My iPhone just died...

Ilya

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Feb 16, 2004
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My iPhone 5 worked just fine earlier today. I fully charged it and over sudden it just won't start at all! Completely dead!
I tried charging it again and holding two buttons for 20 seconds. No signs of life! Bummer! :(

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I hope it is a minor repair. Too close to release time of iPhone 6 to get a new phone now. The pain of course is getting an appointment at an Apple store or sending it in.
 
I will say that Apple has a very lenient 30 return policy for those who may need to bide some time until a new release. Not that I would suggest using that to one's advantage, just stating a fact.


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Just talked to Apple. Looks like I do have the coverage plan (wasn't sure). So, hopefully I should be able to get a replacement. Scheduled a trip to the Apple store for tomorrow.


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They replaced my battery under the plan. Might need to replace it again.


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Went to the Apple store today. They checked it out, couldn't make it work and gave me a replacement phone. Exact same model/configuration. (I asked if I could upgrade to 5s - no way! Not without paying the full price!)

The good news: I now have a brand new phone, hopefully with a brand new battery in it. According to the sales person, it's not refurbished.

The bad news is that the new serial number no longer matches the one on the box. They didn't give me a new box. I wonder if that will cause any problems if and when I decide to sell or trade it in.

I have lost some important data: notes, photos and videos, that weren't backed up to the cloud. Nothing really critical though.


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Nope. It's never completed. I wonder if it has anything to do with the failure.


I bet that was the problem. I remember seeing a message during updates to connect to a power source if the battery was below 50%. Glad you got a new phone.


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Since I connect my iPhone to my Mac every night to charge, it gets backed up to my Mac via iTunes. Same with photos and purchases. Not that I ever got burned, but I've been doing this since I had a 2G iPod. It's just the way I got used to living with an iDevice.

I never use iCloud for backups. Part of that is the microscopic amount of data they give you for free, the other part is the crappy upload speed I used to have as part of DSL. (Now I have u-verse and uploads are faster, but I still balk at the limitations of moving gigs of data out of my home.)

I had a discussion with one of my co-workers who just picked up a MacBook Air at Best Buy (sounds like they're making room for some new models?) and he did not pick up Apple Care. I've made good use of both "Apple is Awesome" and Apple Care when the "Awesome" ran out on my iPhones. I never cracked my iPhone 4, but the lens did get scratched (even though the back was spotless!) and Apple replaced the back for free. They also swapped my iPhone 5 when it went into burn mode. Even in Airplane mode it would burn through the battery in 6-7 hours. I tried reseting the phone back to factory but nothing worked. The Genius at Apple checked it using their diagnostics and said I had a bum battery. New Phone!

Since I had made a full backup before I tried the Factory Wipe, it was no big deal to recover the new iPhone to my old configuration. Here's a hint to make recovery easy, though. Use a Password-Protected backup. That way, iTunes can save your security credentials in the backup and you won't have to enter all your security credentials on the new phone.
 
(Cleric casts a +5 Resurrection Spell on this thread!)

It happened, the thing I thought I'd never ever do, and it happened anyway. I left my iPhone 5s in my jeans and put them down the laundry chute last night. My wife woke up early this morning and decided to do a load of laundry. Of course, with my jeans on top, they went in and now I am the proud owner of the world's cleanest 64 GB iPhone 5s paperweight!

My wife is way more upset than I am, mostly because I don't sweat the small stuff, and also because I have AppleCare Plus on all our iPhones. The only thing that slightly irks me is I was waiting until NEXT month to switch my phone from VirginMobile USA over to T-Mobile and this sort of complicates matters a bit. But as my previous posts points out, I have a backup of my iPhone 5s from yesterday so I haven't lost any pictures, music, or apps in the wash. I popped out the SIM card (a little of the pink dye from the moisture tell-tale transferred) and I contacted Apple Support to set up a Genius Appointment at my local Apple Store. I do have to pay $79 for the no-questions-asked replacement, but I guess that's better than paying the $749 for a new iPhone 6 on T-Mobile.

I wonder what would happen if I then turned around and tried to trade-in the "new" iPhone 5s on the iPhone 6 if they would give me a good deal? I'll have to ask...
 
I meant I pay my $79 for the "new" iPhone 5s from my AppleCare Plus, then turn around and trade that "new" iPhone 5s in on a new iPhone 6. Is a dead iPhone worth anything in trade at the Apple Store?

Gazelle has a low opinion of my 5s, offering $10 for a dead 5s, $20 for a broken 5s, and only $85 for a flawless 64 GB iPhone 5s. In comparison, Apple paid $105 for my son's 16 GB iPhone 4s after Christmas. Gazelle says $15 for the same phone. Like I said, it can't hurt to ask!

Since it's dead, I thought I'd see if it is dead-dead. I gave it 15 seconds on the charger, and after the LCD lit up with the discharged battery icon, I thought it might be salvaged. Then it flashed up the white background black Apple logo before it shut off and I could see the moisture between the glass and the screen. Too soon, and since it's covered, off I go.
 
