Chosen Solution
It’s so weird that it won’t charge. I only noticed because I like to charge all of the devices I work on so when the person comes back for it, they can have it working right away for them. And when I plugged it in, it didn’t charge. The phone recognized it was plugged in because the dead battery icon with lighting bolt went away when I plugged it in, however, it never turned on or charged even being plugged in overnight. So today - I put a new (charged battery) into it and it turned on. It worked just fine, but when I tried to charge it, it still wouldn’t charge… Just in case, to make sure it wasn’t something simple, I changed power cords and outlets. But they all work on the two other phones I have, just not your daughters. I tried a hard reset on the phone to clear the phone of any glitches and they didn’t seem to help either. If it was dropped in water, the area where you connect the power cord into the phone (the dock port) could have shorted out and stopped working. I tried switching out this part today and that didn’t solve the problem either. Just out of curiosity to make sure the part was good, I took her dock port from her phone and installed it on another device and it will function/charge in that other device just fine. So, that’s not the issue either… Computers and power/charging is a pretty basic and there are only a few things it could be mechanically but since we ruled out the outlet, cord, battery, and dock port…. I believe it’s a software issue. Something probably got messed up when she dropped it and the screen got scrambled. I can do a factory reset on her phone to restore everything. But, if I do that it will delete everything on the phone (content/pictures/contacts/etc) If we do a backup, however, and can load the backup back onto the phone then it will be like nothing had ever happened. However, if the problem is the mother board itself and it was somehow damaged…trying to load software onto it will not work. Basically I’ve narrowed it down to two possible issues. Either it’s a software issue or it’s the motherboard. If it’s the software, we can simply do a DFU (factory) restore and it will fix the issue and load the most recent software on the phone and then we can load her backup info and that should solve the issue, and it will start charging the battery. If the motherboard is damaged, there’s nothing that I can do. You’d have to either find one of those places that have proper instruments to fix tiny circuity or just buy a new phone and sell this one for parts. UPDATE: Today I was able to successfully upload a backup into iCloud wirelessly but after many attempts, I was not able to get the iPhone into DFU mode. Mainly, I believe because the computer won’t recognize it. I did erase all content and settings on the phone and that didn’t work either!!! Sigh…Any suggestions?????
So from what I understand the phone can switch on fine but it can’t charge the battery or have working USB connection. In this case the issue is caused by the Tristar charging IC (Chip that controls the communication / charging protocol from the lightning cable to the logic board. To fix this, that chip needs to be replaced by someone that does micro-soldering. I would estimate it would cost around $80-$150 to get a board-level repair like this done.
