How to restart/reboot an iPhone or iPod

iPhone reboot FAQ: How do I restart (reboot) an iPhone, iPod, or iPad?

As a new iPhone user, after hearing that the iPhone may suffer from a memory leak which causes applications to become slower over time, I looked at my phone and wondered "How do I turn off my iPhone?", quickly followed by "How do I restart my iPhone?"

How to restart/reboot an iPhone, iPod, or iPad

Fortunately restarting/rebooting an iPhone, iPod, or iPad is pretty easy ... once you know how to do it. Here are the steps to follow to restart an iPhone:

1. Press and hold down the sleep/wake button on the top-right corner of the iPhone.
2. Keep holding the button down (about five seconds) until you see a slider button labeled "Slide to power off".
3. To turn off the iPhone, move the slider across the screen. Or, if you don't want to turn it off just press the Cancel button at the bottom of the screen.
4. When your iPhone is off and you want to turn it back on, press down and hold the sleep/wake button until the Apple icon appears on screen. (This takes just a second or two.) A few moments after the Apple icon appears your iPhone will be restarted and you will see your home screen.

In my case I don't know if there really is a memory leak, but this morning -- immediately following the 2.0.1 system upgrade -- I had problems placing a call with my iPhone 3G, and I found that restarting the iPhone fixed this problem.

iPhone restart/reboot - Follow-up

Several months later now, and I have not had any more problems placing phone calls, especially not like I had on the day I wrote this blog entry. I have had some iPhone slowness problems, and whenever that happens I usually reboot my iPhone, and it behaves better.

On one other note related to the iPhone power button (on/off switch), if you want to create a iPhone screenshot, you'll be using that power button again. Here's a link to my How to create an iPhone screenshot (screen capture) tutorial.