Does Your iPhone Freeze When You Call Voicemail? Here's Why...

A couple of friends of mine had exactly the same "fault" appear on their iPhones recently.

When they hit their "call Voicemail" button, their phones would start to call their voicemail, but suddenly stop...their screens went blank...and it was only a hard reset (hold On/Off and Home buttons) that got their devices back into life.

We tried many hard resets....we reset settings...and even restored the Apple iOS software. But the problem stayed.

After much Googling, I think we found the solution.

Both were using screen protectors on their iPhones.  It seems dust can collect in the screen protector hole in front of the phones' proximity sensor - that's the little camera-like thing next to the speaker on your device.

The dust then stops the proximity sensor working properly and, apparetly, it's super-sensitive when you're calling your voicemail...so it blanks the screen and sometimes freezes the phone.

Anyway, we removed the screen protector and...hey presto....the phone was back to normal with voicemail calling working again.

Proximity sensor next to speaker

I say phone in the singular, because we only tried it on one device, The other was taken to an Apple Store where a Genius swapped it for another one without removing the protector!

If you've got the same problem, I hope this helps.  I'd advise removing your protector...you can always replace it with another one...because I'm sure not all Geniuses will just swap your phone.