You could use your Android phone because some Android devices had or have an IR transmitter (I'm not sure how common they are anymore).
I'm not an iPhone user, but I don't think they have ever had an IR transmitter built in. You can buy an external one but they're not widely available aside from mail order as far as I know.
Have you tried going to the lowest channel and pressing the channel down once more? On one of my TVs this will start scrolling through the other inputs until you've gone through all of them, and then bring you back into the tuner.