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The first model of iPhone, Model A1203 with 4, 8, or 16 GB capacity and an aluminum back. Repair requires a significant amount of prying, and may require some soldering. This page aims to help users troubleshoot, fix, and seek help for the iPhone 2G.

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Installed new battery, wont charge, restarts repeatedly.

My 1st gen iPhone had a bad battery after a devastating earthquake in my town I was forced to use a car charger to charge it - ruining the battery (lesson there!!)

So I bought a replacement battery from dealextreme.com and installed it. I have done quite alot of these types of repairs before so was not worried. All the same I managed to break off the solder terminal for the white wire. I scratched the board back to the copper trace underneath and finished the battery installation ok (considering the mistake I had made).

The phone turned on fine, had 95% charge which dropped to 88% and seemed stable.

I put the phone on a AC Apple wall charger and left it for an hour to find the battery being depleted, even though the battery icon showed "Charging".

Overnight I left it on charge but the battery kept depleting and eventually the phone started cycling reboots over and over.

I've done a Home-Power hold reset - no help.

I've removed the SIM and has stopped the reboot cycle, but still will not charge.

The replacement battery had exactly the same part number on it as the old battery (an original Apple - P/N 616-0291) which I concede doesn't mean anything really since whoever made the replacement can print whatever they like on it.

Question - Why is the phone not charging the new battery, why is it repeatedly rebooting and how do I fix it? What exactly is the white wire for in the battery and is that the cause of this issue?

Thanks for your help

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Awesome, thanks Brad and Pollytintop for the response and suggestions.

I will try cleaning the dock port connector and reinstalling firmware. This is good advice as the simplest easiest first-case solutions. I do however suspect somehow my white/negative cable is not properly soldered to the trace, as I have read of batteries not accepting charge when white is disconnected.

FYI Brad I believe the brutal charging method of the 12v car charger simply advanced the end of an already old battery (iphone 1st gen is probably 4 years old now?), rather than damaged any circuitry.

For anyone else reading, this problem (if it is the damaged white terminal) was caused by my impatience to finish the job without the right tools (solder wick, magnifying glass, flux). I usually am very good at getting the problem solved with what I have at hand but in the case of iphones you really need the right tools the first time.

Thanks, I will address the outstanding solutions and let you know how it goes.

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OK, what I ended up doing is dismantling the logic board, switching out what I think is the COMMs board, which is the section of the logic board that has the battery solder pads on and placing a functional board (from my iphone spares!) onto my logic board. This was actually really easy, I pulled the logic board apart not knowing it was possible but later found this step documented on ifxit. It was really easy, just needs a fine spudger or screwdriver to gently pry the two parts of the logic board apart.

The result is a phone with a well soldered battery pack.

The only catch was that when rebooted, the phone had a different modem/baseband version installed, and so would not connect to the cell tower.

Initially iTunes would not allow me to restore with a custom firmware, so I restored back to original Apple firmware (3.1.3) and then after several recompiles of the custom firware using Pwnage I successfully installed the custom firmware and my phone worked fine.

thanks for the help and info,

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Red should be pos, black neg,white ground/neutral... Check on repair guide to be certain.

I'd start by redoing the solder... PITA but you may have solder joints touching or in the case of your white wire not making clean contact... While the solder is off take a good look with a magnifying lens to check you've got rid of debris and haven't taken off more than you should.

Battery drain may be due to antenna connection, so check the white wires for that are on properly. As you said the drain stopped without the sim this may be a sign it's the problem.

The restarting and reboot loop are battery problems that SHOULD resolve when the battery accepts the charge/stops draining.

Also take a look at the dock connector for dirt and damaged pins that are stooping charge from getting to battery.

You might want to take a look at This post for great hint on boosting the battery before you reinstall it...

Good luck and let us know how you get on

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This is a very complex series of events. If the car charger was damaging to the battery, it may have been damaging to the battery IC chip. You scratched into Comm Board to reexpose a battery contact trace, too. When iPhones perform as yours this is what I would do. Clean the dock port pins very carefully with isopropyll alcohol. I know this sounds like an out of place recommendation, but pin corrosion can cause the symptoms and is very easy to do. Second I would restore the iPhone firmware so that the battery, hardware and system can sync. back together. Again maybe a strange recomendation due to all the hardware changes you made, but it is simple and maybe will fix it. Third if these fail, I would open iPhone up, remove the 3 Logic Board screws, do not remove logic board (this is just to loosen it) and flip the Connector lever on the Home Flex cable open, jiggle the flex around a bit, set it perfect and then flip the connector clamp back closed. Screw Logic Board back down. Maybe this will help. Good luck. Brad

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