Apple iPhone 5 Problems: Touch Screen Glitch Causes Freezing And Slow Scrolling

By Lisa Eadicicco | November 09 2012 12:55 PM

Apple’s iPhone 5 had been called one of the biggest smartphone launches in history, and it is believed to be the company’s best handset yet. However, a developer in the UK managed to discover a previously undetected flaw.

Reuters

Rumors are rife that the next iteration of the flagship smartphone, aka iPhone 6, could be less expensive compared to the currently available model of the smartphone.

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UK mobile game development company CMA Megacorp revealed the bug on Friday morning on Twitter. The issue appears while diagonally scrolling on the iPhone 5, which sometimes caused the touch screen to drop out or even freeze, according to Slash Gear.

Recombu, a gadget comparison website, decided to test out this problem to see if it was affecting other iPhone 5 units as well. The video clearly depicted the difference between the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5. The former generation Apple device had no issue quickly scrolling, while the newer handset would stutter, slow down and even completely freeze at a certain point.

A user also reported the issue on Apple’s official forum on Friday, saying that the device had “touch navigation issues” right out of the box.

This may not prove to be a huge deal when it comes to daily usage, but could trouble some mobile gamers playing titles that require quick and frequent swiping. It could also affect the way developers create games for the iOS platform if this problem persists.

At this point, it is unclear if this is an issue resulting from hardware or software. If it’s a software problem, Apple could easily correct it through a future iOS 6 update. However, a hardware bug could be a much more difficult issue to solve.

Apple has yet to make any official statements concerning the bug.

In addition to this touch screen glitch, Apple device owners have taken to the company’s official forums to voice other problems they’ve been experiencing. A number of users have been affected by a Wi-Fi bug that makes it difficult to connect to networks and prevents Wi-Fi synching with iTunes. This issue was expected to be remedied with iOS 6.0.1, but users have still made the following complaints, according to Internet technology blog Blogote.

“My iPhone 4S’s WiFi is totally disabled. I can’t even toggle the ON and OFF switch. I tried to reset the network settings. Performed hard reset but did not resolve the WiFi issues. Now I am totally stuck without WiFi connection.”

“After updating my iPad 3 to iOS 6.0.1 I thought bugs like WiFi problems would be fixed but I was so disappointed that it’s not yet fixed. After a minute of standby mode of the iPad, WiFi is turning OFF.”

Check out the video below to see how the iPhone 5’s touch screen matches up to the iPhone 4S.

Have you experienced other issues with your iPhone 5? Sound off in the comments below.