Turn on the iPhone when unplugging the charging cable

HI Ask4pironi,

ALthough I do not turn off my iPhone at night, I have experienced this behavior on my iPhone 6s Plus. I tried different chargers, moved my phone away from other electrical devices when charging overnight, etc. Every iPhone I have ever had has always displayed the auto-on functionality when unplugging after an overnight charge. After weeks of not turning on, three days ago my iPhone started to auto-on again! I did not do anything I'm aware of. I had NOT updated to iOS 9.1 yet when the functionality returned.

Bit my wife's iPhone 6s has lost her auto-on functionality in the past couple days! I can't say it started after I updated her iPhone to iOS 9.1. But I do know her phone did auto-on until relatively recently. In addition her phone does not display the large battery level icon you normally see when plugging IN the charger.

I had a genius appointment about this. The Genius was stumped and there were no records of such problems in Apple's data banks. She said she thought it might be a software glitch but she wasn't sure. I have read of others having this problem over the years. No one has posted a follow-up with an answer explaining the problem.

I am guessing this issue occurs more often than it is written about as many people probably don't take note of what their iPhone does when plugging in and unplugging the charger. I have asked about 5 people if they have ever noticed their iPhone doing this. All five said they didn't notice and really didn't look to notice.

I am going to do a hard reboot of my wife's iPhone before she plugs it in for the night. If that doesn't help I may restore her phone from backup to see if that helps as that will reinstall the software and firmware on her phone. If any of this works, I'll repost.

Here is some follow-up information:

I tried different chargers, moved my phone away from other electrical devices when charging overnight, etc. Every iPhone I have ever had has always displayed the auto-on functionality when unplugging after an overnight charge. After weeks of not turning on, three days ago my iPhone started to auto-on again! I did not do anything I'm aware of. I had NOT updated to iOS 9.1 yet when the functionality returned.

But my wife's iPhone 6s has lost her auto-on functionality in the past couple days! I can't say it started after I updated her iPhone to iOS 9.1. But I do know her phone did auto-on until relatively recently. In addition her phone does not display the large battery level icon you normally see when plugging IN the charger.

I had a genius appointment about this. The Genius was stumped and there were no records of such problems in Apple's data banks. She said she thought it might be a software glitch but she wasn't sure. I have read of others having this problem over the years. No one has posted a follow-up with an answer explaining the problem.

I am guessing this issue occurs more often than it is written about as many people probably don't take note of what their iPhone does when plugging in and unplugging the charger. I have asked about 5 people if they have ever noticed their iPhone doing this. All five said they didn't notice and really didn't look to notice.

I am going to do a hard reboot of my wife's iPhone before she plugs it in for the night. If that doesn't help I may restore her phone from backup to see if that helps as that will reinstall the software and firmware on her phone. If any of this works, I'll repost.

Update: I did a hard reboot of my wife's iPhone 6s. (Hold down the home and on/off buttons simultaneously until the screen went black and continued to press until the Apple Logo appeared on the screen. Then release the home and on/off buttons.) Boom! The next morning the screen did auto-on when I pulled out the charging plug from the phone. It also worked the next morning. Maybe a coincidence. Maybe "restarting" the phone via a hard reboot clears out some nastiness from the phone. I will add that I am almost sure I tried this with my iPhone 6s Plus and it did not work. Why my iPhone 6s Plus started to display this auto-on functionality again after weeks on not doing so remains, in my opinion, a mystery.

I have seen this issue as well, though in my case it is unplugging the phone from the lightning cable while the phone is powered on. The behavior is intermittent. I have the iPhone 6s Plus on iOS 9.1. I have only noticed this in the morning (after being connected overnight) when disconnecting from the standard charger. I have not noticed this behavior when disconnecting after shorter periods or when disconnecting from a cable connected via a computer. Since the issue is intermittent, then these may be coincidence and not related to root-cause.

One time after it did not activate the screen upon unplug, I pressed the Home button and it still took ~ 1-2 seconds before the screen activated.

Apple Support's only recommendation has been to restore the phone as new and test it that way before restoring from a backup. I have not yet had a chance to go through the time and hassle of doing so.