I just recently came off a fun little experience involving my first generation iPhone where the touch screen became unresponsive on the top and bottom rows. The cause is unknown but I talked to a wide variety of Apple and AT&T representatives to get some guidance with the issue.
Let me first and foremost stress the importance of getting the two year AppleCare Plan when you purchase your iPhone. Even if you already have yours it does not hurt to pick it up. You also want to make sure that at the very first hint of possible problems to notify Apple. There are also several accessories to help protect your iPhone from damages.
Here I'll describe a few procedures to take to try and fix the problem as well as what to do if you need to ship off the phone for repair. If an app has frozen up on your iPhone, it can sometimes be easily cured by using the Home button to unfreeze your iPhone without taking any additional steps.
One of the first things that Apple had me do was to restart my phone. This is easily done as you hold down the square button at the bottom of the phone (below the screen) as well as the bottom on the very top right of the phone at the same time. This is the same as pressing the menu and middle button on your iPod. It does a simple restart of the iPhone and that alone may due the trick. If that does not work then you have to go a little deeper with the restart and do a restore of the phone. Fear not, you are able to backup your iPhone in this process so when it is restored you have the backed up file still on your computer with all of your information.
Continue reading onto the second page to find out how to restore your iPhone, send your iPhone to the Apple repair center, and how the Apple Store might be able to help.
