It might hold 1,000 songs, or it might hold closer to 4,000. It depends on three things — (1) the length of the songs, (2) the amount of other “stuff” you have stored on your phone, and (3) the iPhone model you choose.

The Length of Songs

Every song is a different length, so they take up different amounts of space in your phone’s memory. The last part of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony could be purchased as one song, but it’s something like 15 minutes long (3 x longer than the average song). Most people use three minutes as an average song length. Using  that standard, I would estimate that your iPhone could hold anywhere from 1,000 – 4,000 songs, depending on the model you choose and the amount of other media (apps, videos) you have stored.

Other iPhone Apps and Media

It also depends on what else you have stored on the phone. Do you have a lot of apps and videos and such? If so, you won’t be able to get as many songs on the iPhone 3G, because you’ll be eating up storage space with those other things.

With that being said, the iPhone 3G has an 8-gigabyte (8GB) flash drive, so there’s plenty of storage space for songs and other items. But like any electronic device, that space is limited. Furthermore, if you ever push the limits by downloading a huge library of songs, you will sacrifice some performance. The more memory you use for storage, the less that will be available for running applications.

By the way, “3G” means third generation. It does not mean 3 gigabytes / GB. This is something that confuses a lot of people, so I wanted to point it out. The Apple iPhone 3G (third generation model) actually has 8GB (gigabytes) of memory space. Make sense?

The 3G vs. the 3GS

To make this question even harder to answer, Apple recently released the iPhone 3GS (recent at the time this article was published anyway). The newer model is said to be twice as fast as the earlier iPhone 3G model. You can buy the new model with either a 16GB or 32GB flash drive, compared to the 8GB drive in the regular 3G model. This means the newer model (3GS) can hold a lot more songs than the earlier model.

Has this happened to your iPhone recently? If so, you are not alone. This has happened to me too. Below, you will find a list of the steps I took to fix the problem. These steps also match up with the advice given by Apple, in the troubleshooting section of their website.

Important note: Always consult your owner’s manual before troubleshooting your iPhone, whether it’s for a frozen screen or any other problem. And don’t do anything that would void your warranty.

How to Fix a Frozen iPhone

Here are the steps recommended by Apple to fix a frozen iPhone screen:

1. As with any computer or electronic device, you should first try to restart the device. Besides being the easiest troubleshooting technique, this will fix the majority of cases where the iPhone is frozen and won’t respond. It sounds simple, I know, but restarting your iPhone will correct many of the known issues associated with the device.
2. To turn the device off, you need to push (and hold) the sleep/wake button until the red slider shows up on your screen. Next, move the slider with your finger until the iPhone turns off — the screen will go dark when this happens.
3. Turn your iPhone back on by pressing and holding the sleep/wake button. Hold the button until the Apple logo appears on the screen, and then release.
4. This will fix the majority of cases where the iPhone screen is frozen and unresponsive. If it restarts but is still frozen, try holding down the Home button for about eight seconds. This should close down any applications that aren’t responding, which is usually what causes the screen to freeze up in the first place.
5. After closing down any applications (step 4), try to restart the iPhone again (step 2).
6. Did this fix the problem? If not, you may need to reset your device. To reset your iPhone, you will need to press the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time — and hold them for 10 seconds or more.  Keep holding the buttons until the screen goes black. You may see a red “power off” slider while holding the buttons — that’s okay. Keep holding them until the Apple logo appears on the screen.
7. The steps listed above will fix the majority of cases where the iPhone screen is frozen up. If you are still having problems after performing these steps, try the following…
8. Is your iPhone screen still frozen at this point? If so, you are screwed! Just kidding. You might just need to remove some of the content that’s on your device. Did this fix your frozen iPhone screen, or is it still acting up? Or, you might have to reset all of the settings for your device (different from the reset process in step 6). To do this, tap “settings” on your screen … then “general” … then “reset” … and then “reset all settings.”
9. Lastly, you might also want to restore your iPhone through your iTunes program. To do this, connect your phone to iTunes through your computer, and then click on “Restore” in the summary area.

If you are still having trouble after all of this, it’s probably time to contact an Apple expert for assistance. Hopefully, the steps I’ve outlined above will fix the problem for you, and you’ll never have a frozen iPhone screen again. We can at least hope for a perfect world, right? Good luck.