Battery won't charge. Screen shows red bars to the far right on battery symbol and a white symbol for the plug wire below it.

Question

Battery won't charge. Screen shows red bars to the far right on battery symbol and a white symbol for the plug wire below it.

Two charger places and different wires. The phone appears with a black screen only showing the horizontal battery symbol (Usually green status bar inside) this time with RED bar to the left indicating a REALLY low battery, and a NEW symbol for what looks like a power plug beneath. See photo. Phone was unusable while plugged in. I pressed the two buttons needed for a reset and nothing happened for several minutes. While I laid the phone down for a time, only then did the Apple logo appeared in a restart. Surprised it took at least a minute or so to restart. Any clues as to what all this means? Or was it just simply SO run down for battery charge that it added that additional plug symbol to the screen?

Posted on Dec 26, 2015 1:20 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Ingo2711

Level 10

80,043 points

Dec 26, 2015 2:01 PM in response to Michael Goettee

Do you hear the charging sound when you connect the phone to the adapter or computer?

Leave it connected to the adapter for at least 30min, then check again if the battery did charge during this time. Before you connect, make sure that the docking port is free of any debris or lint, which may prevent it from charging.

Is the phone recognized by iTunes if you connect it to the computer? Are you using the original adapter and USB cable that came with the phone?

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Answer 2

Ingo2711

Level 10

80,043 points

Dec 26, 2015 2:51 PM in response to Michael Goettee

If the battery runs dry, the phone will not start without being charged for a couple of minutes.

Also, in case the phone does not respond, connecting to a computer in recovery mode can bring the phone back to life:

If your iPhone doesn't respond or won't turn on - Apple Support

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Answer 3

Dec 26, 2015 2:52 PM in response to Ingo2711

Thanks again. At least we know the phone's not fried.

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Answer 4

Dec 26, 2015 2:16 PM in response to Ingo2711

Thanks Ingo,

There was no identifiable sound, like that soft ping when you plug a charger cable in. And I'm parroting info from my housemate whose phone it is. He's way less techie than I am. He said he'd left it in charging all night and nothing. That said, after I did a re-set on his problem phone while it was plugged into my Mac, and his normal start screen appeared, we plugged it back into his charger and it's charging up now. Both our chargers and cables are working fine.

All this leaves is the question for future reference for both of us: Why wouldn't the phone have just charged as it should have without needing a reset? Do they just get so near death that they need a reset, like it's an iPhone's version of a heart defibrillator in the Emergency room? (Probably a bad analogy I admit.)

Once we had it going, we didn't check whether it was recognized by iTunes. By then we didn't have to.

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Answer 5

Ingo2711

Level 10

80,043 points

Dec 26, 2015 2:58 PM in response to Michael Goettee

You're welcome 🙂

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