(NOTE: This article is aimed at a general audience. For more detail on the technical issues, see our in-depth Tristar damage/repair article.)

The Important Points

  • We can fix an iPhones or iPad one of several charging and battery related problems. Click here to arrange a repair at a reasonable price.
  • Such problems are often a symptom of damaged charging circuits and the result of using non-approved Lightning cables.
  • Original and MFi-approved Lightning cables include proprietary chips which set up charging safely then filter the current to remove damaging electrical fluctuations before they get to the iPhone or iPad.
  • Unofficial, non-MFi cables pass on the current directly without filtering it. This means there’s a big risk that fluctuations or spikes from the charger will damage the iPhone or iPad every time you use it.
  • We only sell Apple “MFi” certified Lightning cables, meaning they’re as safe as Apple’s own. Despite this, they only cost a few pounds more than the cheap and nasty cables found elsewhere.

    Introduction

    Is your iPhone not charging properly or having other battery-related problems? Maybe your iPad won’t charge or keeps turning itself off? If you’re having any of these problems, read on:-

    • Charger not recognised at all .
    • Charger recognised but “Accessory Not Supported” comes up. (Often this will happen even if you swap to another charger or cable that was good the last time you used it).
    • Says it’s charging, but battery obviously isn’t going up over time.
    • Won’t turn on at all.
    • Battery runs out far quicker than usual.
    • Charging stops before battery anywhere near full.
    • Turns itself off when battery gets to a certain point.
    • USB connection to computer generally erratic and unreliable.

    Okay, here’s the bad news- these are often (but not always) due to damaged charging circuits in your iPhone or iPad. The good news? This can often be fixed. (To go directly to more details on repair click here for the end of the article or click here to contact us and arrange the repair itself.)

    However, while we’re here… Did you know that damage like this to your iPhone or iPad is very often due to the use of unofficial- or downright fake- Lightning cables for charging?

    We wouldn’t blame you for thinking this is scaremongering designed to get you to fork over lots more money for a genuine Apple cable. However, there definitely are major differences between Apple’s own cables (along with officially-endorsed “MFi” ones from other manufacturers) and cheap or fake ones.

    Don’t believe us? Read on! We’ll explain exactly how using cheap cables can damage your phone.

    (Note: In most cases we’ll say “iPhone” for brevity, but this entire article applies equally to all iPads and iPhones that use the Lightning connector).

    How The Official Cables Work Keep You Protected

    Most Apple users don’t realise this, as it’s not obvious from just looking at the cable, but the official Apple Lightning cable is more than a simple USB lead. The connector includes various sophisticated chips that do several things, including the setup of charging and the provision of a cleanly-filtered and safe current. (The same applies to cables from other companies with a genuine “Made for iPhone/iPad/iPod” (MFi) certficate- more of which later).

    Firstly, and most importantly, we have the “load switch” chip. Essentially, this takes the current from the charger and filters it so that ripples, surges, excess current, overvoltage, reverse polarity etc. can’t damage the iPhone.

    Related to this is the “handshake” chip. This has several uses, including sending a password to prove to the iPhone that the cable is Apple-approved, and that it’s okay for the iPhone to turn off certain protections and allow the charging current to flow.

    How Non-Certified Cables Can Damage Your iPhone and iPad

    So far, so good. All those chips we described above are great, because they stop your iPhone getting fried by excess current, spikes and the like.

    By the way… did we mention that the cheap cables don’t include any of that protection?

    Yep- the cheap (non-MFi) and fake cables don’t include the genuine Apple chips, and they certainly don’t contain a “load switch” at all. What happens is that an imitation “handshake” chip basically lies about the current being safely filtered, gets the iPhone to drop its protections as necessary, then passes the unfiltered current direct from the charger to the phone.

    This usually works okay for some time- these cables generally will charge your iPhone. It might- or might not- work for quite a long time. But sooner or later even a decent charger is going to end up sending a current spike, ripple or some other discrepancy direct into your iPhone.

    If you’re unlucky, this will damage the logic board in some way. If you’re very unlucky, it’ll kill the phone completely.

    Official Cable versus Unofficial Cable

    This is our genuine MFi-approved cable. You can see the plastic shroud being removed, showing the metal below.
    The metal has now been removed- you can see the Apple-supplied chips inside.
    A closer look at the Apple chips inside our genuine MFi-certified cable.
    This is a cheap (non-MFi) cable from one of our rivals. Note that it’s completely different.

    The Lightning cables we sell in our store are endorsed officially as “Made for iPhone/iPad/iPod” (MFi) by Apple. They use the same chip assembly- purchased from Apple themselves- in their manufacture, which means they’re as trustworthy as Apple’s own Lightning cables.

    For comparison, we also purchased a “Lightning” cable from a rival store. This wasn’t even pretending to be an official product (so we guess you could at least say it wasn’t a “fake” in that sense) and made no mention of MFi on the pack.

    We took both cables to bits. You can see from our pictures that whereas ours contains the genuine MFi chips, the cheap rival one is completely different, with no current filtering chip and the accompanying risk of your iPhone being seriously damaged as a result.

    It’s not like ours is expensive either. The price difference is just £4- that’s barely more than the cost of the MFi parts from Apple themselves, and really not worth risking your several-hundred pound iPhone over. (Well, that’s our opinion anyway- feel free to disagree!)

    Can Repair St Andrews Fix a Damaged Charging Circuit in the Apple iPhone or iPad?

    If you’re reading this bit, there’s a good chance that our advice came to late and your phone already got damaged. Fortunately, we can repair such damage in a very high number of cases.

    Although the replacement of the charging chip (in the iPhone or iPad) sounds simple on paper, it’s one that requires a lot of skill in practice; for example, a less experienced technician- or one without the advanced equipment we use- can easily end up overheating the board and damaging the CPU.

    We’ve been in business for a long time, and have been repairing iPhones almost since the day they first came out over a fifteen years ago. We have the equipment needed to do the job properly, and we’re often subcontracted to do difficult repairs like these that other repair stores aren’t confident doing themselves.

    Our St Andrews branch was opened in 2011, headed by one of our most experienced technicians- that’s why we’re well-known as one of the leading independent Apple repair centres in East Scotland.

    Repairs can be handed directly into our St Andrews store, and we even accept them via parcel delivery within the UK and most of Europe! So if you’re having a problem with your iPhone or iPad not charging properly- or indeed if there are any problems with it –contact us online, by telephone or in person to find out more and set up your repair with us.