iPhone 5 not charging

Also faced the issue that I could not charge my iPhone 5 using USB from a Windows 7 computer. Checked most of solutions over here before realizing I did not have any Apple drivers installed on my system. After installing the USB drivers (part of the iTunes installer) I was able to charge my phone.

Thanks it really helped i was so stressed

Not sure if this will help anyone out or not, but it threw me, so I thought I would post it. I was having the same issue as everyone else on the last 27 pages of posts. I have an iPhone 5. I cleaned out the lint and did find a significant amount of it. When I plugged it back in I thought it didn't work because the phone has two images that appear. One, just shows an image of the battery, and the other has a lightning bolt with the battery image looking like its charging. The image it showed was the one without the lightning bolt so my initial reaction was that it wasn't charging. However, I left it there and in a couple of minutes the phone booted up and it has been charging like normal. Just in case anyone is reacting to the pictures and not giving it time, its good to know...mine seems OK for now...

Same here - have just dug mine out with a paperclip and works perfectly now.

I tried cleaning the charging port following reading this thread as I was swapping and switching chargers to try and get the phone to charge. I used an interdental stick and now it works perfectly now I have cleared all the lint out

I had the same problem on my iPhone 5S after 20 months. I tried various cables with varying results, but cleaning the lint out of the port fixed it for me. I could not see any with a flashlight, but when I used a toothpick to dig around a very surprising amount of lint came out. I see some people suggesting using a pin - this seems like a really bad idea, as you could damage the electrical contacts and then you have a serious / expensive problem. A toothpick is much better and works fine if you are lucky and lint is your only issue. I also saw a customer before me at the "genius bar" a few years ago who had charging issues, and they would not replace the phone under warranty as they said that it was caused by corrosion created by using a "cheap third-party charger". Since then, I only use Apple-approved chargers / cables.

That's nonsense. A power supply may or may not work, but it can't cause corrosion.

As for cables, maybe they're fixed now, but I was going through 1 Apple Lightning cable a week. Amazon's cables cost half price, and have been far more reliablie...though ultimately the ports on every single Lightning device I've seen have all died regardless.

And "lint" has never been an issue in any device I've used.

Your advice was good. I first tried a toothbrush and then the toothpick with no luck. Then I used a can of compressed air to stir things up in the slot and the toothpick then found a ball of lint. Using both the compressed air and the toothpick I finally got all of it out and the phone is now charging. I suggest using a hard sharp toothpick. A metal paper clip could damage the contacts.

It checked the charging port on my iPhone 5s and saw some lint inside it. I cleaned it with a plastic tooth pick and it's charging just fine. Thanks a lot mdb983 for the helpful information.

I have iPhone 5 where its battery is also eligible for battery replacement program. The problem is I could not charge the phone anymore so I went to Apple Customer Service Center for them to check. The staff who assisted me thought the problem could be the charging port. He tried to clean it using a thin brush but still it would not charge. He told me they don't do any repair so it had to be replaced with brand new same unit and spec worth P16,000 (unit only). I thought it was time to say goodbye to my iPhone 5 because I would have preferred to use the money to buy new model instead. I did not give up on finding a solution until I ran into your post yesterday. It was really helpful. I realized perhaps the Apple CSC staff was not able to clean well the inside of the charging port and I also noticed minor lints on the sidewall inside the port. Using a pin (the one you use for sewing) I tried removing those lints out with the help of LED light from my Note 4 that my wife was holding. When I was done I charged the iPhone again direct from the wall socket and then the battery icon appeared (without the lightning symbol and tip of the lightning connector) which means it was charging. By the way, the battery drained for more than a week already which I thought at first the reason it was no longer charging. After about 20 minutes of charging, my iPhone automatically turned on by itself and still charging. I can finally have the battery replaced for free. ^_^

I have just found that when cleaning out the lint or replacing the charger doesn't work, it may need a software reset. I did this by holding down the home button and the power button. After it came back on, it finally started charging again. If that doesn't work, then it may mean the phone has to be replaced.

I had one of the more expensive after-market lightning cables (say about 50% of the genuine cable cost) that worked for about a month then stopped. When it stopped I had errors on the phone about it not being supported and errors on the computer about a USB device malfunction. So today I was pressing lightly on it to see if somehow the contacts weren't getting good contact (both ends were clean, no lint, dust, grease, food, anything) and without any real pressure at all the little metal end just popped off. Turns out on this particular cable there's only about 1/16" of metal embedded in the plug and the only other thing holding it is an extremely thin circuit board. I'm now assuming that board was cracked, hence no valid connection.

I've owned a variety of cheap knock off cables over the years, the issue I usually have is the cable separating from the back of the port. This one had a very solid connection on that side, which is why I bought it.

I've also owned a half-dozen or so genuine apple cables and so far the only design flaw that I've found in them is that I inevitably lose them. I've never had a genuine cable fail. I currently have 3 of them, one of them is the original from the phone (iPhone 5 from when they first came out).

On the balance of things the cost is probably about the same... I probably get 6 times the life from a genuine cable vs a knock off that costs 1/6 as much, and if I were more careful about not losing them, it'd be a much better investment to go genuine.

It was the lint indeed! This rather embarrassing charging problem was solved in 5 minutes, which would otherwise have lead to my shelling out a lot of money and a painfully long procedure in order to procure a replacement device for this "non-existent-according-to-apple" but a very real and annoying issue!

Thank you for this valuable information!

The same thing happened to me! I knew it couldn't be lint bc I literally got it brand new out of the box today and it's been in my hand only. I was freakig out, thinking my brand new phone was toast after only a few hours!!!!

thank you! Used a paper clip and got some dirt out, seems to be working now!