The strangest thing happened to me last night. I was out with a few friends having a couple ‘thank god it’s the end of the week’ beers, when I decided to ’show off’ a few of the newer iPhone games I had installed. Being in Canada, a few of my buddy’s actually hadn’t seen an iPhone in person, so it was making its rounds around the table for sure.
I decided to open up ‘Raging Thunder‘, a really good racing game that allows you to steer your race car by tilting the device to your left or right. Overall it’s a pretty darn good game and I thought my buddies would enjoy. So, I opened up the app, but just as soon as I opened it I decided to close ‘er down as I could hear someone else talking to me. That’s when all heck broke loose.
The iPhone crashed, or something along those lines. The screen was still on, plain black, but with a slight glow to it. After about 3 or 4 minutes I could see the round ‘I’m working’ graphic on the screen, but even that wasn’t moving smoothly. Another 5 or so minutes later the iPhone had restarted and everything was back to normal, or so I thought.
A phone call came in. Cool.. Picked up the phone and started talking… the other end could hear me, but I couldn’t hear them! I knew someone was on the other end but I could hear absolutely nothing. Lets restart the phone I thought… this is strange.
Restarted the phone and this time our table set out to test what was going on. Sure enough, any incoming audio would not play out on the devices handset speaker, but all outgoing audio would transmit fine. All volume settings were fine, everything was as it should have been. A few more restarts and a few more tries, and still no dice.
I left the phone as it was for the evening, but upon returning home I set out to fix the problem. ‘Hope this will be easy’ I thought… and it was, thankfully. Docked the iPhone, opened iTunes and restored the unit. I did a fresh install of 1.1.4 and after that was done, restored settings from a recent backup of the phone. From there, I downloaded and ran the latest version of ZiPhone, and I was back in business. Tested out the phone again, and bingo bongo it was working like butter again. Ordeal over.
So what can we learn from this? Be cautious about third party apps…and backup your iPhone often! I’m not going to discourage you from using or installing anything (go for it!) But I think we all have to realize that 3rd party apps can and sometimes do funny things to the iPhone. In my case incoming audio stopped working for some unknown reason, triggered by a 3rd party app crash. Install 3rd party apps at your own risk, and accept the consequences. That’s the best way to look at it.
On the way home last night I had set myself up for the worst, ‘Well, looks like I might have a brick on my hands…’ Thankfully that wasn’t the case.
Anyone else out there experienced similar problems!? Would love to hear your strange and kooky iPhone horror stories!
TodGak // 10/05/2008 at 9:39 am
Thanks for sharing that story! Glad you got it fixed!
miigo // 10/05/2008 at 9:40 am
I had something similar happen but when the iphone restarted everything was working fine.
Partners in Grime // 10/05/2008 at 9:55 am
Should be fewer problems once Apple’s App store goes live.
Mike // 10/05/2008 at 10:49 am
Thanks for that
I downloaded that app too and my phone wouldn’t even reboot after
It came with 1.12 and a stealthsim
Many hours of stressy forum reading on what to do
Tossed the stealthsim,restored and upgraded to 1.14 in itunes
Then used iliberty and a few clicks later i was back in business..whew..
Mike (again) // 10/05/2008 at 10:54 am
To be fair though it may have been the 300mb allocation for apps, OS,etc was full
Bigboss has a utility to tell you how full that section is
VL-Tone // 10/05/2008 at 11:37 am
I also lost audio on my jailbroken iPod Touch following a crash from a third party app. Even after a reboot, audio wouldn’t play. Since I heard a loud click when the app crashed, I was afraid that the audio chip was fried or something.
The solution I found was to reset the settings:
Settings –> General –> Reset –> Reset All Settings.
I’m pretty sure it would’ve solved your problem on the iPhone.
Mr. Mayor // 10/05/2008 at 1:09 pm
Mike, glad it wasn’t just me that had this problem! Also good that you got things back up and running… what a relief hey!?
VL-Tone, thanks for that info too… if I ever run into a similar issue again I’ll try to reset all settings.
Daniel A. Shockley // 11/05/2008 at 9:42 pm
I had that SAME problem on my NOT-jailbroken iPhone. I didn’t need to Restore, though. My fix?
Plug in the headphones, then unplug them.
That worked. Seems to make the iPhone decide whether to mute the speaker or not. I’m assuming that would have worked for you, too, although I don’t know for sure.
madmacmat // 12/05/2008 at 6:35 am
OK… this is SUPPOSED to happen to nosy people jailbreaking iphones I guess… so my warning is: keep away from the metasoftware KATE (previously Caterpilar), this thing made my iphone to the most magnificent-looking doorstopper ever seen- instantly! Don’t use this, it messes up major time…
madmacmat // 12/05/2008 at 6:36 am
@Daniel: the software bug experienced here is a bit more severe than just a misguided mute call from the software…
Mat Pancha // 13/05/2008 at 8:39 am
That doesn’t conclusively mean it was the 3rd party apps. Keep in mind, everyone is beta testing the iPhone.