Chosen Solution
Yesterday I was cleaning away some of the fluff from the speakers, microphone and docking port with a toothpickI don’t remember if I ran it around the home button. Shortly after (maybe about 30 minutes later), I noticed that the home button was becoming unresponsive. It would work once every 5 clicks or so. Once I got home, I started looking at different fixes. So far I have tried a soft restart, power down and restart, update iOS, reset settings (I haven’t restored it to factory settings), open clock to re-calibrate the home button, re-align the docking port. The next steps for me would be to clean the gunk around the home button with 70% or higher rubbing alcohol or a full restore to factory settings. I have turned on Assistive Touch but this isn’t an ideal solution for me. The home button still clicks as it always has and still works once every 25-50 clicks. It doesn’t matter if I press lightly or hold it down, it’ll only work from time to time. I have tried to press in different areas of the home button but that doesn’t seem to help, sometimes it works in different spots, sometimes it doesn’t. It has gotten progressively worse in the past 18 hours. I did not drop my phone or spill anything on it. I can still use TouchID. Any help would be much appreciated!
My guess is that the home button got rotated (this can happen if you push the home button down and rotate it with your hand) which results in ripping the home button cable partially. To fix this you would need to get the home button replaced but you will lose touch ID functionality in the process. You might be lucky if it is just liquid damage on the home button connector behind the screen meaning cleaning it would usually dix that. Apple has made it so that the home button needs to be paired with their proprietary secure enclave machine to get touch ID working on a replacement home button which of course only Apple has access to. I have linked guide and where to buy replacement part for home button from iFixit if needed: iPhone 6s Home Button Assembly Replacement iPhone 6s Home Button Assembly
