be a geek: Learn how to turn on and off
It helped for me to turn of the Fraud Detection in Safari (Settings -> Safari)
Since then: no coma anymore.
Yes for the Coma Mode on my iPhone 3G. Been happening 4-5 times a day since I upgraded to 3.1 — it also seems to have affected other friends with the 3G (but not 3GS). For those snarkily saying “just rest it, stupid, it happens to all iPhones”, it’s not just a phone freezing while you use it. It’s a phone freezing at random points through the day, so you can’t receive any calls or messages. It makes the phone USELESS, and potentially dangerous. (What if someone had to make an emergency call? Should they reboot and wait the five minutes for it to come back to life?)
The infuriating part (aside from having a bricked phone for the majority of my day) is Apple’s insistence on “officially” saying it is a “hardware issue” and not related to the update whenever people contact Support.
I love my Mac. I love my iPhone. But this is ridiculous.
Disable 3G and it solves the problem although you’ll be running on Edge until they fix the problem.
Disabling 3G didn’t fix my comaphone, nor did any of the other suggested fixes (network resets, restoring as a new phone, etc. etc.). The “genius” at the genius bar stated that powering down and re-starting the phone once a day would fix the problem, but…no dice.
A replacement phone is in the mail; we’ll see if that works.
This does not solve the problem. I’ve tried everything….my phone even went into ‘coma’ while in airplane mode.
This is ridiculous and Apple not recognizing it (or at least publicly stating it) is insulting.
It happened one time to me. It was totally bricked. Even holding down the two buttons for 10 seconds resulted in nothing. (My phone was totally drained it appears.)
I found a reference that said it might not show signs of life for two minutes after being hooked up if the battery is totally drained. No dice for me. An hour later still no sign of life.
Then I ran into a web pages that offered another solution.
Hold down the home button for 10 seconds. Continue to hold it down as you hold down the power button for 10 seconds. Continue to hold down the Home button as you let go of the power button. In about 10 seconds it should start.
For me it took something like 20 or 30 seconds after letting go of the power button (or did it just seem that long?) and it finally lit up the screen. But then it said it had to be restored. So I had to restore it to factory fresh, and then restore from a backup.
Luckily, it’s only happened once so far. Otherwise, it’s been flawless since last November.
Eric, you don’t know me, but I think you may have just saved my iPhone, was just about to take a trip to the Apple store! Thank you!
Upgraded to 3.1 on my 3G and have experienced the coma twice after battery level was below %20.
It’s defintely better since I’ve disabled 3G. It was so annoying! Hope Apple will fix the bug soon!
This happened to me twice under 3.0.1… both times, it was locked and received a text… hasn’t happened since the upgrade to 3.1
Don’t bother with exchanging for a new phone. I’ve already done that and it doesn’t fix the problem unless you get a new one that hasn’t been upgraded to 3.1. I got a new one before I knew this was a problem. It had 3.0 on it. As soon as I plugged it in to iTunes it upgraded and is trashed again. My wife has an iPhone as well and is having no problems at all – same model, etc. Disabling 3G doesn’t necessarily solve the coma problem but many of us were also not able to make calls or send texts until we disabled 3G.
I had this happen right after I upgraded. Phone would not coma – but would be unable to send/receive calls. I turned off wifi and the problem disappeared. Then I called apple care – did a hard reset and reset network settings and the problem was gone with wifi on – Today I turned the phone off for a few hours for the first time since I reset – problem came right back! VERY frustrating – Apple needs to fix this!
Yup. Running the latest update on my iPhone 3G. I noticed his problem around the second day after i updated and it’s still happening about once or twice a day. :-/
The worst (or is it the best?) outcome ocurred last night. IPhone 3G running latest firmware crashed for good. No amount of power cycling and restarting get’s it past the apple logo at startup. At least I sprung for the AppleCare so when I go to my 1:40pm appointment today, I’ll be getting a new phone.
Who can tell me what I should expect to deal with when I have a new phone. Do I just go home and build from a backup?
Ask the applecare people, but I have been told it’s very easy through iTunes. Should restore automatically since iTunes will see it as a new phone.
This is all as long as you’ve made a recent back-up. heh
Again, this is untried. I haven’t gotten a new phone yet, so ask applecare people, they will definitely be able to tell you.
