3GS stopped charging, now dead
A couple months ago, my 3GS seemed to be dead. It wouldn't turn on, did nothing when plugged in (either to wall or computer), etc. Apple store said it was dead and they couldn't do anything about it. (I got a 4S, it was time anyway).
Looking back, there is a sequence of events that makes some sense now: That afternoon, while attached to my iTrip, the phone restarted itself randomly. That evening, I happened to look and see dangerously low battery charge, which is strange, since it spends most of the day plugged into something. Finally, at night time, it was dead. My guess is that something in the battery charging department gave out in the afternoon, causing the reboot, and it slowly ran out of battery and died, despite being plugged in. (sort of sad, when you think about it).
I'm hoping to refurbish this one, unlock and sell it. I've replaced the dock connector, and there is still no response. The only glimmers of hope are the fact that my new iPhone now pops up in itunes whenever I plug this one in, and there is an EXTREMELY faint clicking noise in the phone when I plug it into the wall. Fixing this thing is fairly valuable to me, as there were a bunch of pictures and data between the last backup and failure.
Where do I go from here? My next instinct is to replace the battery, but what part controls charging? Is it on the logic board? Is there a way to hook it up to 'external' power, if only to get at the data? Is there a way to get data off a dead phone?
Is this a good question?