I borrowed a friend's old iPhone that is now essentially an iPod Touch. I used it for several hours to listen to music without any issues and then put it in my pocket. One thing I didn't do was turn it off. Not having one I thought it would go to sleep or something.
Anyway, not it doesn't turn on. Charging doesn't help. I didn't drop it or get any moisture on it. The only things I did were: 1) not turn it off, 2) left the ear buds in with the cord wrapped around it when I put it in my pocket, and 3) attempt to charge it later that night on my laptop.
Any idea what I could have done to it? She said she's drained the battery many times and that has never been an issue.
She's taking it to the Apple store over the weekend, but I feel bad because it stopped working while I had my hands on it.
Try holding down the power and home keys simultaneously for 15 seconds or so, I think thus can force it to boot. (I'd have it plugged in, also, just to be sure.) Did you try connecting through iTunes? That might tell you if it's just the screen that's not coming on.
iPhones will sleep if they don't have anything going on, and are set to sleep (it's in settings). If you happened to be listening to a playlist with days of music on it, it'll happily keep playing through the various low battery warnings (20%, 10%) and then shut off, completely drained (as you've learned). One little trick is to pull out the earplugs from your iPhone when you're done listening. Apple has built some nifty functionality in that automatically pauses the iPhone is the earplugs are unplugged.Originally Posted by Mark Asher
Many laptop USB ports have insufficient juice to properly power an iPhone. I would highly recommend plugging it in with an actual iPhone charger directly into a wall socket. I also recommend leaving it plugged in for at least 30 minutes. On the rare occasion that I fully drain out my iPhone and I plug it in, it takes longer than I'd expect before anything appears on the screen to indicate it's charging again.
Otherwise the reboot advice is good.
I know a guy who this happened to recently... was listening to something on his iPhone, muted it, and forgot about it. The thing never stopped playing the stream, and ran the battery down to zero. (I think it was NPR's app)
The thing totally bricked his phone. He took it to the Apple store, but they couldn't do anything for it, and he ended up having to replace the phone entirely.
Hopefully that's not what happened to your phone, but it may be if it won't reboot at all.
Wow. I didn't know that was possible. Kinda surprising.
Did you try DFU mode?
Yeah, I'd start by seeing if it charges when you plug it into the wall. As others have noted, you can drain it to the point it will not charge from USB.
The "hard reboot" has also worked for me in the past with an unresponsive iPod.
No kidding... I still don't understand what exactly could have happened. He tried everything, including plugging it into the wall and every trick in the book to reboot it.
I gotta figure that somehow the hardware itself suffered from some kind of failure as a result of the battery draining that low.
I'm guessing the charger circuitry needs to be powered to actually work. Which seems counter-intuitive. It should be powered by the external source. Or something you might warn people about.
Unfortunately, I think my friend has lost the charger and has relied on plugging it into either a PC or a little stereo system. Hopefully the Apple store will have a charger and give it a go for her.
There are a ton of power adapters that you can plug any USB cable into, including an iPhone's. My Android phone came with one, for instance. She might have one of those. Or you might.Unfortunately, I think my friend has lost the charger and has relied on plugging it into either a PC or a little stereo system
Update:
Apparently, the guy I know whose phone bricked actually had it come back to life right before sending it back to apple. So, after charging, and then just sitting there for around a day, it finally booted up again.
But he ended up just sending it back anyway since they had sent him a new one, and he didn't want to deal with the possibility that his old phone was just gonna die again.
So, it may be possible that if you just plug the thing in and charge it for a long time, that it'll start working again.
Yeah, you can buy a USB/AC adapter at Walmart for about $5 and plug the Apple iPhone to PC adapter cord into it to charge it.
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