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Monday, September 24, 2007

Confession Time

I develop software for a living. I own two Windows PC, and one MacBook. I know several programming languages and have been developing software for over 20 years. You would think I'd know how to do some basic stuff on my iPhone already! Like shut it down (really shut it down not just sorta shut it down)!

About two or three days ago I noticed that all of a sudden I couldn't make calls on my iPhone! Everything else seemed to work, even when data had to be gotten over Edge instead of Wifi. When initiating a call, it would "start" and stay that way. No ringing heard, no person answering, nothing. I had my wife make sure that her cell phone was on while she was in the same room. I attempted placing a call to her cell phone. It did not ring. She tried calling another number I had just tried to call. It rang, she got through. Same network, we're both AT&T customers. She tried calling me, again, no work-ey! My phone didn't ring and she got immediately dumped into my voice mail.

I tried "turning off" my iPhone and turning it back on. This was Saturday. It still didn't work. I resolved, that if I couldn't figure this out over the weekend I would go to an AT&T store to get things sorted out.

It seemed to happen sometime after the latest firmware upgrade. I checked all the latest iPhone news on the web to see if there were any items describing how Apple introduced some new bug which made the phone functionality not work. There was nothing.

Fortunately for me the phone part of the iPhone is not critical for business, etc. It could wait until Monday to deal with.

Interlude: On Sunday, after visiting my father, I printed out my Apple store $100 credit and headed to the ol' Apple store to use it (I got a blue-tooth headset by the way). I decided to talk to an Apple associate about this. I wasn't really sure this would help cuz I figured it was probably an AT&T type issue (everthing else on the phone seemed to work fine and I didn't get any error messages).

Apple guy: "Did you do a completely power-down of the phone?"
Me: "I don't know how." ... how embarrassing!

Did I ready all the instructions? No for Pete's sake, I'm a guy!

Turns out that turning the phone off (pressing the "power" button on the top of the phone), doesn't turn it completely off. I knew that already. What I didn't know is that there is a couple of ways to do a complete shutdown of the iPhone:
  • Hold the power button down several seconds until a slider comes up that you can slide with your finger to turn the phone all the way off.
  • If the phone is locked up really good (never has happened to me so far), and the slider doesn't work for you, hold down the power button and the "home" button at the bottom of the phone at the same time until the phone powers down.

I used method number 1 in the store and waited a few seconds (gotta let those electrons disperse), and then turned the phone back on. I tried to make a call home.... Ring!

Yes! It worked! It was suggested to me that I turn my iPhone all the way off about once a week and then turn it back on (sort of a iPhone version of a Cold Boot).

Hope this helps anyone else who doesn't read all the instructions!

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