Apple's online support forum is flooded with complaints describing the frustration of hearing their phone ringing for "six to eight" seconds while staring at a blank screen, without the "slide to answer" function.

Apple’s tech genius advice is to turn their phones off and turn them on again. This gives you 15 more calls before it freezes, according to one customer.

"Sometimes the screen does not turn on, and this problem can last for a few seconds or remains permanent until I do a forced reboot", another wrote on the forum.

Apple fanboys are discovering that all those who splashed out their life savings on the gadget which could recognise their face, provided that they were not Chinese, are suffering from the problem.

According to one user: "Most of iPhone X users are facing these issues including my friends and colleagues".

Apple just reported a huge quarterly profit last week and while sales of the iPhone were down, the fact that people were so keen to buy the iPhone X has meant that it is still a money spinner. However, it does not look like Apple is rushing to reward those who are propping up the company with good solid, reliable products.

We are expecting iPhone X users to contact us to say that they have had no problems. We should point out that your mother has to ring you at least 15 times before you will notice a fault.

Last month a bug was discovered that could cripple an iPhone with a single text message. The "text bomb" causes an iPhone to crash or restart upon receiving a text message with a link to malicious code. In November, there was also the case of the annoying iOS 11.1 autocorrect bug, in which the letter "i" auto-corrected to "A".