Is my 3G iphone battery dead?

[greenpantern]

Hi,
My iphone battery is completely drained. When I plug the power cord into the phone, on the screen it keeps switching between the little lightning picture and the lightning picture with the plug-in-the-cord picture. The phone doesn't get charged either. So just want to make sure my battery is dead before buying a new one.
Thanks.

[Cowboy]

Yup sounds like it to me. If you havent tried a restore do that first but if that doesnt fix it then ya your battery is a goner!

[Simon]

It could also be a bad usb connector or cord.

[Cowboy]

It could also be a bad usb connector or cord.

I would say that. But more often then not you get the yellow triangle if its a bad cord unless its just not charging at all then you would get nothing. I dont think its a usb because the phones is getting recognized to charge.

[Simon]

What if a cord was giving intermittent connection though.

[Cowboy]

Hmm maybe i dont know i see a more common the yellow triangle then it just not charging at all. Not say its not possible i just have never personally seen it .

[greenpantern]

I have two usb cord one original from apple the other is 3rd party. They both give me the same problem. When plugged in, the little lightning icon and the little lightning icon with a plug-in-the-cord icon keeps flashing back and forth. When the flashing does stop and if i'm lucky, it only shows the charge icon which indicates to me that it's charging. However, after a while it would flash again between the two icons. At this point, I think the battery is dead. AND all this happened because I tried to restore my 3G jailbroken iphone which was on 4.2.1 back to original 4.2.1 from apple. I'm not sure if the two are related but I am quite suspicious that it is.

[glttrgrl]

I had this problem on my old 3G. The battery was starting to go - could only get about 1 hour of talk time out of it and the thing would heat up like CRAZY.Then it wouldn't charge until it cooled down again - it would do exactly what you're describing.

It also would only charge with the Apple charger (sucked, cuz my Chinese $2 knockoffs were a lot easier on the wallet).

Have you tried a clean restore (from no backup)? That solved the majority of my battery longevity problem, and charging with the Apple charger only fixed the no-charging problem.

Worst case scenario, if you keep it around when you upgrade, use it as an iPod touch. In airplane mode that thing's still trucking - gave it to my brother and battery life now w/out ever turning on the cell radio is about on par with my brand new iphone 4. I kept it for a few weeks to learn JBing so I can confirm this was with very similar usage habits - heavy wifi web surfing, iPod use, etc.

So, try a restore and a new (or new as possible) Apple charger. My first two frayed out on me in less than 3 months both times so there may be damage you can't see yet, and something may be hung up in the phone itself (corrupt app or setting) that can be wiped with a restore. Sorry this is long but I had almost the exact same issue & just wanted to say that there IS hope.

[greenpantern]

Thanks glttrgrl. Actually, with the new firmware 4.2.1, it doesn't let you restore your phone once jailbroken which is what I did. So here's what I did. I jailbroke it, the battery kept draining like crazy so I thought if I restore back to factory 4.2.1, I would be ok. Well, that I found out the hard way. You can't restore. iTunes doesn't let you. So now I have two problems, battery and firmware. But I can't try other restore method because my battery is dead. Pulling my hair out as I'm trying to solve this problem and I'm almost bald as is. So sad... So I think the only thing I can do is try to replace the battery and then tackle the other problem after. Thanks for your input though.

[glttrgrl]

Wow, that sucks. :/

I just posted this in another thread, and it may/may not help if I'm understanding you correctly. Before I restored, I'd actually fixed the battery drain problem without restoring but doing Settings->General->Reset-> "erase all content and settings."

This was before I JB though, but I think it just wipes it, not modifies the OS. So maybe you could try that and preserve your current JB? (I'd google that or ask someone who knows more than I do first before trying though).

