IPhone Cafe

Basic iPhone troubleshooting steps from Apple.

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1. The phone doesn’t appear in iTunes and won’t sync

• Check the phone battery. It may need recharging. 
• Try a different USB port on your computer.
• Or, turn the phone off and turn it on again. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button on top of iPhone for a few seconds until a red slider appears, and then slide the slider. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.
• Or, restart your computer and reconnect iPhone to your computer.
• If none of these steps works, download and install (or reinstall) the latest version of iTunes from www.apple.com/itunes.

2. The phone won’t make or receive calls, send or receive text messages, or access email or the web

• Check the cell signal indicator in the status bar at the top of the screen. If there are no bars, or if it says “No service,” try moving to a different location. If indoors, try going outdoors or move closer to a window.
• Check to make sure you’re in an area with network coverage. Go to your carrier’s website to see network coverage areas.
• Make sure airplane mode isn’t on. 
• You may need to turn airplane mode on, wait 15 seconds, then turn airplane mode off again.
• Make sure to include an area code for every phone number in your contacts list that you use to send or receive text messages.
• Turn the phone off and turn it on again.
• There may be an issue with your wireless service. In this case, call your carrier’s technical support.
• If none of these steps work, restore the iPhone software. See this document or see “Updating and Restoring iPhone Software” in the iPhone User’s Guide. 

3. The phone won’t turn on, or the display freezes or doesn’t respond

• Press and hold the Home button below the screen for at least six seconds, until the application you were using quits.
• If that doesn’t work, turn iPhone off and turn it on again. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button on top of iPhone for a few seconds until a red slider appears, and then slide the slider. Then press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.
• If that doesn’t work, reset iPhone. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
• If iPhone continues to freeze or not respond after you reset it
  Reset iPhone settings. From the Home screen choose Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings. All your preferences are reset, but no data or media is deleted.
• If that doesn’t work, restore the iPhone software. See document 305744 “Updating and Restoring iPhone Software.”

I got a great question about the blank screen people find on their iPhone when they are rearranging icons on their home screen, and wanted to discuss it here.  The iPhone has seven (I think) screens that can be filled with shortcuts to web applications.  Using the Safari web search function on your iPhone, go to www.apple.com/webapps.  There you will see an extensive list of web applications.  Click on one that sounds interesting to try it out.  For instance, I am addicted to a web app game called iPipes. 

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To add an iPipes icon/shortcut to my home screen, I would first bring up the application on my phone.  At the bottom of the screen, there is the menu of icons (back and forward buttons, a plus sign, a book icon, and the pages icon).  Tap on the  plus sign and it will ask you if you want to add a bookmark, add to the home screen, mail a link to the page, or cancel.  Choose the “Add to Home Screen” button, and it will add the icon to your home screen.  

You can easily rearrange the icons on your home screen to suit your needs.  Simply tap and hold on any icon until all the icons on the screen start quivering.  Little circles will appear right above the quick bar at the bottom–these circles tell you how many screens you currently have available.  The one that is white tells you which screen you’re on.  Once the icons are quivering, you can switch them around by dragging them across the screen.  You cannot, however, drop an icon into an empty slot.

This is probably a no-brainer, but I thought I’d throw it out there…

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My office building doesn’t get cell phone reception, and with my old phones, I’d power the phone all the way down so as to keep it from draining the battery while it looked for a signal.  With the iPhone, I figured all I needed to do to power off the phone was click the little black button on the top right edge of the phone–it turns the screen off, and I assumed that meant it was powered off (a high school teacher used to tell us in class, “Whenever you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.”  I guess she was right about that…).  Unfortunately, I’ve been going to turn on my phone and discovering the battery drained down, so I knew I wasn’t turning it off.  I would normally turn to the phone manual in cases like this, but since the iPhone manual is nothing more than a elaborately drawn game of Pictionary, I’ve not been able to turn to it for guidance with any of my iPhone issues.  

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I finally broke down last night and called my dad, who knows all about technology, and explained my problem.  I’m pretty sure he thought I was totally lame for not being able to figure this out on my own–I could tell from the exaggerated patience he used to walk me through the process, like he would if I didn’t understand English or something.  Regardless, I finally know how it works and am passing it along for the benefit of anyone as inept as I apparently am.  To completely power down the iPhone, press and hold the black button on the top right edge of the phone.  After a few seconds, the screen will fade to black, and a red slide bar will appear at the top of the screen.  Slide the bar to the right to power off, or touch the “cancel” button at the bottom to return to your phone’s desktop.

Here’s a great site for IPhone owners.  The name is ”One thousand iPhone tips and tricks in your hands“. With tips like:

“What to do if your iPhone gets wet“, “Set up Hotmail on the iPhone via Gmail“, “Secrets of the Sensors“, “Customizing the iPod Buttons“, and “Force Quit, Hard Reset“.

…the site is a must visit for iPhone owners.

For more on importing contacts to the IPhone see  ”Generalized IPhone Contact Import“.

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Here’s a tip for IPhone owners with email configured to use Yahoo email.  It’s an easy method to move data onto the IPhone by email. I used this approach to import phone numbers from my old cell phone onto a MyDocs folder on the IPhone.

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To start, go to Yahoo email’s inbox web page.  In the folders window on the left, click Add, and enter the name of the new folder.  Click OK, and the page will redisplay showing the folder.

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To see the new folder on the IPhone, click the Email icon and navigate to the Mailboxes page where the new folder is displayed.

While reading emails, store them to the personal folder by clicking the folder icon at the bottom of the IPhone screen and moving messages into the folder.

Tony

March 30 2008 - For more on importing contacts to the IPhone see these pages:

• Generalized IPhone Contact Import
• Generalized IPhone Contact Import Part II
• Move Contacts - Motorola Rokker to iPhone - Part 1

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The only thing I didn’t like about my Rokker was the connector for the power charger which was lame and fragile.  After a year of use, the phone would not recharge without much jiggling of the charger cable to get a good connection. Motorola tech support sent another unit but the replacement had the same problem with the power connector.  Other than the problem with the charger connector, I loved the Rokker and would have kept it for a while longer.  It had great audio quality, a great speaker phone and it played iTunes.  However, when Apple dropped the price of the iPhone, I decided it was time to drop the Rokker for something new.

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Too bad Apple didn’t provide more options to import telephone numbers into the IPhone. Why not let owners import contacts from Yahoo, GMail, Excel or a simple, vanilla, CSV text file?

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For me, because of limited import options, moving phone numbers to the IPhone from my old Motorola Rokker was painful. The import relied on my Yahoo Contact list which wasn’t my most current list, and it still required manual rekeying.

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For Microsoft Windows users, ITunes imports contacts from Microsoft Outlook. So, if you run on Windows and your phone contacts aren’t stored in Outlook, you may have some work ahead of you.

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In my case, contacts were stored in the Rokker and in Yahoo, but not in Outlook, so I used the following workaround which isn’t so pretty.

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First, from Yahoo’s contact web page, copy / paste contact names and phone numbers into a text file. Then, email that text file to the IPhone and move it into a personal folder.

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Storing names and phone numbers in an email in a personal folder is useful, because the IPhone converts phone numbers into links which, when clicked, pops up the phone dialer. So, without re-keying names and numbers, contact phone numbers from the Rokker are available on the IPhone.  More on personal email folders.

Here’s a tip. It is possible to answer a call while leaving your iphone in your pocket. If wearing your earbuds, simply tap the microphone once.