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Revamped version of the iPhone 3G with faster processing speeds. Repair of this device is similar to the 3G, and requires simple screwdrivers and prying tools. Model A1303 / 16 or 32 GB capacity / black or white plastic back.

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Why won't my iPhone charge after the battery drained completely?

I went camping recently, and of course my battery drained completely about a day and half in. Once it drained I put it away in my bag.

On the way home, I plugged it into my Griffin iTrip to charge it, and I got nothing - no red battery, no screen flicker. I left it on there for at least a solid hour.

When I get home, I plugged it into a wall charger thinking it just needed more juice. It had been taking a really long time to charge lately, but once it's charged, the battery seems to hold it just fine. I left it on the wall charger for several hours, and I still got nothing.

At this point I tried rebooting it by pressing Home+Power, and I actually see a little flicker - like it's trying to kick over. If I hold them down for about a minute, it will actually keep flickering until finally it shows the dead battery screen, but that will go away in a few seconds or as soon as I unplug it from the wall. I can't get back to it unless I repeat the process from the beginning.

My first thought was the battery, but after reading some posts here, I'm not so sure anymore. It seems like it might be the charge circuitry or the dock connector. It's out of warranty, so I'd like to try fixing it myself. I figure at this point I can't make it any worse.

Is there any way to help pinpoint the cause other than guess and check? If not where should I start? Has anyone seen something similar to this?

I've had the phone for about seven months, but it was a refurbished unit from Apple.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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What worked for me was that i took my iphone to a technician and they resolved the problem. Apparently the battery went... It was swelling. Be careful if you desire to use the hair dryer to heat up the battery. I am in Morocco and i had to pay 300dh to get that problem resolved

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Thanks wiz i just did the "hair dryer thing" and now my phone is charging goodjob

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The hair dryer trick worked for me too. Thank you!

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I had the same problem and I took it to apple. They said the charge port was no good and that part isn't covered by their warrantee. Really? They make an offer. Wow for 299.00 I get a replacement phone. This is an iPhone 6s and I'm still paying on it. (Bought highest gig phone they offered). If I did purchase a replacement then I'd own a 1300.00 plus phone. I'm currently looking for an unlocked replacement. And it will be anything but an apple

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Update. Forgot to mention in my answer that the battery was replaced and once the new battery drained the phone still wouldn't take a charge. Hence the apple tech saying charge port(dock) wasn't any good. Currently we are trying other suggestions given in the answers here.

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I would suggest first to try another charger! Than by what you say, "It had been taking a really long time to charge lately, but once it's charged, the battery seems to hold it just fine.", the battery seems not to be responsible for this situation! I would suggest to take it at a service point since it is out of warranty. If it really has problems with charging circuits (which are docked to the board) you can't do much on your own.

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Thanks for the response! I've definitely ruled out the charger. I've tried the car charger, the wall charger, a PC, a laptop as well as a few different cables. Nothing has worked so far.

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I decided to go to a local, family-owned service shop since I couldn't seem to pinpoint the problem myself. They were wiling to diagnose the issue at no cost. The first thing they tried was a new battery, and that immediately did the trick. They then offered to finalize the repair for a very reasonable price. I might have been able to do it myself, but I probably would have spent half of a day trying to get it back together.

It's now happily charging from my wall charger. Thanks for your suggestion!

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so battery wasnt the prob? its a dock connector?

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this doesnt help me i got mine back last november and is the best and works perfectly. but just now this is happening to mine. its an SE the charger i use worked before and works on my moms so idk what to to.

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i had the same problem but i changed the battery yesterday,it works just fine.But then after my brother used it the battery turns to 20%.I left it like that because i was tired.Today i charged it, then go back to sleep.When i woke up i thought its going to be find.But,it wont turn on.Then i used another cable and it works just fine but it took hours.Just now it flicked.Then i asked my sister to check it.Then she unplugged it to try another cable but it wont turn on at all..ANYONE HAS ANY IDEA WHATS GOING ON?BTW I SPENT RM250 TO CHANGE THE FREAKIN BATTERY

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Ok, this is too late to help, but I thought I'd answer anyway in case someone else finds this post whilst searching for the problem. Here's how to fix it:

Lithium batteries have protection against over-discharging, they do this by breaking the circuit if the voltage drops too low to prevent further drain. Unfortunately, once this has triggered, you can no longer put charge back into the battery because the battery is disconnected internally, so no matter how long you leave the phone on charge, it remains disconnected and flat.

