How to fix an iPad that froze on home screen? I have an iPad Air running iOS 7.1.2 and is not jailbroken, I opened an application yesterday and when I was finished with it I closed it by using the four finger gesture where you place your fingers around the edges of the screen and you then slide them all towards the middle of the screen.

This gesture is supposed to close my current opened application and then display the home screen with all my installed applications on the iPad. But what this gesture did was close the application and display my home screen picture and the iPad froze where I could not see or access any application on my iPad. I only had the display of my home screen with no application visible.

If I lock my iPad and then unlock it, the same home screen display would appear without showing me the lock screen, and I won't be able to access or see any application on my iPad. It's like I had a framed picture in my hand not an iPad. I could've even shutdown my iPad with only pressing the sleep/wake button, my iPad kept displaying the home screen display after pressing and holding the sleep/wake button for a several seconds.

The only way I could get my iPad functioning again is through the hard restart (press and hold the home button and the sleep/wake button for several seconds until the screen goes black and you see the apple logo) which I don't think is the best solution for this problem, becuase the problem could surely happen again. Any suggestions how to fix this?
Yes, this is a known bug. As the device is not jailbroken, the only solution in iOS 7 is to hard reset.