I figured this out bc I didn't wanna restore at the time and it DID fix the battery. It didn't fix the charging, so I ended up restoring before I learned it was actually the charger. I'm assuming you've also tried a ton of different outlets & stuff? When I mentioned how awful my 3G had gotten when I was buying my iphone 4, the guy looked kind of mortified and said I definitely should have brought it in, even though it was 1.5 years old. I was trying everything bc replacement batteries for the 3G seemed pretty pricy (50-75 dollars is what I was seeing online, Apple will charge you more) so it hardly seemed worth that much money, and in the end it did seem to be almost totally a software problem. Good luck! Would love update/s if you are able to fix this.

[glttrgrl]

One other thing, have you tried plugging it in a bunch of places? Like USB vs different outlets and maybe a power strip? I ask bc my the house I live in is very old; build before electricity & the wiring seems "creative." I noticed that my phone charges faster on certain outlets, which is disturbing. Just a longshot but hey worth a try.

As a hail Mary pass, I was wondering if you could get it charged just enough to try the erase all content & settings and if that would help bring it back. Doubtful, but tossing it out there as something to try.

[greenpantern]

oh i found 3G batteries OEM new for about $20. so it's worth it to replace if required. Thanks. will update you when problem is fixed.

[glttrgrl]

And one more thing you could try, also in the "nothing left to lose" category - when mine would not charge (after being plugged in) and would head up a bit, I'd throw it in the freezer for 10-20 minutes. That usually worked too in terms of letting it charge another 20 minutes or so til it overheated again, went back in the freezer again, etc.

Mine had gotten so bad and corrupted that backups took 6-8 hours and the phone would overheat and stop charging halfway through. I literally did a final backup before giving it to my brother by changing out ice cube trays underneath it every half hour! Then I realized no way was I gonna port a corrupt backup to my new phone anyway,but the cold really did help the battery simmer down.

Note this works the opposite way for normal batteries; they'll drain really fast if they freeze, or are forgotten in your car in subzero temps. Learned that one the hard way. So a little cold can help, a lot of cold will zap them though. Again, only bringing this up in detail because this same battery went back to almost normal life and charging after the reset all settings thing, just tossing it out there for you or anyone else who might be googling or looking around for things to try. I've found a lot of random things on forums over the years that seemed like they'd never work, but sometimes they did.

[glttrgrl]

Cool, 20 bucks isn't bad at all! For that price it's prob worth just giving the swap a go, then. Good luck!

[greenpantern]

Hey glttrgrl,
It worked! I bought a new battery $20, replaced it myself (a pain in the booty but fun to do) and voila it worked to my amazement! So now I need to get the phone working again. arghhhh..

[glttrgrl]

Awesome! That's good to know. I'll tell my brother about it if the 3G I gave him gets worse again. How is it going otherwise? Not sure what you meant by "working"'again. Also, did it make you install 4.2.1 after replacing the battery? Just curious.

[greenpantern]

Hi glttrgrl,

Ok, after the new battery, I am getting the same problem again. I am unable to charge the phone. My battery is drained. The phone keeps flashing the lightning bolt and the other picture over and over. I don't think the battery is the problem. I think it's the restoration of the phone back to stock 4.2.1. What happened was that I upgraded my 3G to 4.2.1. I then jailbroke it and had serious battery drainage problem. So I thought it might be the jb that caused the battery problem. It wasn't like that pre-jb. So I decided to restore the phone back to stock 4.2.1. And all hell break loose from there! I can't restore to any firmware now. I used redsnow even, followed the steps and still doesn't work. Then battery was dying because the restoration firmware somehow locks the phone from even getting charged. So every time I plug the phone to get charged I see those two flashing pictures with the red drained battery image. I am so pist! This is my phone, it's paid in full after 2 years of slavery to AT&T, I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with it! Damn Apple and Damn Steve Jobs! May he go to Blackberry hell forever and ever!

[Simon]

Have you updated your baseband to the iPad one?

[greenpantern]

No, I didn't update the basebad to iPad one. My basebase was still at 5.15.x.

[Simon]

What error do you get when you try to restore?