Chosen Solution
So, I got an iPad Air that was not turning on. I got it to come on for a minute somehow and it had even charged to 100% battery. I used it for a few minutes (playing a game) and it just randomly died as if the battery had drained. Somehow I got it to come on one more time and the battery was down a few percent. The customer asked me to change out the battery, so I decided that would be my next move. He claimed it wouldn’t come on unless he kept it on the charger. I replaced the battery only to have the same thing happen, and I can’t get it to turn on. So all it does is when I press the power button it has the battery symbol and signal to plug it in. I plug it in and the symbol does go away and it acts as if it were charging but I have left it on the charger for hours and it still doesn’t come on. Only the red battery symbol displays. I do believe it is charging the battery, but may be a board level issue. Where would I start? What parts of the board would be causing this? I have SOME micro soldering training, and some experience, and now a microscope as well. I am still learning though. Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you! :) Update (10/22/2017) Turns out, it was a bad battery all along, embarrassing as that is. Even tho I changed the battery out, that was not the end of it. I decided to order ANOTHER battery through a reputable source (https://www.ifixit.com/Store, thank you so much for your quality batteries! <3). Plugged it all in and it all worked great :) Another great way to check this is to get ibackupbot and check the information on the battery there. Thank you so much for your very helpful suggestions!
Do you have an inline power meter? Its a pretty easy way to tell if the device is pulling amperage to charge. If it is, then disconnect the battery and see what its reading. Reconnect it, connect the charger and see what the circuit is reading. Let it charge for a while and then check the battery’s reading again. Its either going to be a bad charge port, bad power IC or a blown power circuit component.
I use Coconut Battery on my Mac and the iOS option to check batteries out on iPods, iPads and iPhone. Of course you need to plug the device in. It gives you a lot more information. http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutba…
