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Calibrating Home button in iPhone, iPad and iPod touch

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Apr 6th 2014 08:03 am 4072548 24953

Over time, the majority of iOS device owners may have a small, but quite annoying problem with the Home button, which starts to respond to pressing only every other time. Usually it doesn't happen right away, but after about 1,5-2 years from the purchase date.

Luckily, there is an elegant way for the mobile operating system to calibrate Home button, taking into account its "physical disability".

After applying this method you'll probably notice that iOS has become more responsive to pressing "Home" button during heavy work with your mobile gadget.

Calibrating process has few simple steps:

First, run any application that was originally part of default programs on iOS. For example, Weather, Stocks, Clock and so on.
Once the app is opened, press and hold the Power button until the familiar "Slide to power off" appears, but do not touch this slider.
Now hold the Home button for 10-12 seconds, this will result in a force shut down of the built in application.

That's it! From now on the only physical button on the front panel of your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch should properly respond to touch as if just purchased.

Tags: iPhone iPad iPod touch Tablet PCs Apple Smartphones Calibration

Discussion (total 2 comments)

Octothorpe

April 06, 2014 at 12:46 pm

Apple Certified Technician here.

There is no "calibration" taking place here. In fact, there is nothing to calibrate; either contact is made in the switch (in which case it will work) or contact is not made (in which case it will not).

The Home button (a dome switch) can begin functioning intermittently due to corrosion or debris between the switch's dome and the pads on the board which become shorted by the dome when it's pressed downwards (causing the dome to collapse onto the pads).

Compare this to, for example, a touch screen — which detects the capacitance of fingers without any moving parts — and due to manufacturing variations needs to be calibrated at the factory so each unit off the production line behaves comparably to all the others.

This article is complete horseshit, and should be disregarded. The procedure it outlines merely tells iOS to forcibly kill the foreground application, and has nothing to do with anything else, including the "calibration" of parts which cannot be calibrated.

That is all.

Anton Muchychka

April 07, 2014 at 05:19 am

Hello Octothorpe!
Actually this solution must be performed before disassembling a device! When you use a device for some time the contact of the button becomes worse, but such solution can prolong a time of using device. It helped me several times, of course when it doesn't help you need to replace the button, it will be the next article.