The adverts for iPhones are always telling us how great they are. They can surf the web, let you watch YouTube or feature films and of course they play your music and store your photos. They can even help you sort your finances. But what they don't tell us is that for some people the phones have started crashing and becoming unusable.
iPhone fans have been calling the problem 'coma mode' and when it happens the phone won't receive calls or emails. It becomes useless until the user puts it through a 'hard reboot', similar to shutting down and restarting a desk top computer when it crashes. But even worse, because this happens when the screen is locked, leaving it blank, the unlucky ones experiencing the problem don't know it's in 'coma mode' until they pick up the phone to check. They could go for hours without realising the phone's stopped working.
We met Paul Hutton, a self confessed iPhone addict. His iPhone had been suffering a string of glitches and falling in and out of 'coma mode' for weeks, sometimes two or three times a day. In fact the problem had got so bad he started carrying a spare phone around with him, just in case.
"With no warning or indication as to why it happened the wifi access failed completely", he said. "(The phone) was not working properly, it became unstable. People would dial in and the tone would be that of a phone that's been cut off and it would go to sleep. It would fall into what's referred to as a coma."
For the vast majority of iPhones 'coma mode' is not a problem but it causes great frustration for those users it does affect.
Michael Tyler, a world renowned telecommunications expert, told us he believes the problems come down to the applications or 'apps'that Apple - iPhone's manufacturer - are always banging on about. The apps can turn your phone into a GPS style map, help with D.I.Y around the house by turning the phone into a spirit level and can even allow you to drink a virtual pint of beer. But he says they can cause problems too.
"The difficulty is that it's a skittish kind of a thing," he said. "It doesn't happen every time, it just happens in certain circumstances depending on how much you have stored on the Apple phone, how many applications you have, which applications you have and which version of the operating system."
Michael likens the problem to a bouncer in a night club. When an app starts acting up it's like a commotion in a night club and the bouncer throws out those causing the trouble. But if the commotion grows the police are called in and they shut down the whole place. That, he says, is what the operating system is doing.
Apple has released a software fix in the form of a patch that can be downloaded from iTunes. The patch is called OS 3.1.2. If you plug you're iPhone into iTunes as normal it should solve the problem. If it doesn't, let us know.
Apple told Watchdog:
"iPhone OS Software Update 3.1.2 is a free update for all iPhone customers that provides a number of bug fixes. We encourage all iPhone customers to keep up to date with the latest version of iPhone OS via the free download from iTunes.
"For support please refer to: http://www.apple.com/uk/support/iphone/. For complete details on iPhone hardware service and repair, please see our iPhone Service FAQ.
"There are now more than 85,000 apps available... the number of apps on the iPhone does not affect its performance."
iPhone goes into a coma?
iPhone fans have been calling the problem 'coma mode' and when it happens the phone won't receive calls or emails. It becomes useless until the user puts it through a 'hard reboot', similar to shutting down and restarting a desk top computer when it crashes. But even worse, because this happens when the screen is locked, leaving it blank, the unlucky ones experiencing the problem don't know it's in 'coma mode' until they pick up the phone to check. They could go for hours without realising the phone's stopped working.
We met Paul Hutton, a self confessed iPhone addict. His iPhone had been suffering a string of glitches and falling in and out of 'coma mode' for weeks, sometimes two or three times a day. In fact the problem had got so bad he started carrying a spare phone around with him, just in case.
"With no warning or indication as to why it happened the wifi access failed completely", he said. "(The phone) was not working properly, it became unstable. People would dial in and the tone would be that of a phone that's been cut off and it would go to sleep. It would fall into what's referred to as a coma."
For the vast majority of iPhones 'coma mode' is not a problem but it causes great frustration for those users it does affect.
Michael Tyler, a world renowned telecommunications expert, told us he believes the problems come down to the applications or 'apps'that Apple - iPhone's manufacturer - are always banging on about. The apps can turn your phone into a GPS style map, help with D.I.Y around the house by turning the phone into a spirit level and can even allow you to drink a virtual pint of beer. But he says they can cause problems too.
"The difficulty is that it's a skittish kind of a thing," he said. "It doesn't happen every time, it just happens in certain circumstances depending on how much you have stored on the Apple phone, how many applications you have, which applications you have and which version of the operating system."
Michael likens the problem to a bouncer in a night club. When an app starts acting up it's like a commotion in a night club and the bouncer throws out those causing the trouble. But if the commotion grows the police are called in and they shut down the whole place. That, he says, is what the operating system is doing.
Apple has released a software fix in the form of a patch that can be downloaded from iTunes. The patch is called OS 3.1.2. If you plug you're iPhone into iTunes as normal it should solve the problem. If it doesn't, let us know.
Apple told Watchdog:
"iPhone OS Software Update 3.1.2 is a free update for all iPhone customers that provides a number of bug fixes. We encourage all iPhone customers to keep up to date with the latest version of iPhone OS via the free download from iTunes.
"For support please refer to: http://www.apple.com/uk/support/iphone/. For complete details on iPhone hardware service and repair, please see our iPhone Service FAQ.
"There are now more than 85,000 apps available... the number of apps on the iPhone does not affect its performance."
iPhone goes into a coma?