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iphone shorted out by car stereo connection?

P

pna

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 27, 2005
318
0
I picked up one of the refurb iPhones from AT&T, unlocked it, and have been using it for a few weeks with a t-mobile pay as you go plan. It's worked fine, charged quickly ( a few hours ), and the battery-life was several days without a lot of active use, even with wireless on.

Two days ago I had it connected through the dock connector to my alpine car stereo. It was playing fine, but at some point I had to restart my car, and the iphone wasn't found by the car stereo. I had to do a hard reset of the iphone, at which point the screen flashed for a while, and then eventually it came back on.

Things seemed ok, but the next morning the phone had completely lost its charge from a full charge the day before. It no longer would take a charge from my firewire docks like it had previously, and took a full 24 hours to fully charge via usb. Today I've just watched the charge drain, and it's lost a full half of the battery charge today despite being on standby for the entire day, with wireless turned off.

Clearly something's amiss, but do any of you have any ideas of what to do about it? It's been activated previously (as it was a refurb), but I don't have an AT&T plan, so I can't imagine Apple will service it, even if I re-lock it. Is this likely to be just a battery issue, that I can pay to just replace the battery to fix? Any other ideas?

Thanks. I'm at a loss. Everything else on the phone seems to work totally fine, just anything to do with the battery seems a bit off.
 
If the iphone was connected to the car with a charger you might have had a power surge when you restarted the car that caused the damage.
 
Some of the iphones seem to have an issue when charged over the firewire pins instead of the usb ones there is a lot of threads about this in the forum where peole fryed their phones
 
senorFunkyPants said:
If the iphone was connected to the car with a charger you might have had a power surge when you restarted the car that caused the damage.
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This seems like the most likely culprit, though it freaks me out that this is even possible with the alpine decks. I'd think lots of people would have this problem, as I would assume lots of people leave their iPhones/iPods plugged in when they start their car.

It really doesn't hold a charge at all. I'll take it to a genius bar and see what they say, probably even just in an empty battery state like it wants to be in now. If they can't help out, is there anywhere that replaces batteries for cheaper than the $79 apple replacement? I'd hate to take a risk and drop $80 on a new battery if it ends up being other parts that were shorted out as well.
 
pna said:
It really doesn't hold a charge at all. I'll take it to a genius bar and see what they say, probably even just in an empty battery state like it wants to be in now. If they can't help out, is there anywhere that replaces batteries for cheaper than the $79 apple replacement? I'd hate to take a risk and drop $80 on a new battery if it ends up being other parts that were shorted out as well.
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I wish I could suggest an alternative solution, but I'm drawing blanks. Leave the iPhone in the charger as you work to restore it and it really shouldn't matter that it was unlocked. Get the battery replacement, and hopefully that's all that's wrong with it. They can do a quick software check and that'll determine anything else that is wrong with it. Normally, the software glitch will be the main issue and they'll replace it immediately. Good Luck either way and keep us posted. :(
 
SFStateStudent said:
I wish I could suggest an alternative solution, but I'm drawing blanks. Leave the iPhone in the charger as you work to restore it and it really shouldn't matter that it was unlocked. Get the battery replacement, and hopefully that's all that's wrong with it. They can do a quick software check and that'll determine anything else that is wrong with it. Normally, the software glitch will be the main issue and they'll replace it immediately. Good Luck either way and keep us posted. :(
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It was unlocked with iplus 2.0b, and is on 1.1.4 with the 3.9FB bootloader. To restore it, do I just do a firmware restore to 1.1.4 through iTunes, and this will upgrade the bootloader as well? I've searched, and I can't find a good answer to this.

If I bring it in as dead as it is right now, given how long it takes to charge to even get recognized by iTunes, I'm not sure how they're going to be able to do any software diagnostics. It'd be great if they could, though. Although, all they're going to see is the registration screen for AT&T, if I restore it, which won't help anyone.
 
Since it's a refurb, you might get it exchanged, since there are refurbs that are being sold that have been unlocked and jailbroken by the previous owners. There's threads throughout the forums, so you've got a 60%-40% chance of getting a new refurb. IMHO :(
 
SFStateStudent said:
Since it's a refurb, you might get it exchanged, since there are refurbs that are being sold that have been unlocked and jailbroken by the previous owners. There's threads throughout the forums, so you've got a 60%-40% chance of getting a new refurb. IMHO :(
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That's fine. If they won't exchange it, I'll just get a new battery. Do you know the procedure for re-locking and restoring the bootloader to 4.6, though?

Thanks.
 
pna said:
It was unlocked with iplus 2.0b, and is on 1.1.4 with the 3.9FB bootloader. To restore it, do I just do a firmware restore to 1.1.4 through iTunes, and this will upgrade the bootloader as well? I've searched, and I can't find a good answer to this.

