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Fourth generation iPhone. Repair is straightforward, but the front glass and LCD must be replaced as a unit. GSM / 8, 16, or 32 GB capacity / Model A1332 / Black and White. This page aims to help users troubleshoot, fix, and seek help for the iPhone 4.

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iPhone shut down, only powers on when connected to charger

Hi there,

I often do iPhone repairs but i have a question about an iPhone that is showing strange behaviour.

This iPhone 4 just goes black all of a suden. I doenst repond to anything, its not working at all at that moment. Also a reset is not possible at that time.

It is not possible to power on the iPhone. Only when connected to a charger is can go on. When its on everything is working fine, shows up in iTunes etc.

I replaced the battery with a new one a did a software recovery. Still the problems accur. It doesnt seem to matter if the phone is connected to a charging source or not, it just shuts off random. When the phone is on everything is working normally.

Another thing that i noticed, when its shuts down you wont see the spinning circle that you would see when manually powering off the iPhone, it just goes dead inmediatly. When the phone is powered off manually, it will also go on the normal way. When it shuts down itself this is not working

The battery is working fine, the phone accepts and charges it just like normal.

Home & sleep button are working perfect.

Any ideas what to do with this *****

***UPDATE*****

The iPhone is now constantly fibrating, it was charging on my pc. Now it wont go on but keeps fibrating :S

When putting the iPhone in DFU mode and try to recover it gives errors. like '2005 and 106'

Any ideas? Any help would be apreciated

Answer this question I have this problem too

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mine is doing the exact same thing at the moment. It charges, but when I unplug it, it just dies and goes black and wont turn on .

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Hey guys I have this problem too! My iPhone 6 blacks out at random battery percentages. The only way i can turn it on is by plugging it to a charger.

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Omg yes that happens to me out of nowhere it just turns off while am using the internet or something and i have an Iphone 6s and the only way it will stay on is by plugging it to the charger for a while whether is on full battery

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I have an Iphone 6s and it does the same thing. Turns off randomly and has full battery and when i try to turn it on it shows that my phone has no battery and the only way it will turn on is by plugging it to the charger

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My iphone 4s is doing this aswell! Im not quite sure why.Whenever i charge it, it seems to be working fine but when i take it out it instantly turns off.Does anyone know how to solve this issue because it is starting to get annoying.

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The battery terminal may be damaged therefore the battery cannot charge nor supply the phone with power

but when the power cable is plugged in it powers the phone directly.

You can check if this is the case by removing the battery and connecting the charger then if the phone powers on this idea should be correct.

Kind regards

Brad

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hi i have an iphone 6 plus that only stayed on with charging wire even though the battery was showing as almost full . When i opened the phone the battery seemed to have expanded slightly (damaged most likely). Replaced the battery for a new one and it is now fine.

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This is a real problem and nothing to do with damage . The phone thinks the battery is dead and switches off . If attempting to switch in it displays the battery dead message. When plugged back in it comes on immediately at 100% or 60% but certainly not zero !!! It happens about ten times a day and many users discuss this . Clearly a problem with the phone

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Rosemary is completely correct. I was havong this same very fristerating issue and as soon as I too off the connector I saw it was not stting correct;y. Undo the connector and press it back on hard. The issue as she stated is the iPhone thinks ther battery is dead due to the bad conection between the battery and the phone, thus powering itself down.

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this used to happen to me but recently it has got worse if you wack it on you hand a few times it usually turns back on

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As long as I am missing with the iPhone 5 it never goes off or in sleep mode but if I don't miss with it an put it down I have to plug it up an I can take it back off cager an I can miss with it all day but when I stop miss with it I have to plug it up every time

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This sounds like you got water or damaged the Doc connector where the charger plugs into so its not charging the battery so when you unplug it just dies straight away. replace the doc connector and take it from there as the battery is next in line! i got one for a fiver on ebay!!!

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i dont think this causes the problem. The phone is perfectly working without beeing connected to a charger. It only needs it to power on. The battery is charging. I had a new half full batery connected to the phone. After charging is shows up as 100%.

Also when the phone turned itself off i cant power it on. When you power it off manually the normal way it is able to go on without the need of a charger

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Dont think this is the case, the phone will charge, and can operate without beeing connected the charger. But this keeps getting more strange, i wanted to power on the phone but it displayed the battery empty. So i connected to the charger for a few hours. Now the outside part of the screen is white and is flashing really fast. Like if the LCD is broken. When i connected it to the charger it was working fine, after two hours this is the result.....

