Last night my iPhone Air battery died at about 11pm. I plugged in the USB-C charging cable within seconds of shutting down, assuming it would reboot immediately as you’d expect. But it didn’t happen. Minutes passed and nothing happened. There was no low battery indicator on the screen; the screen was just black. It was as if the phone was dead.
It turns out that this a thing. There are several threads online with posts from other iPhone owners describing the same issue on all iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone Air models…
It is not known exactly how sporadic this is. It doesn’t affect everyone, and it doesn’t happen every time a particular phone runs out of battery. The Air’s battery has died a few times since launching last September, and last night was the first (and hopefully only?) time I’ve had the problem.
After plugging the phone into the wall for a few minutes, I tried the reset button combination (volume up, volume down, side button) expecting it to boot the phone into gear and show the Apple logo.
Again the screen remained black. I tried several different USB-C cables to no avail. Right now, I was worried that my phone was completely bricked and would have to be sent to Apple for warranty repair. I tried connecting the phone to my Mac, but it didn’t show up in Finder either.
That’s when I turned to Google and found numerous threads (albeit many comments each) others reporting similar experiences. Here’s the consensus solution that seems to work best: put your phone on a MagSafe charger and leave it on for about fifteen minutes.
Thankfully I tried it and it worked. My phone turned on after about ten minutes on the wireless charging pad.
It seems that when the phone gets into this weird state, wired charging is an unreliable way to revive it, like it doesn’t draw voltage continuously. Maybe it could work if you wait for hours, but wireless charging seems like a first attempt. Some of the commenters on these threads even said they took their “dead” phones to an Apple Store and the technician’s main method was to grab a MagSafe charger.
Frankly, I got over the problem with my phone being temporary. Nevertheless, it is somewhat disturbing. What if this happens when I’m out of my car and I need CarPlay to direct me home? I don’t always carry a MagSafe puck with me. Maybe I should do it now, anyway this situation will happen again.
If this story sounds familiar and something similar has happened to you, let us know in the comments.
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