My iPhone 4s will not charge

I got the same battery icon with 2-3 red bars on an iPhone 4S. A picture for a charger port appears below. It disappears when I plug the phone in, but it doesn't charge and the phone does not turn on.

So after reading a few a lot of postings here suggesting the dock port is faulty or dirty, I cleaned the charging port and the cable plug with a bit of cleaning alcohol and a small toothbrush. After letting it sit for 5 minutes or so, I did a reset by holding home+power (this does not wipe your data), and the phone actually turned on. If you are unlucky your dock port might be too dirty or rusted and might have to be replaced.

This is what I did. :-)

How to Fix When Your iPhone Won’t Charge: 5 Ways

You can read here (above) if you want the full in-depth article together with all the screenshots.

Alright let's get this over with.

1. Hard Reset Your iPhone

The very first thing you should do is always hard reset your iPhone to check for any software malfunction before jumping into checking any of the hardware.

Step 1: Press and hold the Power button and the Volume down button together (iPhone 7 and newer) or the Power button and the Home button together (iPhone 6S and older). Keep holding both of it down together until you see the Apple logo appear on your screen, then let go.

Now try charging your iPhone once again. If that doesn’t work then move on to the next few methods.

2. Check Your Lightning Cable For Any Damage

Go on grab your charging cable.

Got it? Alright now take a very close look at both sides of the that one end of the cable you use to plug into your iPhone to charge it with.

See any signs of wear? If yes, then it’s time for you to get a new Lightning cable.

Hold on now, How can I tell if whether my lightning cable is the reason why my iPhone won’t charge?

If you find there’s no visible wear and tear on your lightning cable then there’s two ways you can go about checking this to really make sure:

1. Try charging your iPhone by plugging it into your computer instead of using the wall Adapter

If you already tried charging using your computer , then now try plugging into your wall adapter.

If it works in one place but not the other then your cable isn’t the problem.

2. Try charging your iPhone using your friend’s cable

This is the best way to find out whether you have a bad cable.

If you find that your iPhone does manage to charge with your friend’s cable then there you go.

Now you know that it is because of a faulty cable that your iPhone couldn’t charge.

3. Brush The Gunk Out Of Your iPhone’s Charging Port

Go ahead and grab a flashlight and take a look at your charging port in the bottom of your iPhone.

Now if you see any debris or junk in there, then that might be what’s preventing your lightning cable from making a solid connection with your iPhone.

And just so you know, in your charging port there are about 9 connectors in there, and if at anytime any one of these is blocked by junk or debris that has accumulated inside it can prevent your iPhone from not charging at all.

Which is why you are going to need to clean your charging port by brushing it gently with a soft brush that does conduct any electricity.

Got your brush? Alright let’s get this over with.

Step 1: Grab your soft brush and then gently brush out your iPhone’s charging port. Take your time. Keep gently brushing whilst using your handy flashlight to see if there are any junk left inside your charging port.

Once you’re done, try charging your iPhone again.

If not then there’s one last thing you haven’t checked out yet before you go on any further..

Have you dropped any water or some kind of liquid on to your iPhone in the past few days?

Yeah?

Then read this article.

4. Put your iPhone into DFU Mode and Restore

So I’m guessing your iPhone still doesn’t charge right?

Not to worry, there is still one last option that may still work.

Note

Make sure that you backup your iPhone into iTunes before going any further.

What you’re going to do is a thing called DFU Restore. (It’s a fancy term for factory reset).

Basically it resets your iPhone back to how it was when you first got it. So yes, that means it will erase everything that is in your iPhone right now.

Now you might hesitate to what I say, saying

“I’m sure the guys over at the Apple Store knows how to fix this without erasing all of my data”.

But the thing is, every time no matter what the problem you bring to them is, if they see it as a damaged iPhone they’ll always do a DFU restore before proceeding to the hardware fix.

And yes most of the time they charge you a fee for just doing something you could have done in your underwear back home.

So you might as well save your precious time and the cost with a trip to the store by doing it yourself.

It’s pretty simple.

Step 1: Go ahead and plug in your iPhone into your computer and open your iTunes. (It doesn’t matter if your iPhone is on or off)

Step 2: Press and hold the Power button and your Home button together for 8 seconds.

