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Trouble with crashing applications? Here’s a few tips

A number of iPhone users have been reporting crashes from various applications, both from Apple and third-party developers. The most common crash consists of an application suddenly ceasing operation followed by the screen turning black, and eventually you are taken back to the home screen. Occasionally an application will crash immediately after pressing the icon due to a refusal to properly launch.

In more serious cases, the crash will result in a complete freeze of your device, where the iPhone is completely unresponsive.

There are a few procedures that you can take to attempt to combat these issues. If you are experiencing any of these problems, go ahead and try these in order:

Full reboot: Perform a hard reboot of your iPhone as follows: Turn the iPhone off completely, by pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button (on top of the device) for a few seconds then slide the red slider. Turn it back on by holding the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears. This can clear potentially problematic data, preventing some crash-types.

Restore the iPhone: Try performing a restore of your iPhone. Connect it to your Mac or PC and, in iTunes, click the Restore button under the Summary tab. Restoring the phone will erase contacts, calendars, photos and other data on the phone, but will restore automatically backed-up information including text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, etc.

Reinstall the application:
• Touch and hold any application icon the icons begin to shake.
• Tap the “x” in the corner of the application you want to delete.
• Tap Delete.
• Press the Home button.
• Download the application again, either from your iPhone or your desktop computer (there will be no additional charge for the redownload)

Additionally, if an application freezes, you can elect to force-quit by holding down the home button for several seconds, which can eliminate the problematic process that can also take a toll on battery life.

A step that you may want to take to prevent future crashes, would be to keep adequate space on your device’s internal memory. Similar to a desktop, the iPhone’s operating system will require some head-room, on the internal flash memory in order to properly operate. Keeping at least 10% of your memory free would be a good option.

As a final resort, you can always go to the Settings application and select Erase All Content and Settings, which will delete all data and media on your phone, so be weary of this option. If you are interested in determining what caused a crash, just like Mac OS X, your iPhone will generate a crash report following faulty behavior. These files are sent back to your computer when connected and synced with iTunes. You can locate them in /Library/Logs/Crashreporter/MobileDevice/.

via iPhoneAtlas.