When our iPhone does not turn on, it can be for many reasons, and although at that moment our pulse races and our heads hurt, the truth is that in many occasions we can solve it ourselves.
Although it may seem obvious, first of all if your iPhone won’t turn on, make sure to turn it on the right way first. Try to turn it on in a conventional way and checking that there are no charging or hardware problems, and of course that you have a battery in the device.
If this fails, it is when you will need to connect the iPhone to the computer, to try make a backupAs always, this step should be done almost automatically when you have a problem on the iPhone, and we are going to try to solve it.
It’s scary when your iPhone won’t turn on, especially if you’re not a tech guru. It might seem like there are a thousand things wrong, and you don’t even know where to start.
In general, we can reduce the typical or usual problems to three: a software glitch, charging malfunction, or serious hardware issue. Therefore, in this article we are going to try to solve them. Go for it!
How to turn on an iPhone
You need to make sure that you are powering on your iPhone the right way before trying any power solution methods. Not all iPhone models are the same, and sometimes it can be confusing to know how to turn on your model.
Powering methods of different iPhone models
- It has a home and side button: Hold down the side button until you see the Apple logo on the screen.
- It has a home and top button: Hold down the top button until the Apple logo appears on the screen.
- It doesn’t have a home button, but it does have a side button: Hold down the side button for a few seconds and release it when you see the Apple logo.
What to do if your iPhone won’t turn on?
Once you are sure that you can turn on your iPhone correctly, you can try to get to the bottom of the problem:
Check if you can restart the phone
You probably know that your iPhone is on all the time, even when the screen is off, unless you have deliberately turned it off via the app. Setting or with the combination of buttons that is required.
When the screen is black, the phone is on, even if the screen is “blocked up«, and a software glitch in an application could be preventing the phone from «wake up» when you press the power button. So the easiest remedy is to force restart your iPhone and see if it turns on.
The slider “slide to turn off” is displayed at the top. The first thing you should try to do is restart your iPhone, because most of the time, a software glitch is probably preventing the screen from turning on.
If your phone restarts successfully, your problem is probably resolved. This glitch can occasionally occur without suggesting a serious underlying issue, but if your phone crashes frequently, you may have hardware damage, or some application is working incorrectly.
In that case, you may have to reset your phone to its factory settings and then manually reinstall apps from the App Store to see which one is buggy.
As always, you should know what to do factory reset it will erase all your data and settings, so you should back up your iPhone with iCloud or your computer before you reset it. That way you can restore what you need later.
try to charge your phone
If you can’t seem to restart your iPhone, then your phone is probably already turned off and the battery is dead. This is what you should do.
Try charging your phone: plug in your phone however you normally charge it and let it charge for an hour or two.
If the phone still doesn’t do anything, there could be something wrong with the way it’s charging. You should check the phone’s Lightning port to make sure it’s free of lint or dust, and inspect the Lightning cable for kinks, breaks, or frays. If necessary, you should even change the cable.
Charge the iPhone again. Make sure to connect your phone directly to an AC adapter instead of a computer’s USB port, to make sure the USB port is not a problem.
It’s quite possible that your laptop’s Lightning port or USB port has failed, and since it wasn’t charging, you couldn’t turn it on. If so, this should solve your problem.
Fix a hardware problem
If your iPhone doesn’t respond to a hard reset and doesn’t seem to be charging, the number of possible issues has narrowed down, probably indicating a hardware issue. This is not good news, because it suggests that you might have a serious problem. Some of the most likely problems include:
- Water damage: You may have gotten your phone wet and it caused some components to fail.
- Fall damage: If you have dropped your phone, there may be damage to the screen or internal components.
- Manufacturing fault: It doesn’t usually happen, but it can be.
You can check if your phone still has some life:
- First connect your iPhone to a Lightning cable and connect it to a computer.
- Then launch iTunes on the computer.
- Check if iTunes recognizes the phone: You should see the phone icon at the top left of the iTunes window. If so, the phone is on, and you can probably back it up.
If none of this happens, we would be in the worst case, and we would not be able to solve it by ourselves, therefore, in this case, you should contact Apple to repair or replace your phone.