So the Genius attempted 2 restores from safe mode and both hung up and failed. On try three he said if this doesn’t work, I’ll get you a new phone. Lo and behold try 3 worked. He did however say that I shouldn’t restore from my backup since whatever caused the crash on the backup is probably sitting in the restore point as well. Said it was better to start fresh. Only 1 app (Gasbag) has data that I will miss. Had logged every gasoline purchase for 12 months and now it will all be gone. Hopefully the completely new build on my phone will make it work much better than before the crash!
you can pull the backup data from gasbag if you have a jailbroken iphone… you can open any back up on your PC/Mac and extract the (documents) folder. then go into your jailbroken iphone and drop it in the new apps documents folder and it is there. Google backup extractor for iphone.
I’ve not had the coma phone problems although the phone does seem a little slower when opening text messages now.
In the UK on O2
I had the coma once and hard rebooted. Since then I made sure I always returned to the home screen before letting the phone suspend. I read this somewhere and it makes sense, since most apps don’t have a background footprint. I never got the problem again once I did this.
Lately I got careless and stopped returning at the home screen, and sure enough I have “coma”ed twice in the past day. I am again always returning to the home screen. This is clearly a 3.1 bug, but this workaround is working for me. Awaiting a fix from Apple ……..
My iPhone just went comatose on me a few minutes ago. All I was doing was listening to a podcast. I stopped it and left my desk only to find it unresponsive. Connecting it to the charger via outlet or MacBook yeilded no results. Hard reset finally fixed it. Hopefully Apple addresses this soon.
My iPhone just went comatose on me a few minutes ago as well. I thought it was a goner. I did a hard reset and it’s back, but we’ll see how long it lasts. You’d think for how much their products cost, they’d actually work correctly.
I’m writing this from the Smith Haven Apple store where the manager Ellen flat out refused to acknowledge any issue with 3.1 software comas/crashing/dropped calls/poor battery life.
I have been having similar problems on my 3GS since upgrading to 3.1 but I’d rather call it a seizure because if I’m patient and don’t reboot it, the phone recovers on its own after a minute or few. The common denominator is that the touchscreen stops being responsive but the home button works. This will happen in a game, browser or when the phone is sitting idle. It sometimes misses calls, or once when the phone was ringing I was able to repeatedly slide the slider all the way to the right but the phone kept ringing and wasn’t answering.
I tried to downgrade to 3.0.1 firmware but Apple doesn’t allow so I’m stuck with this rather smartphone with occasional paperweight functionality. Downloading 3.1 firmware and doing a full restore fixed it for a day or two, but it soon went back to its “regular” seizure schedule. I have a rather high IT management position and having an unreliable work cell phone is a BAD thing. In addition, I recently canceled my land line and this is also my only home number, so guess whether I’m a happy camper. That’s what I get for trusting Apple – next time I won’t upgrade for a long time, or I’ll wait for x.x.1 version where they will hopefully fix the worst bugs.
Zarko same thing happened to me too so now I am stuck with unreliable phone….
I haven’t done the update 3.1 yet on my 3gs. I am afraid of
al the comments above. Is it safe guys or not?
Do you have to get the 3.1 to get the att mms now?
Also is att supposed to be sending a text to me? I am in Memphis tn.
Thanks
I haven’t done the update 3.1 yet on my 3gs. I am afraid of
al the comments above. Is it safe guys or not?
Do you have to get the 3.1 to get the att mms now?
Also is att supposed to be sending a text to me? I am in Memphis tn.
Thanks guys.
Unfortunately my reset of not more than 2 hours ago didn’t help me out at all. It already locked up once. I went to take it out of my pocket after I hadn’t really touched it much since the reset and it was locked up solid. Very warm to the touch also. I had to hard reset and now it’s fine again.
This is absolutely ridiculous for a phone as expensive as the iPhone.
3 times I’ve experienced “the coma!” Twice it resulted in a total drain of battery life. Once it just wouldn’t do anything, and I wasn’t close to my charger. 5 to 10 min. later it just started working again with no battery drain.
Guess I won’t be blindly trusting Apples updates anymore. You’d think a bug as widespread as this would’ve been detectable before they released the update.
iPhone 3GS and mine started having the problems as soon as I upgraded to 3.1. After asking about 10 other friends who all have iPhones and 3.1 it seemed I was the only one with the problem. Glad I came across this becuase I was about to do the restore to see if that resolves the problem. Guess i’m going to have to wait for another update. Missing calls due to a comatose state is really getting annoying.