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I meant I pay my $79 for the "new" iPhone 5s from my AppleCare Plus, then turn around and trade that "new" iPhone 5s in on a new iPhone 6. Is a dead iPhone worth anything in trade at the Apple Store?

I don't see why Apple wouldn't take in the replacement as a trade. I doubt they want a dead one.

No idea what the current trade in deals are. Now that I think about my trade was actually at an AT&T store. They gave me $200 for a working 4. Saved my 5 for the next time.
 
I believe AT&T was offering $300 for a 5s trade-in at some point.

The replacement phone will be no different from the one you had before, except it will not come with a box. This shouldn't make any difference for the promotional trade-in but can make it a bit more difficult to sell it on EBay.
 
I am in a transitional state. My iPhone 5s, being a VirginMobile USA device, is a different SKU than most, and my store does not have any Silver 64 GB iPhone 5s A1453 in stock, so they had to order it. I made the on-the-spot decision to get a Space-gray 64 GB iPhone 6 on T-Mobile and while the VirginMobile SIM transferred into the phone, VirginMobile refused to activate the SIM on this particular SKU (A1549). Their loss, T-Mobile's gain.

I'm killing time while the iPhone 6 restores all the music, Apps, videos, photos, etc. from iTunes backup. When that's done, I call T-Mobile and hopefully they will activate my new iPhone with the $30 plan the rest of my family is using. I was able to get my son switched earlier this month, so hopefully the same thing will apply to me.

Next week, when the replacement iPhone 5s shows up, I take my dead 5s in, pay my $79, turn around and trade in the Replacement iPhone 5s, get an Apple Store Card good for $210, then turn around again and apply the remaining AppleCare Plus from the iPhone 5s to a new AppleCare Plus for the iPhone 6, using the Apple Store Card to pay the balance. Phew! And on top of that, I need to return the case I bought for the iPhone 6 since I can use the Apple Store Card for that. Yeesh!

This is not how my wife imagined her Birthday was going to be!
 
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Well, my wife had a sucky birthday, even though we had a nice dinner out to finish the evening. She was working while I was out spending money and when I was outlining the "master plan" she, oh, lets say, "did not share my enthusiasm" with my new iPhone 6. So, Plan "B" is to hold on to the iPhone 6 until the replacement 5s comes in, swap the SIM, and return the iPhone 6. I will stay on T-Mobile since there is no reason to go back and I was planning to make the move next month anyway. I just lose out on the remaining balance I had at VirginMobile USA,

Also, since I still have the "freshly washed" iPhone 5s, I thought I should open it to see if I could dry it out enough that it would work. Using the iFixit guide and tools, I was able to get inside the 5s and take a look around. I did not remove the screen from the frame, but I did need to disconnect the TouchID/Home button cable before opening it very far. Good thing I did it before my morning coffee!

I left the two halves hinged apart in front of the hair dryer for 20 minutes. After letting everything cool down, I reversed the disassembly and tried connecting it to my charger. It ran through the Depleted Battery icon / White screen, but there was still something funky with the display. It could be there is still some moisture in the LCD connection between the motherboard and the LCD cable. That would require further disassembly. As it is, the phone boots up and the touchscreen does not seem affected in the least. But, oh my, the LCD display has major issues!

I guess the next step in this experiment is to see if I can move the T-Mobile SIM over to the limping iPhone 5s and use it as a phone until the replacement comes in. Update: Nope. The iPhone 5s is locked to VirginMobile USA and can't use the T-Mobile SIM. But the real problem is the phone croaks as soon as I remove it from the charger. Not a very good "mobile" device if it has to be plugged in and powered all the time!

Again, full disassembly may correct the power issue (since the full reset method is to remove the battery power and re-connect it) and I would need to remove the LCD, MultiTouch, and Front Camera cables to do so which should (might) fix the lines in the LCD display. And since I left VM, the phone should be able to be unlocked. Hopefully, the replacement iPhone 5s is unlocked!
 
One good thing, I got to use my iFixit #2 pentalobe screwbit, suction cup, and spunger to open up the old iPhone 5s to see if I could dry it out and reset the battery. It did change the behavior where the phone died as soon as I pulled it off the power, but now the dead battery icon appears, then the white screen with the black apple logo, but now it goes to a dark gray screen and doesn't go past that. Nothing approaching what I was able to do the other day on-power where I was able to get into my old phone. But for all the "Apple makes it impossible to repair" complaints I would say working on the iPhone 5/5s isn't that hard. Just very tiny! Good lighting is essential.

I'm still waiting for my notification that my replacement iPhone 5s is here. Since I'm keeping the screen protector on the iPhone 6 I can't fully appreciate the curved edges. So far the only thing I would change is to put the screen button back on the top edge where I wouldn't keep pressing it when I adjust the volume. But I won't have regrets turing it back in and going back to the iPhone 5s.

I was able to check the T-Mobile signal strength at work and with the repeaters we have in the office, I can get 20 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up even though it's 4G and not LTE. Closer to home, the Okala test came up with 35 Mbps down and 18 Mbps up!
 
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