Step 3: After the 8 seconds, release the Power button but continue to keep holding down the Home button until you see that iTunes shows “iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode”.

Step 4: Now let go of the Home button. Your iPhone’s screen should be completely black, which means that you’ve successfully entered DFU Mode. (If it is not, try again from the beginning)

Step 5: From here, you can restore your iPhone using iTunes.

That’s it! 🙂

Hopefully it works, if not then it’s time.

Keep reading.

5. Time to call the geeks

If you have tried all of the above and you still find that it does not charge, then you really should pay a visit to your nearest Apple Storeand get your iPhone repaired.

Read more at Saint

Split the cover from the 30 pin connector, there's only 4 wires used connecting to the 30 pins found the black found wire broken from the pin re-solder and your good to go... Hope this helps somebody.

Are any of the cables you tried Apple cables? I understand that in iOS7 many non Apple cables will stop working.

I have the same problem as of last night and posted a question about it as well. If you plug it into a computer and don't choose to trust or not, you will get a few % worth of charge before it boots it off. I think iOS auto-updated something last night which is messing it up.

I have this same exact problem it happened after updating my iPhone 4s to iOS7. Just started happening for me today.

I also did a factory reset and this did not help the problem. I leave it plugged in and after a few minutes it will boot. I turned on the battery percentage in the general settings and it says I have 4% battery and then begins to decline one percent at a time until it final shuts off. This just keeps happening. I have also noticed that my computer no longer recognizes my iPhone at all when pluging it into the USB port.

Thanks for the answers on this thread, My Old iPhone I'm giving to my son wouldn't charge, I've since plugged it into the computer and she's charging?

Thanks guys.

Did anyone find a solution i have the exact same probem, even thought it might have been the cable so i bought a new one but it still wont charge, computer and mac wont recognize the device anymore. I randomly get it to charge up to 10 per cent then it dies again. Nightmare i can't afford to send it away for 10 days again, due an upgrade in a month too so almost seems pointless.

HELP! 😠😟

Mine doesnt show its charging so what i have to do is have it turned off then plug it into my charger and sometimes it turns on.

Its probably best to do it before you go to sleep so no one touches it cause for me I have to have my phone on charge for like 4 - 5 hours and if I hit the home but to see how much charge it has it stops charging and goes down.

Btw I took it into apple and they said it was the whole charging part of the phone and would cost me about 2 - 3 hundred to fix

Could be something in the cable head or port on the phone blocking good pin connection.

Look at the pins on the inside of the charging port, they are supposed to look somewhat shiny and gold colored.

You may have corrosion or some gunk covering them. If that's the case you can try gently scraping them clean with a pin. Do NOT use a cleaning solvent, water or soap. Gently scrape the dirt off, then blow it out like an old nintendo cartridge.

Plug/unplug it a few times and see if it won't start to charge after that.

Hi. I came across this blog because I just had the same issue. I've had my 4s for about 2 years, worked fine until yesterday night it would not hold a charge. Dock station, usb, several different chargers, still would not charge the iphone. I am guessing this is caused by number of things, over charging, crappy chinese made chargers, even car chargers that you buy at the dollar store. All in all I just found out there are two things to do about this instead of buying a new phone. I noticed that my 4s (*when turned off) it will detect the charger enough to power the phone back on, but when its on it will not charge. You can quickly turn off the phone after it powered on, with the plug still in. Whent he phone is off completely it will charge. I woke up this morning and it was 100%. Downside is that the phone has to be off. This morning, I found a guy on yelp local to me who explained that it was the charging function on the phone that shorted out, and it is easily fixable. Costed me $40, not sure if that was high or low, but the phone works now. Good luck guys!

My iphone wont charge from my wall or from my laptop. i charged this morning but after i woke up it wont charge via wall or laptop. Idk whats wrong with it. When i plug my iphone4 to my latop, the laptop makes a noise, but wont have the iphone pop up in itunes. i tried turning off my phone then on, but still wont charge. i need help. it tried different chargers but still no help. my itunes and iphone is updated to the lasted version. it just stopped working today. I NEED HELP ASAP. This is the first time this happened to me. My iphone would always charge no problem, but now its just messed up