My wifes phone was showing the same problems (although mine is fine).
I found that if I turned off the Auto-Lock in Settings, the problem is greatly reduced.
I didn’t update my 3gs but I updated my wife’s 3g and she said her battery went from full to dead in about 4 hours with no activity really between.
No lockups yet or comas. We’ll see!!
Question: how do you get cydia on the phone?
3gs running 3.0.1 firmware—–
The solution is to downgrade. You can follow the steps here http://www.blogsdna.com/3911/how-to-downgrade-iphone-3gs-31-to-30-os.htm
or anywhere else that walks you through it. My wife’s phone had all of the above symptoms. I made an appointment with a “genius” and they said that there was nothing wrong with the phone and that I should try to reset it. I did that and my wife still experienced problems. I was about to return it when I came across the coma forums that you can find all over the internet. I figured it was worth a try and downgraded her phone. It’s worked great for the past week. I just hope that the new upgrade will fix the problem or else she will be stuck on version 3.0 for a while.
iPhone 3G, 8GB
I have the same problem, which began after the 3.1 update.
I have done:
“reset all settings”
Full Restore of the phone.
At least 2 hours of reset, restore, redo settings, etc.
Nothing works to fix this problem.
Randomly, the phone will simply stop working. Changing the vibrate button does nothing, and inbound phone calls go to Voicemail after 5 or 6 rings.
There is no rhyme or reason. Some days I have no problems, other days, it goes “out” 4 or 5 times a day. If I wait (as mentioned by Zarko) a few minutes, it will eventually come back.
When it does come back, the phone has lost all network connections and has to refind cell towers, wifi, etc.
Sometimes, nothing will work but a hard reset.
VERY Frustrating to say the least.
Glad I’m not the only one with this problem, but I wish it didn’t exist!
I wish I had never updated to 3.1. i will be wary of the next update for sure, which is said, because it could hold the answer to all the problems!
I have had this iphone coma problem since day 1 of the update about every other day and it sucks royally. I never had to do that reboot before because it usually came back to life a few minutes later or afte pluggin it in, but after 3 hours of the coma today I did a search to find the cure. So, many thanks for posting this!
What is the cure you found Elizabeth ? The downgrade?
Thx
I am a fellow Iphone coma sufferer. After 3.1 update iphone randomly stops making or receiving calls. It also give a black screen randomly. And lastly my battery now gets drained after ~12 hours (compared to 3-4 days immediately before the update). Will try turning 3G off and see if that helps.
This seems like a MAJOR glitch in apple’s update. I am very unhappy with apple. The least they could do is acknowledge the problem and state they are working on it. I just called an apple store and they said they never heard of this problem…. if you google ‘iphone 3.1 can’t make phone call’ you get hundreds of hits- I can’t imagine they don’t know. Acknowledge there is a problem and people will feel better and not so angry.
I’m really not sure if this fixed “band-aid” the problem, but this post by @Lee suggested that his wife’s problem was “greatly reduced” by turning off auto-lock. I did the same thing and waited 2 days. It does seem a lot better.
Here is the original post…
http://theappleblog.com/2009/09/23/iphone-3-1-unresponsive-and-no-vitals-but-not-dead/#comment-59838
I noticed another thing that might be helping. One of the problems 3.1 introduced for me is when I hit the Home button to wake it, the spotlight over the words “Slide to unlock” is frozen for a few seconds. I noticed sometimes the 3G at the top is gone too. Give it a few seconds and it unfreezes and I can get in and the 3G pops back up, along with full bars. I noticed if I just let it do it’s thing, instead of trying to manhandle it and hit the slider even while frozen, I also seem to be fine.
Now unfortunately I just may be in one of those lulls, which I noticed a few of you had where it’s a day or two before the problems crop up again.
Just some info for ya to help out. I know how frustrating this problem is. Especially with 3 guys here I work with, same phone (3G), same software (3.1) and not a problem. :(
I primarily use EDGE and my iPhone still goes into a coma 3-4 / day
I’m starting to suspect a pattern about letting the iPhone go to sleep while an app is open, but not just one app, I’ve had it coma with several different apps.
My phone has just gone into a “coma”, and it won’t wake up, no matter what I try. Help???? It’s my only phone, so I can’t call AT&T!
Exactly!
Add 1 to the iPhone coma patient list..
