Last night, my iPhone Air’s battery went to zero around 11 pm. I plugged the USB-C charging cable in within a few seconds of it shutting down, assuming it would boot up again immediately, as you’d expect. But this did not happen. Minutes passed and nothing happened. There was no low battery indicator visible on the screen; The display was completely black. It seemed as if the phone had died.
It turns out that this is a thing. There are several threads online containing posts from other iPhone owners that describe the exact same problem, which appears to occur in all iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone Air models…
It is not clear exactly how sporadic this is. This doesn’t affect everyone, nor does it happen every time a particular phone runs out of battery. My Air’s battery has drained several times before since it launched last September, and last night was the first (and hopefully only, though who knows?) time I’ve experienced this problem.
After leaving the phone plugged in and on the wall for a few minutes, I tried the hardware reset button combination (volume up, volume down, press side button), which would boot the phone into gear and show the Apple logo.
Still, the screen remained black. I tried a few different USB-C cables but to no avail. At this point, I was worried that my phone was completely ruined and would have to be sent to Apple for warranty repair. I tried connecting the phone to my Mac, but it didn’t even show up in Finder.
That’s when I resorted to Google, and found Very threads (Albeit with a few comments each) Others reported similar experiences. The consensus solution that seems to work best is this: put your phone on a MagSafe charger, and leave it on for about fifteen minutes.
Thankfully, I tried this and it worked. My phone booted up after about ten minutes on the wireless charging pad.
It seems like wired charging is an unreliable way to revive a phone when it gets into this weird state, as if it’s not constantly drawing voltage. It might work if you wait hours, but wireless charging seems to work best on the first try. Some commenters in those threads even said that they took their ‘dead’ phone to an Apple Store, and the technician’s way was to also take a MagSafe charger.
Obviously, I was relieved that my phone problem was temporary. Still, it’s a little disturbing. What if this happened while I was out in my car and I needed CarPlay to get home? I don’t carry the MagSafe Puck with me all the time. Maybe I should do this now, maybe it will happen again.
Let us know in the comments if this story sounds familiar, and if something similar has happened to you.
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