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Yes, I am having the same problem :( I have an Iphone SE and my brother had gotten it for me, After about 2-3 weeks of using it I took it out of the charging cord and it just completely shut off. When i tried to turn it back on it said it was dead but when i took it out the phone was at 100%. I took it to the verizon store and since my brother was a Verizon worker they couldnt pull up an account, which meant they couldn't fix it which I thought was odd, but they did say one thing "This tends to happen to quite a few Iphone actually." So hoping i can fix it or get it replaced :)

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Try to clean the contact between the battery and the phone, press hard on that contact and power the phone with charger disconnected. if it powers on you can install a small plastic bumper on top of the contact and than n force the cover on it will crate some Pressure .

good luck

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i think you need to replace the battery connector.But you need to know about microsoldering.iFixit has a video series about microsoldering.They have a video that they replaced the iphone 4s battery connector.But with the iphone 4 the process is almost identical.

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I charge my phone and when it gets fully charged I unplug it and about five mintues later it goes black and shows the battery in the red and then I can't do anything with it.I don't know what to do to fix it.

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ITS the Battery...the reason why it's randomly turn off...the reason your having iTunes error is because when the phone goes to restart itself it will not because the battery giving you this error and battery's are real tricky almost everyone who sells battery's say oem or original but even Apple has a lot of complains about battery's...lithium battery's are out of date and Easley breakable but ohhh well there cheap to make!

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If you take Ito the Apple Store they will just give you a new iPhone but make sure your phone is backed up so you can just transfer everything to the new iPhone

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does it have to be within warranty tho

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I took in my battery to be replaced ($79.99 because out of warranty) and they came out of the back and said "when we were replacing the battery we broke some tabs so we will just give you a whole new phone (same iPhone 5S) for the battery price. This happened to several people I know so I think they just have more phones that are out of date than they have batteries.

I don't care if they are lying about the reason, the new phone works very well and the battery is working fine. (The old battery was at 86% but with upgrades to the operating system, that was not enough to prevent it from running down very fast.)

One more thing, get a paper receipt, when I got home the work order was for $269.99 and not $79.99 so you really don't want to pay $190 extra for a battery replacement!

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Probably there's a loose battery connection. I have to reconnect the flex cable on mine.

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Kimberly iPhone will be on an battery all the way up the screen will be on an you see I tunes an when I stop miss with it an put it down it will go in sleep I guess an I have to plug it up to back on put battery is up what that mine ???

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I had the same problem. Device would die a few minutes after autolocking. Only plugging in the lightning cable would turn it back on. It still has full battery after turning on. Eventually it would stop charging altogether whilst displaying the charge icon (lightning cable was plugged in, and tested on a second device to be functional). This occurred several months after a battery replacement. Turns out I had applied too much solder on the battery contacts. This caused the black sticker covering the soldered contacts to tear and the battery shorted itself against the aluminum battery cover. The fix was, open it, stick black electrical tape on the underside of the battery cover directly over the battery contacts. After putting everything back together. It charges properly and doesn’t turn off after autolocking anymore.

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Still happening in 2020. Just got the iPhone 12 last week and was almost done putting all my accounts in. Connected it for charging and an hour later pulled the plug to look something up. Black screen, no reaction, nothing, dead. Connected it to the charger again, bootloop. Apple logo, black screen, apple logo, black screen, apple logo, black screen… Connected it to the old USB A to lightning cable and got it to boot. I was able to do a backup and reset the device that way. Problem is still there. In a few hours I’ll be at the Apple store. … #notamused

If you have the same problem I think the old cable is the only way to get your stuff. USB-C to lightning seems to do something “clever“ that allows the bootloop to happen.

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I have same issue in my iPhone Xr. I get 3rd party battery replaced after this problem start. Battery backup is good. But when i turn on camera at full brightness. It does suddenly turn off some times and power on until i do connect to charger for only few second. Can anyone help me plz

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I had the same issue. I deleted a large percentage of internal memory - backup files - problem solved.

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I had the same issue. I deleted a large percentage of internal memory - backup files - problem solved.

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Jordy will be eternally grateful.
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