iPhone 3gs fell and switches off randomly till then...

[schwertfisch]

I have my iPhone 3gs for 1,5 year now. I have dropped it 2-3 times from about 50cm height. Three days ago, it fell from my hands (50-60cm height) on a thin carpet in my house, it spinned in the air (5-10cm) and fell again (on the carpet). When I got it in my hands I saw that it had switched off. I turned it on and it took ages to startup (about 1') and the date was reset to 1970.

For the last 3 days now, it keeps switching off randomly. It doesn't matter if I move it violently or softly, the switch-offs are totally random and happen about 4-7 times/day. What's notable is that the date doesn't reset to 1970 all the times.

I am thinking that since it switched off when it fell in the first time, maybe that moment the battery had moved a little from it's position and every now and then it loses it's contact and keeps turning off on it's own.

Do you find my guess possible? I'll probably open it and check to see if something has moved (although I find it really hard for an inexperienced person as I to notice a slight misplacement of the device's interiors).

 

[Crystal-RX]

I have my iPhone 3gs for 1,5 year now. I have dropped it 2-3 times from about 50cm height. Three days ago, it fell from my hands (50-60cm height) on a thin carpet in my house, it spinned in the air (5-10cm) and fell again (on the carpet). When I got it in my hands I saw that it had switched off. I turned it on and it took ages to startup (about 1') and the date was reset to 1970.

For the last 3 days now, it keeps switching off randomly. It doesn't matter if I move it violently or softly, the switch-offs are totally random and happen about 4-7 times/day. What's notable is that the date doesn't reset to 1970 all the times.

I am thinking that since it switched off when it fell in the first time, maybe that moment the battery had moved a little from it's position and every now and then it loses it's contact and keeps turning off on it's own.

Do you find my guess possible? I'll probably open it and check to see if something has moved (although I find it really hard for an inexperienced person as I to notice a slight misplacement of the device's interiors).

No, your guess is impossible. The battery is attached to the back housing using double sides tape and there is no way it can move.

Can you do a hard reset and see if it fixes the problem?

 

[schwertfisch]

Actually yesterday I realized that the problem is possibly connected with how much battery there's left and not with the minor movements of the device. Below around 50% I get frequent-instant-switch-offs and below 35% it's impossible to turn the phone on (when pressign the power button it begins the startup with the silver apple logo for 5-10'' only to switch-off again).

Fully charging the device solves the problem completely. When the charge falls below 60-70% I can get a random switch-off now and then and as described above. At lower battery levels the problem becomes more and more frequent.

 

[-aggie-]

From your last post, it sounds like your battery is bad. Restore the phone and setup as new and if it still does it, you need a new battery.

 

[schwertfisch]

the problem was an expired Developers Provisioning Profile

Thanks guys, the problem was caused by an expired Developers Provisioning Profile and it now seems to be solved:
I'm currently developing a game for the iPhone and I had a Development Provisioning Profile installed on the device. These profiles expire every 3 months. The day the I dropped the phone was the day my profile expired. The device switched-off on falling down so I automatically connected the fall (and switch-off) with the following random switch-offs that day and the following days. The cause was the expiration of the profile though...
Uninstalling the app that I'm developing/testing (the app did not run anyway, as the profile expired) solved the problem. It all came to me after talking to a friend, that told me that he's dropped his iPhone about 10 times on hard floor and it never had any problems and that my problem must be caused by some software-related issue and he suggested I uninstall any suspicious apps...
I'm sooo happy that the iPhone is ok!