I Phone 7 Smart Case Charging Problem.

[Ace191]

My wife's I Phone 7 smart case equipped phone would not accept a charge. Case was at zero, phone at 35 %.
I took the phone out of the case and charged it for 10 minutes. I then charged the Case for 20 minutes (amber light comes on). Put it back in and it now works fine. I think the issue is that when the I Phone gets to 35% charge it quits putting out power to other devices via the lighting plug. With a dead battery in the case, the charging electronics did not know what to do. I saw a similar post about this where it was also at zero and 35%.

My wife had a very good experience with her Mophie equipped I phone 6 but has become very upset with the new 7 because of this issue. I think Apple is using a proprietary charging strategy where the case tries to be more efficient than the Mophie by trying to power the phone rather than charge the I Phone's battery when it can,
but I think that the design may have a major glitch in it if you get below the zero/35% threshold.

 

[Ace191]

I think what is going on is when the case is by itself, the default is to charge the case battery. Ditto when you plug the charge cord into the phone by itself. The problem comes when
the phone is in the case. You plug the charger into the phone and the charger electronics detects that the phone battery is critically low and sends full power to that. Then maybe the
phone's operating system detects that the battery is below 35% and shuts off the power to external devices of which the case is one and shuts off the case's charger. So you plug in the phone, the charging signal comes on and two hours later your phone is still not charged. Hopefully, this is a simple software fix.

 

[zstairlessone]

Does the iPhone 7 do this regardless of low power mode?

 

[Ace191]

I don't know. Low power mode was not on when we had the problem. I thought at first the problem was due to bad charging cords, but testing them on the phone and the charger without the phone showed that not to be the case. There also was no problem with wiggling the phone inside the case when it had a reasonable charge on it. Then when I saw another post that this happened to someone else at zero and 35%, I knew it had to be a hardware or more likely a software issue. It's my wife's phone so I do not really want to play with it, but I would almost bet if you encountered the problem and took the phone out of the case and charged either one of them for a bit it would work again.

 

[Caesars]

Hmmm I have a smart battery case and mine has never reacted this way, super strange :-(.

 

[Ace191]

Well if it ever does, just take the battery out of the case and charge them both for a little bit and then put the phone back in the case.

 

[Ace191]

My wife had a similar problem today. Plugged in the charger to the smart case and the little symbol showed that the I phone 7 was charging, but it was not. Case read 97% I Phone 57%. Case charged up to 100 %, but the I phone dropped to 55% with the charge cord plugged into the case. Tried turning the phone off and then on, but it would not charge even though the little icon said that it was. I took it out of the case again and plugged the charge cord into the I phone 7 directly and it quickly went up into the 60's. Put it back in the case and the phone charged up normally. I really think it is the smart case that is defective and not the I phone 7. I will try returning the case to Verizon and see what they say.

 

[brixtonboy]

Sorry to be dumb here, been following this.
Can you tell me what an iPhone 7 smart case is.
I'm just guessing that it's a secondary battery unit, like l have for my iPhone 5s. For emergencies?

A link would be great thanks

 

[Ace191]

It is the Apple version of a mophie for the I Phone 7

https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/21/iphone-7-smart-battery-case-smart-pricey-ugly-bigger-battery-video/

The video seems to suggest that the case runs down first and then the phone battery goes down. A few times now that has not been
what has happened with my wife's phone. It will not charge at all inside the case. It is probably just a defective I 7 smart battery case.

 

[Ace191]

I took the case into Verizon tonight. I asked if they were having any problems with the I Phone 7 Smart cases. The gentleman answered, "only with the charging system." They did not have an I Phone 7 Smart Battery Case so they gave me a new Mophie I phone 7 case. Needless to say, I left a very happy camper. Only issue is that this will force a move to Bluetooth headphones for my wife at the gym.

 

[brixtonboy]

Thanks for the link

 

[Ace191]

You are welcome. The Mophie is thicker and heavier than the smart case but it has magnets for wireless charging inside it. The apple is a more elegant and thin design which accommodates plug in earphones with the apple adapter. Too bad it does not work better.

 

[brixtonboy]

Apple items normally do look better, there is no way that l personally would spend €100 for a battery though.
But then l'm no business man.

 

[Ace191]

Do not think of the Mophie as a 100 dollar battery. Instead, think of it as a 100 dollar insurance policy that protects your phone from damage and keeps it charged. I lost count of the times my wife dropped her I phone. She finally broke the Mophie, then got another one and dropped it a couple more times. I think the change to the Bluetooth head phones is a good idea because several of those phone drops were at the gym on the treadmill were the headphone cord got hit and her phone hit the floor.

 

[brixtonboy]

Actually l was a little confusicatcated because she can use Bluetooth on any iPhone model.
Does it not work when the Smart case is attached?
Also from the video l watched you can remove it very quickly if required.