Thinking that it could be some sort of memory leak or hung processes, I turned off wireless connection and shutdown all applications, just left the phone running. It seems to be working for a day or so but then today I looked at my phone, the battery was showing full, 5 minutes later it’s dead….
I suppose all software has bugs but just didn’t expect something this big could be coming from Apple…
Putting phone in airplane mode wasn’t helping so I’m tempted to blame indexing because it seems to be getting a bit better every week (said with a bit of sarcasm because there should have been a fix published in a week). I upgraded on Saturday, September 19 and it’s been very bad in the beginning but now the freezes are shorter and less frequent (still happens several times a day). When it happens my screen stops responding to touch, but I can regain control by pushing the off button and going back in with the home button/slider combination. It just happened again while I’m writing this on my iPhone. Knowing the above mentioned trick help me not lose my work, but not having a fix keeps alive the memory of happy dats with my Blackberry phones.
i have a new iphone ::
- 3GS , 32GB , V 3.1 , officially unlocked . and am So frustrated with it .
it gos into coma ( black screen ) every 15 minutes every day immediately after sleep mode ! can’t receive calls , messages , Alarm when it gos to coma , i have to press sleep/wake + Home bottoms for 6 sec to get it back from sleep mode !
No restore ( new or backup ) could help , Now am doing what Liam advice us to do and see if it helps .
Thanks for the great post and thanks to all of you guys .
I had this happen to me last night. The phone came back this morning, not sure if I did anything that brought it back. After reading this I tried to go back to the home screen and change some settings but I am now stuck in Safari, when I hit the Home button it takes a picture and does not go to the home screen. It also does it when I hit the sleep button. This is my only phone, I did not sleep well last night knowing I was unable to make a call if I had an emergency.
My 3G was going comatose several times a day since 3.1 update. The last few months I was leaving Bluetooth on all the time so the iPhone would automatically sync with my handsfree when I got in the car. I read another post suggesting that turning off Bluetooth would fix the problem so I tried it today — lo and behold, no coma episodes. Hopefully this is a band-aid until Apple releases a patch.
Looks like 3.1.2 is out. I haven’t tried it yet, but the list of what it fixes looks promising…
http://www.digitalhome.ca/2009/10/iphone-os-3-1-2-firmware-released/
OMG! I seriously thought I was going to have a heart attack this afternoon when my phone seemed to fizzle and die! I noticed that the last couple of times that I brought it out of sleep mode that the screen looked a little funky, like changing the channels used to be a long time ago on the tv. The third time I pushed the button, nothing. Plugged it up, nothing. Only when I thought about how I have to reboot my iPod (when I take it off of the computer without ejecting it) did I think about how to reboot my phone. Luckily it worked, but I am seriously upset with this mini computer that holds my life in it’s memory chips. I have it on auto update, so I’m sure I’ve got the newest version of the software, and it still died.
I have updated to 3.1.2 (thanks to the_0ne for the post on this – made me run to do an update)
We’ll see what happens. So far, 8 hours and no crash. I’ll check back in around 3 days from now.
Dana Hail: just because you have autoupdate on doesn’t mean it will update today. iTunes is set to check once a week for updates by default. A manual update check will force the download.
my iphone 3g went frequent coma after i upgraded to 3.1, its getting annoying! apple, please please do something before we lose faith on your brand!
@koma
….um, they have!! 3.1.2 has been released!
oh, i better update it soon. Is 3.1.2 getting any better?
Ever since I’ve upgraded to version 3.1 (7C144), my iPhone 3Gs touch screen becomes sporadically unresponsive, and I have to put it into sleep mode and then wake it up for the touch screen to become reactive again. It’s annoying, I’m wondering if it’s a hardware issue, will try to restore the entire device, and if that doesn’t work, will bring it to the Apple Store.
48 hour mark and all is still well. No freezes, hangups, hiccups, seizers or unresponsiveness.
It looks like whatever caused this has been fixed, at least for now.
Thanks for help. I had the exact same problem on 3.1.1 and hard-resetting did the trick.
I had this happen 5 times and twice was after the 3.1.2 update. For all occasions the last app running had always been the camera. Now after using the camera I always hit the home button and I have never had coma relapse since.
So far with 3.1.2- I haven’t seen anything abnormal. Maybe slight battery power lower than normal.