You only need to get the voltage in the battery to raise a percent or two to reconnect the protection circuit so that it will charge again and you can do that by warming up the battery. You may get away with leaving the phone overnight in a very warm (hot) place, such as on top of a hot water tank, however a more efficient way is to remove the battery and heat it up until it's quite hot with a hairdryer on its hottest setting. Heat it for a good 5-10 mins so that the hear soaks right through the battery and it feels hot to the touch, this will raise the internal voltage enough to reconnect the protection circuit. Immediately reconnect the battery into the phone and put it on charge. After about 10-20 mins, enough charge should get back into the battery to fire up the phone and it'll come back to life.

I've done this a few times now on various different models and it always works. Hope it helps you.

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is it effective for iphone 3g

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Crazy advice - not safe to follow see below

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Is this applicable to iPhone 5?

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this did not work for me..2 days now my iphone 5s has been down

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My iPhone 5 has been of for 5 days now, it shows the battery thing but just won't turn on

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I hope I am not to late. What I did because I have the 5 and it did the same thing. It wouldt come on but it would show the battery was charging so what I did was make sure the phone is plugged up to the charger but here is the trick. Plug in a flat iron, clothing iron, blow dryer or stove and set your phone very close (but not close enough to cause damage to the phone). After about2 minutes of doing this trick I pressed the home screen and the sleep/wake button an my phone turned back on. (AMEN)

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Thank you so much! I'm so glad this worked!

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dude... i charged my phone for 5 hours. And I'm leaving on a trip tomorrow, totally chaos when my phone didn't work. used the blowdryer for like.. 30 seconds and it turns on. Thanks a lot man! You saved my day!!!!

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this procedure works on my phone too brilliant thanks a lot

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Holy crap. This actually worked. Thanks man!

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The heat suggestion does work! However, I was too scared to put it near a direct heat source, so I took it out of the cover & rubbed it between my hands...it sprang back to life after not turning on for 6hrs!

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if you have had difficulty charging your battery, but once charged it holds it's charge then the problem is either the dock itself..in which case give it a very good clean out of all the dirt that may have gathered or replace it.

Once a battery has died beyond charging it will not charge from wall or pc no matter how much you try.

I'd suggest investing in a new battery and a new charging port (dock connector) then you know you have a clean starting point. As the phone is dead you don't have to worry about powering off before you start troubleshooting, but it's a good point to remember if you need to go back in and check connections once you have replaced those parts.

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What's the best thing to use to clean the dock connector? Can I use rubbing alcohol or will that set off the moisture sensor?

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remove battery charge it extranally for a few seconds it will charge fine,until its empty again !!! ios 10 is the fault deliberate or unintentional you decide.

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this worked for me after about 30 seconds. awesome advice. thanks for posting.

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simple technique every apple device has issue... i just take a hair dryer and in back cover slowly and gradually move up and down when it's metal got heated it's turn on ... since iphone 4 to uptill now iphone 6s plus and now also tried iphone 7... so i though apple can also gave one hair dryer to every customer :P

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HEY EVERYONE I just had the same issue of an old iPhone 5 that I was on reserve for emergencies so I have not used it in a year, What i found to be the charm was warm it up (i just used my laptop that was quite warm underneath as all laptops get, left it there for 1-2 mins resting underneath then i held down ALLLL THE BUTTONS ON MY PHONE(home button, + - buttons and main top switch) and after what felt like eternity it came alive!!!! :) Really hope this current advice helps others!!

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I was wary of the hair dryer technique when my phone wouldn't turn on so I tried just warming it up with my body heat while it was plugged into the wall. This did the trick! phone turned on in about a minute or two and it continued charging.

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My iPhone 7plus won't turn on after the battery has drained for about half day. And when I plug the charger, the screen flicks red battery after several hours I still had nothing.

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i dont know if people still have this problem....but a solution for me was cleaning out the dock with a pin. a lot of dust can get stuck in then and become compressed. a good way to know if this is your problem is to see if your charger fits in all the into the phone. if it doesnt most likely means your dock has dust in it and charger is not fitting in properly. if you ask my phone was charging normally before? yea it charged for me too but when my battery was completely drained it wouldnt with the dust there, but i once i cleaned the dock it started charging perfectly. hope this was some help.

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Hello i had the same problem, its like the above post there is a fusible link of sorts and it opens the circuit when the battery power gets too low. I just took off the phone case and plugged it in and placed the phone about 2 inches from a light bulb. what that did was close the circuit and allowed the battery to charge once again. The phone has to heat up to close the fusible link. so get the phone to about 90 degrees after you plug it in. good luck

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The following steps revived an iPhone5: a) put your iPhone into DFU mode (Default Firmware Update), then b) restore the iPhone completely. The complete restore process in DFU mode may need to be repeated 5-6 or more time before the iPhone revives. (I'd give up after 10 tries)

NOTE: I would not recommend paying for a battery replacement. Usually it is a software issue. Once an iPhone's battery has been discharged completely, the software date and other parameters seem to get lost, preventing iPhone from properly functioning.

