Q: iPhone 5s 'This cable or accessory is not certified and may not work reliably...' help?

The problem is happening with the real iphone cables, too, though.

Try checking your cable socket/lightning cable for dirt, grime, pocket lint, etc. I could not find the solution to this issue myself and after much searching I found someone stating that cleaning this out helped them immensely.

After taking a wooden toothpick (making sure the phone was OFF first) and gently clearing out the edges and inside of the lightning socket this went away.) It is worth noting that I had a significant amount of dust or lint buildup along the edge rails which I think was causing the iphone to believe it was plugged into something when it was not.

Try it and see, ensure you are very careful and do not use any conductive tools to clean the area in question. Compressed air also does wonders here.

This worked, i bought 2 cheap cables after my original broke, both didnt work but my friends original did, i cleaned it (took a while to get all the lint out enough for it to work) and now both cables work fine

My problem - unauthorized cable message even when I was using apple cable and I received the message even when no cable was plugged in.

Fix - The problem is a software error. Plug in phone to Itunes, hold down home button and sleep button. When apple appears on reboot on phone, keep holding down home button. This will put phone in restore mode and restore data.. Follow promps on screen.

PS. Backup data before you do all of this!

too true

Yesterday, I activate my new iphone 5s, upgrading from 4s

I have several 3rd party usb cables that work perfectly with my wife's iphone 5 (NOT s) and my ipad

These cables do NOT work at all with my 5s

Yes, I've read much of this thread

No, rotating the connection front to back does NOT work with these cables

In fact, the usb cable that came with my ipad 6 months ago, does NOT work with my 5s!  It does work with my ipad and with my wife's 5 (not s)

Ideas?

Please, advise. Thank you

Pretty sure its a static thing too. Used to have a similar problem with my Palm V. Funny coincidence that it has returned on my iPhone 5.

Hey guys. Im having the same issue here. Running iOS 7.0.4 (since it was released) and just a couple of days ago i also got that error. What?!

My phone is a black iP5 32GB and it's running iOS 7.0.4 and the phone IS NOT jailbroken. I'm using the original Apple cable that came with the phone. The phone was NEW when i bought it.

I cleaned the lightning port on the phone and still get the error. Many say that dirt gather there and so on but no, that's not the issue here.

The phone never fell on the ground. No kind of damage or anything. I am very delicate with it and specially with the lightning cable and i never plug/unplug it in any bad manner or so. I always grab it by the plastic connector and do it carefully.

Can anyone here give me atleast a clue on what's going on? I am a 100% LEGITIMATE user and this thing really started to bother me now. I have no clue why this wasn't happening before while i was running iOS 7.0 and then 7.0.2 and 7.0.3. or maybe i wasn't using just enough the USB lightning cable with my PC, It just started happening a month after 7.0.4 was on the phone.

I never noticed this problem when the phone is connected to the wall socket, just on USB PC?!

What's even more wired is that the error didn't show up untill a couple of days ago (1st of JAN 2014 i guess). I'm running 7.0.4 sice its been released "last year" and had NO problems (except the slow animations which Apple is taking care of now in the new 7.1 beta 1 and beta 2. I'm patiently waiting for the GM release of 7.1 in March or so they say - hoping it will also adress this problem)

I know Apple started to tear down the fake lightning cables but c'mon Apple, i AM using YOUR cable. I also read that someone has at home 8 lightning cables made by Apple (he has a big family i guess) and he has the same issue with all 8 cables. It just can't be that all of them are broken down right?

People having common sense including me are going in the direction that this is just a software glitch/bug in the iOS 7 itself?! Can anyone here confirm this?? Some here have problems with this message poping up even if the phone is not connected to anything. It has to be a software bug!

What's going on here? Any ideas?

Cheers from Slovenia,

Alex

LOL! As if batteries and charging was not a big enough issue with smart phones and now a release that i prohibiting charging is on the rampage!

You might have read it in the newspapers if several hundred million users of iPhones and iPods worldwide had suddenly found their device had become unchargeable.  People seem to be keeping very quiet about such an excellent news story.

Hi all

I too am having the same issues. I started a thread (before I saw this one) but as yet have not had any replies from apple. My thread was as follows,

I have just purchased 3 certified charger cables from Sainburys to use on the family's iproducts, however trying to use them on certain devices is proving impossible.

Both my daughters have iphone 5's, both running ios 7.0.4 (11B554a). Each of the 3 cables I purchased works perfectly with either of these phones.

But here's the weird bit......

I have an iphone 5S and an ipad mini 2 (retina). My iphone 5S has software version 7.0.4 (11B554a), exactly the same as my daughter's phones but every cable fails to charge and pops up with the usual error message saying the cable is not certified!!! My ipad has software version 7.0.4 (11B554a), again identical and again every cable does not work and the error message pops up!?!?!?!?

Can someone from Apple please reply and sort this out.......:)

I've sent many replies on this - it's worked for me perfectly.

Turn off the phone, and while the little gear is on the screen, plug in the device you use to charge/etc. Then turn the phone back on. It should solve the problem.

Remember - the gear needs to be on the screen when you plug in the device. I have a converter to make my lightinging plug into the iPhone 4 and below componnents (aftermarket) and it was getting that darn error after the new update. Now it's working great. Hope that helps.
If that doesn't - go to YouTube and look for more item specific videos.

've sent many replies on this - it's worked for me perfectly.

Turn off the phone, and while the little gear is on the screen, plug in the device you use to charge/etc. Then turn the phone back on. It should solve the problem.

Remember - the gear needs to be on the screen when you plug in the device. I have a converter to make my lightinging plug into the iPhone 4 and below componnents (aftermarket) and it was getting that darn error after the new update. Now it's working great. Hope that helps.
If that doesn't - go to YouTube and look for more item specific videos.

I saw some with something about airplane more being turned off and on? Not sure - the above works for me and I do have some aftermarket charging cords that all work just fine for me.

Hi Cheryl

I've just tried this and it seems to works, but if I unplugged the cable and plugged it back in it reverts back to the error message and stops charging again!

I just removed from the inside of the plug a lot of dust (more that I could imagine it could hold) and so far I did not get any message. I used a paper clip, simple. So try to do this first, that could be an quick win.