iPhone and iPad Charging Problem Repair
For a more technical version of this article, see “Apple Tristar/U2 Repair & Cheap Lightning Cable Damage” at our Disc Depot Dundee site.
Introduction
Are you having trouble with your iPad or iPhone not charging correctly or having any of the following problems?
- Charger not being recognised.
- Charger recognised but the “Accessory Not Supported” error appears.
- Device claims that it’s charging, but battery charge doesn’t seem to go up.
- Device won’t turn on at all.
- Battery runs out far quicker than usual.
- Charging process appears to stop before fully charged.
- Device turns itself off when battery drops below a certain charge.
- USB connection to computer is generally unreliable.
There’s good news and bad news. The bad news first- in many cases these problems can be caused by your iPhone or iPad’s charging circuitry having been damaged. The good news is that we can fix this in many cases. (If you want to skip directly to more information on repairs, click here or contact us to simply arrange the repair itself.)
Whether or not your phone has these problems, there’s one thing you need to know- Very often, damage like this is caused by using unofficial or fake Lightning cables to charge your phone.
Now, it’s understandable that you might think this is an excuse to get you to spend much more on a genuine Apple cable than a cheap one that’s (apparently) just as good. That’s why we’ll explain the differences between the officially-endorsed cables (including our MFi-certified ones) and cheap, non-certified or fake cables- and how using the latter can end up frying your device.
(Note: We’ll generally just say “iPhone”, but you can assume that everything written here applies equally to any iPad or iPhone that uses Lightning cables.)
Official Cables Provide Protection- Here’s How
The official Apple Lightning cable isn’t just a simple USB lead- it includes several proprietary chips that set up charging safely and filter the current to protect the iPhone from damage (amongst other things). As we’ll explain later, all MFi-certified cables from other manufacturers (such as the ones we sell) also include these chips.
The most important chip is the “current filtering” chip. This filters the charger current to protect the iPhone from ripples, surges, spikes, overvoltage, excess current or reverse polarity.
The “handshake” chip sends a password to the iPhone to confirm that it’s a legitimate certified cable, and to let the iPhone know it can safely drop some protections and start charging (since it knows the charging current will be filtered).
Non-Certified Cables Can Damage Your iPhone- Here’s Why
Bad news time. You know all those lovely chips we just mentioned that stop your iPhone from getting fried?
The cheap unofficial and fake cables don’t include any of them.
What you get is a fake “handshake” chip that sends the password, making the iPhone think that it’s going to get nice, clean, filtered charging current. Only, the cable doesn’t include the “current filtering” chip needed for that at all, and just sends the raw, unfiltered current direct from the charger.
This is fine as long as it works… right up until the charger inadvertantly sends a ripple or spike down the cable direct to your iPhone and either damages the motherboard or kills the phone completely.
Believe us, this isn’t just scaremongering- this can, and does happen all the time. We know, because we have to repair the results.
Official versus Unofficial- Let’s Take a Look
Metal shielding has now been removed and we can see the MFi chips.
A closeup of the official Apple chips inside the connector of our MFi-certified cable.
This cheap non-MFi cable from another repair store is completely different.
As mentioned above, the Lightning cables we sell are officially MFi-certified (“Made for iPhone/iPad/iPod”) by Apple and use the same genuine chips- as supplied by Apple themselves- as original cables.
On the other hand, a “Lightning” cable we bought from another store came in some generic packaging that made no mention of MFi. (It wasn’t passing itself off as an official product, so we guess you could argue it wasn’t “fake”).
We took both apart, and you can see from our images that the two are completely different inside- ours has several genuine MFi chips, the cheap non-MFi cable has a couple of unofficial parts and no all-important “current filtering” chip. In short, your phone is at risk with the cheap cable.
We say “cheap”, but in fact, it’s only £4 less than our MFi cable. That’s a pretty minor premium for all those good-quality parts and the reassurance that your phone won’t get damaged when you charge it.
Can Mac Repair Fix It?
If you’re looking at this section, there’s a good possibility that the advice above is a bit too late for you, and your phone is already damaged. Fortunately, we can fix this damage in very many cases, so it’s worth bringing your iPhone or iPad to us if you’re in this position.
In most cases, this repair involves the replacement of your iPhone or iPad’s charging chip- something that sounds simple on paper, but that requires a lot of skill in practice. For example, it’s incredibly easy to damage the CPU while heating the motherboard as necessary if you’re a less experienced technician or you don’t have the advanced equipment that we use daily in our repairs.
Mac Repair is part of Disc Depot, a company that’s been around for more than fifteen years, and fixing iPhones and iPads since they first came out. We even act as subcontractors for many other repair stores that bring them to us. (Often having- and failed- to repair them ourselves, then charging their customers more than it’d have cost them to come to us directly!)
There are Disc Depot stores in Dundee and St Andrews, and we’re known as one of East Scotland’s leading independent Apple repair stores.
You can either bring them to us in person, or send them from anywhere in the UK, or indeed from most of Europe.
So if your iPhone or iPad is giving you charging problems you need fixed- contact us either online, by telephone or in person to arrange your repair with us.