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I have found numerous times with so called "smart" battery chargers as needed for Li-Ion but also NiMh or even lead acid leisure batteries that they refuse to charge a really discharged battery. Their internal logic does not cope for a very flat battery. Happened only last night with my BL-5CB in my Nokia105 which was only reading 3.05vdc. First time I just bought a new battery online and away it went. This time I used the trick mentioned by an earlier poster. Just get a few 1.5v alkaline batteries (enough to exceed the 3.6v of the BL5CB) and connect them together (I use a battery holder from some item I scrapped a few years ago) and then just connect the BL-5CB to it +ve to +ve and -ve to -ve and leave it for just a minute or two. This will give enough charge to bring the BL5CB voltage out of "deep discharge" and then I put it back in the Nokia 105, DON'T turn the phone on as not enough charge to power it, but straight away plug in and switch on the charger. Up popped the little charge icon on the screen and a few hours later the phone was back to full functionality showing 100% charge.

Similar approaches worked with my 12v leisure battery that my smart trickle charger/maintainer refuses to recognise unless the battery voltage is over 8v. Takae care not to use any power supply which can provide too much current as it will probably blow the protection fuse inside the BL-5CB. I measured my charge rate last night with an inline multimeter and it was only 30mA. but that was enough as I explained above.

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it really works...g8, thanks

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iPhone 5s, original battery will not hold a charge for very long, takes ages to charge up. Fit new battery in phone works great for two days, then got left overnight without charge, nothing.. What is happening is the phone is not warning of a low battery and does not switch off when the battery gets two low, so the battery gets discharged beyond what the charger can recover it from. Joined 3 x 1.5v batteries together in series to make 4.5v, undid the phone case, flicked off the battery lead, measured the voltage 2.9v - applied the bank for a minute then remeasured, phone 3.2v battery bank was 4.2v applied the bank and held longer, wanted to get the phone battery as far above 3v as possible, new they are 3.84v - I stopped and the phone battery came up to 3.4, so no point in going much further, reconnect the phone battery cable and screwed down the support shield, then without going any further plugged it in, I got the apple symbol, and in a few minutes got the battery signal....FIXED....thank you Andy.

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Oh yea, I also tried the heat trick, but no luck, after that I figured I had nothing to lose so went down the road of the battery bank, what you are doing there is simply feeding power from a high level to a low level until they are equal.

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This worked for me too! An old iPhone we use as a device for kids was lost and dead a month. Plugged in all day couldn't get it to come to life, only the red dead battery. Left it plugged in, hairdryer to the back about 1-2 min and within a minute the apple logo came back and then it worked!

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Jakie Dines,your trick is true,I have done it and the phone is alive again.Thank you for sharing this.

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I can confirm the hairdryer method works. Not first time for me, but after about 15 mins of a hairdryer while plugged into macbook with itunes open, and it took 3 attempts until recovery mode began. couldn't get it into DFU.

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Happened to me a few times when I let the battery completely drain. I just put it under my laptop and it will start charging again. I guess the heat under the laptop will do the trick.

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I used a blow dryer to warm mine up and then tried a fourth apple charger. Finally it's charging.

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My Iphone 6 was not charging and can't turn on after updating to IOS 11. I sat on my phone for 2 mins and force reboot and it turned out fine! woohoo!

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I am also facing the same issue in my i phone my battery is died every time but i go to geek squad they help me and now my iphone going good i suggest you to go and check out the services. visit here https://geeksquadtechsupport.co/

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As the following people said, "Place near hot source". I agree! My phone is kind of broken so it isn't the best and I left to to charge. The battery got drained and this had happened before. I placed my phone under my laptop, since it heats up. Anyways, in order to heat up my laptop I would do something entertaining to lose focus. I continued doing what I was doing and after a while it heated up. Then my phone turned on! Definitely recommend.

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This is Amazing! I just kept my phone under the Laptop and continued charging. After 45 mins or so a Drained 4S sprang back to life out of nowhere !

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hi guys, unfortunately i have this problem as well and what i do is i rub my ip6 between my hands for like 2 minutes until i it warm and after that i try to charge it and guess, it works! so happy right now. hope it helps, have a nice day :)

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My IP5s does not charge only shows red battery icon. At first the red battery icon flashes 3x and disappear which i thought i had stable connection in the wall. However i read tips from inet that red battery icon should not flash to ensure correct charging - which i did. But still after several hours the apple logo does not show up. I tried cleaning the end terminal hook up to IP5s and put the back part of IP5s on top of boiled warm banana (of course not too hot that will not burn your palm). After that crazy trick the apple logo show up and my IP5s starts normal charging..Happy ;-)

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Matt will be eternally grateful.
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