If I bring it in as dead as it is right now, given how long it takes to charge to even get recognized by iTunes, I'm not sure how they're going to be able to do any software diagnostics. It'd be great if they could, though. Although, all they're going to see is the registration screen for AT&T, if I restore it, which won't help anyone.
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If they did do diagonstics and found out the modifications you had done to it, you would be footing a hefty bill since the warranty is invalidated by software modifications, ESPECIALLY unlocking it.

I've fried an iPhone before with an FM transmitter in the car, but I'm on AT&T, so I just walked in and got handed a new one (though it was jailbroken, it just wouldn't start up). Not sure what to tell you, though. Technically, you did violate the terms of the warranty so if they do some diagonistics you'll be paying to get it fixed/get a new one, not Apple.
 
Sbrocket said:
If they did do diagonstics and found out the modifications you had done to it, you would be footing a hefty bill since the warranty is invalidated by software modifications, ESPECIALLY unlocking it.

I've fried an iPhone before with an FM transmitter in the car, but I'm on AT&T, so I just walked in and got handed a new one (though it was jailbroken, it just wouldn't start up). Not sure what to tell you, though. Technically, you did violate the terms of the warranty so if they do some diagonistics you'll be paying to get it fixed/get a new one, not Apple.
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Those are good points, and I would suggest also to drain the battery as much as possible, as Sbrocket mentions above. If the techs can't start it up, that's to your benefit. I'm not supporting unlocking or jailbreaking, but I totally feel for you with regards to the "fried iPhone" and getting a replacement or getting it repaired via Apple. Sorry that I'm unable to help you with the unlocking and jailbreaking thing. :(
 
Sbrocket said:
If they did do diagonstics and found out the modifications you had done to it, you would be footing a hefty bill since the warranty is invalidated by software modifications, ESPECIALLY unlocking it.

I've fried an iPhone before with an FM transmitter in the car, but I'm on AT&T, so I just walked in and got handed a new one (though it was jailbroken, it just wouldn't start up). Not sure what to tell you, though. Technically, you did violate the terms of the warranty so if they do some diagonistics you'll be paying to get it fixed/get a new one, not Apple.
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That's fair enough. If it looks like they're going to be doing some actual diagnostic work beyond the free genius bar check, I'd just ask them to hold off and I'd order the replacement battery for $79, or whatever they're charging for that service at this point. I'm assuming the battery is the only problem, and that's probably the cheapest way to check.

I'd still like to re-lock it though, so if anyone can comment on whether or not a restore through iTunes will bring the bootloader back in line, I'd love to hear it...
 
I don't know much about re-locking, but I can almost guarantee that they will charge you much more than $80 if they know it's unlocked.
 
pna said:
That's fair enough. If it looks like they're going to be doing some actual diagnostic work beyond the free genius bar check, I'd just ask them to hold off and I'd order the replacement battery for $79, or whatever they're charging for that service at this point. I'm assuming the battery is the only problem, and that's probably the cheapest way to check.

I'd still like to re-lock it though, so if anyone can comment on whether or not a restore through iTunes will bring the bootloader back in line, I'd love to hear it...
Click to expand...

If you can start it up then assume they will we able to also. In my case, the device wouldn't hold a charge at all and I couldn't get it to restore without shutting off so I just made sure the battery was completely dead before bringing it in and they didn't bother to let it sit there for a few hours charging enough to turn it on. Lucky, too, they would have seen Installer.app on the front page. :O

In any case, it sounds like yours is a little more responsive than mine was. I wouldn't assume right off the bat that it's only the battery, and it would suck to pay to get that replaced only for some transitor somewhere to be fried. Can you start it up at all, enough to do a 1.1.4 restore? I don't really know how the fakeblank bootloaders work, so you might need to ask elsewhere for that stuff. On the other hand, they're going to enter your serial number and wonder why you haven't activated with AT&T yet...so you still have to get around that.

Good luck.
 
Yep, mine was fried as well, but it was fully charged when I walked into the Apple Store and the diagnostics also determined that the Software was affected. Being with AT&T was a plus, b/c they quickly determined that I was not handing them an unlocked iPhone. The tech couldn't restore or restart without the screen flickering. :(
 
JBaker122586 said:
I don't know much about re-locking, but I can almost guarantee that they will charge you much more than $80 if they know it's unlocked.
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I can't imagine they bump up the charge on a replacement battery service just because you've unlocked it, they just won't service it under warranty. If they did, that'd be pretty... comical.
 
pna said:
I can't imagine they bump up the charge on a replacement battery service just because you've unlocked it, they just won't service it under warranty. If they did, that'd be pretty... comical.
Click to expand...

They'll charge you other fees normally "covered" by warranty, for diagonistics, repair, etc.
 
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