You Won’t Believe Why this iPhone Battery Died

If your iPhone can’t hold a charge anymore, you might want to check out one more possible solution before you throw in the towel…

If your iPhone can’t hold a charge anymore, you might want to check out one more possible solution before you throw in the towel…

My wife’s iPhone 6 Plus suddenly had battery problems. Big problems. Purchased online right after I got my own 6 Plus, her iPhone is not even ten-months old. But suddenly it couldn’t get through half a day without burning through a full charge. And believe me, she’s no smartphone power user… so that wasn’t the problem.

Warning: Low Battery
So the IT Guy proceeded to take some standard steps to eliminate known battery-drain culprits on her ailing smartphone:

  • I closed all the unnecessary open apps.
  • I turned off Bluetooth.
  • Also switched off Wi-Fi.
  • I then let the phone drain down all the way and then fully powered it back up to make sure the battery wasn’t experiencing any memory issues.

No improvement.

I was resigned to the likely reality I needed to take a trip to the Apple Store for surgery and a new battery.
(Fortunately, we always buy AppleCare coverage. Plus, our lazy iPhone was still covered on its base one-year warrantee. So my projected pain was more about inconvenience than cost…)

Hiding in Plain Sight
I decided to take another look and lifted the device out of my wife’s purse. The iPhone’s screen was already glowing, and the whole unit was pretty warm… as if it had been lit up for a while.

That’s odd.
It must have just gotten knocked around inside the purse when I picked it up, and the home button had accidentally been squeezed.

That night, I walked by the phone. It was sitting idly on my wife’s night table.
Its screen was illuminated… again.

I stopped.
Wait a minute… I was sure my wife hadn’t just been using it.
She was downstairs.

Hmmm… this couldn’t be a coincidence.
Could it be possible this iPhone was stuck in some kind of ‘always-shine’ mode?

Illumination
So I walked back, sat down and picked up the iPhone to drill down into its settings:

  • General
  • Auto-Lock

And do you know what I found?
Its Auto-Lock setting that determines when the screen shuts off automatically was set to…“Never!!”

WHOAH!!!
(How did that happen?)
(Of course, any iPhone 6 Plus would quickly lose its juice if its screen had been instructed to always remain on…)

So I switched the setting back to ‘five minutes,’ which I find is to be a reasonable amount of time to let your iPhone radiate while momentarily unattended.

Problem solved!

Well, not entirely…
My wife hadn’t adjusted this configuration. And it would seem almost impossible to accidentally make the change.

It was a conundrum for both of us.

Better AppleCare+
Of course the good news is my wife’s iPhone battery is just fine. No Apple Genius appointment needed at the Apple Store.

Another piece of good news for iPhone batteries throughout the known universe is Apple has just improved its AppleCare+ warrantee coverage.

Previously, AppleCare+ would only replace your battery if it couldn’t hold a 50% charge. Now, if your battery can’t get past 80%, AppleCare’s got you covered.
(That’s a pretty sweet upgrade for iPhones, iPads and MacBooks.)

Your Skynet has Arrived
The bad news…?
How the iPhone’s Auto-Lock setting got bumped to infinity mode will remain an unsolved mystery in the Lester family.
Case closed…

Is this ‘freakish’ tech tale really as much of a shocker as my post’s headline suggest? Well, consider it a cautionary account, as we all rely more heavily on technology to live our lives.

You can laugh at sci-fi sagas like “Terminator: Genisys” for being a bit ludicrous. But you can’t deny it’s always a problem when your tech goes rogue.

Pray it’s never intentional.
That could really ruin your day…