Is Your iPhone's Home Button Shot?

Earlier today, I had a freak out moment.  My iPhone, on which I am hopelessly dependent stopped working!  The home button, that little under-appreciated circular button at the base of the phone that controls countless tasks was broken...or so I thought.

It all started this morning.  I pressed that little button to display the password lock screen.  Nothing happened.  That seemed a little odd so I pressed the power button just to see if the battery was drained.  Nope.  The phone responded to the power button with no problem.  I entered my passcode and began merrily checking my e-mail when I realized I was having a devil of a time returning to the home screen.  Needless to say, that turn of events totally sucked...and it sucked even more when rebooting the phone did absolutely nothing.  And it sucked even more when I found out (on Apple's website) that my phone's one year warranty expired last week!  How convenient.

I frantically searched online for anyone else that had this problem and out of all the cries for help, I found only two answers.

1. Replace the phone when the Home button is physically damaged. Fortunately, this solution did not apply to me since the button on my phone isn't loose or cracked or anything.
2. Kill some apps.  I usually do this on a very regular basis.  Except today is the holiday weekend and I left quite a few (12) apps open.  Apparently, the Home button can take a longer time to respond when many apps are running in the background.  The only problem is you need the Home button to function to kill the apps.  What a dilemma.  If you keep double-tapping the Home button it should eventually respond (as it did on my phone) and then you kill the apps.  After I did that, my Home button was back to normal and lightening fast.

Whew!

See a quick video on how to kill iPhone apps in the video bar to the left or at our SkilSmart Channel.