THERE IS NOT in probably 99% of these cases anything wrong with the iphone!! At the your left corner of the display there is an IR-sensor. Touch that OR hold a finger NEAR it, it blacks out the screen & the display will momentarily get irresponsive. This is NOT a bug/hardware fault – IT’S A FEATURE!!
Think selves: This is
1) to protect battery life & privacy. When holding the phone to your ear U show part of the screen to people around U — but — primarily it is
2) to protect U from starting apps when touching the display to your ear
Try it our for yourselves. Hold your finger on or near the display.
Maybe U could expect Apple to be more informative about it but this feature is of course necessary for a telephone constructed the way the iphone is.
Uh! This has nothing to do with the screen going black as that only happens when using the phone app on a call. It also takes more than a finger to black out the screen, like my entire hand or a head. (I have a 3GS, maybe earlier phones used IR) I just played with the phone to verify. Also, when trying to get the phone going after entering coma mode I have to reset it using the power and home button simultaneously.
I’m referring to a 3GS which is what I have. This feature puzzled me til I was informed of the sensor at the top left. On my phone it suffices to hold a finger about hardly 1 cm above and to the side of the sensor to cause a black out. It’s thus very easy to accidentily cause a blackout.
This is probably the cause of this “problem” in the majority of users. My guess. It’s also only happening during calling – so if it happens in other instances it’s caused by something else.
groucho,
Found sensor, but this is NOT I repeat NOT the problem I had, but I can see it being a problem with some folks. I know that I was using the camera last before a coma episode and not the phone. The sensor seems to only work when using the phone app, on a connected call and not using the speaker phone mode.
OK, this feature puzzled me and almost drove me nuts, U know those automized telephone-services, “press 1″ etc – in fact it happened to me calling apple-service – I had to hang up! A couple of hours later the cause was pointed at by a customer support guy at the telephone company. But this is something else than your problem, JonG. Bet a lot of users are bothered by my problem thou..
This is exactly what mine is doing… Im glad I am not alone… thank you so much for posting this.
I’d say Apple would have done better placing the IR-sensor on the top RIGHT corner. As most are right-handed the natural thing to do is holding the phone in your left hand to use your right index-finger pressing buttons during a call. Thus you hold the phone resting in the palm with your thumb extended at the left side and in that situation it’s dangerously close to the IR-sensor, often in my case (even when I now know it) causing black-out.
Omg my boyfs phone went into coma and we tried the home button and main button trick and it worked. We had given up hope. Try that. Plus all missed calls registered on revents even though the phone had a black screen and was “dead”. Thank you guys. Mine was fine after update
iPhone Coma… That’s clever. I used my phone several times this morning and then when I needed to make an urgent SMS after receiving a call, it won’t turn on. When I hook it up to iTunes, it says that the phone is on, but it won’t receive calls or move away from the black screen.
I’ll try the hardboot that you suggest above. The only other trouble I have had is that it refused to take a charge from the wall for a while.
OK that worked. I thought about the situation a bit more. My phone call came in on the house phone. I hit “Sleep” from the iPod app when I turned off the music to answer the house phone. After that it went to coma mode.
I’m in the same boat: iPhone started staying in coma mode about two weeks ago. I’ve been trying multiple fixes:
• Restored from backup
• Restored as new iPhone
• Wiped all data and settings from phone
• Restored with no apps
• Updated iTunes and proceeded with new restore
• Restored from fresh firmware download
• Restored in DFU mode with fresh firmware download
• Restored from a different computer
Phone has never been jailbroken, abused, anything like that.
I’m worried that it’s hardware related, but currently I’m having (tentative) success when disabling 3G and wi-fi (which, of course, makes the phone virtually useless). If this lasts, I’ll bring wi-fi back and go from there.
I’m scheduled to meet with a “Genius” on Friday, but I’m skeptical: I know a “Genius,” and even as a lifelong PC user I still think I have better intuitive knowledge of this software and hardware than he does.
My 8gig 3G has gone completely haywire. I’m continuously stuck in the coma and the home/top buttons don’t do anything at all. If my phone locks up, I need to wait for it to die before I can do anything at all with it.
Hi Dave,
I’m finding the exact same issues on my iPhone 3G running iOS4. Completely comatose, multiple times per day!! Its so frustrating! I’ve upgraded to iOS4.0.1 but no dice. I’m seeing that iOS4.1 will fix the speed issues, but what about the narcolepsy?? Anybody have any information on this?
Thanks
thank you so much.. i have the utmost respect for you.. thank you again dearly..