Odd iPhone Charging Behavior — Resolved | by Teri Radichel | Cloud Security | Dec, 2022

Charging randomly turns on and off when charging two phones — is it AT&T? the Apple iPhone? Or the charging cable I bought at Kroger?

I recently had this odd behavior while trying to charge my iPhones on a trip. I have two because as I’ve written about before I use them for different purposes.

Prior to the trip, I was charging one or the other at night but not both at the same time by my bed or I had one upstairs and one downstairs because I was too lazy to bring a second cable upstairs in our 100+ year old house. I never had a problem charging my phones in my bedroom. I had issues with wireless chargers and I may have had issues in my office but I probably wasn’t paying that much attention since I was focused on other things.

We went on a trip and I was trying to charge both phones at the same time each night. I grabbed a charging block and a couple of cables from somewhere in the house. I have a few in my office of different lengths.

After a couple of days on the trip, I noticed that my phones were not charging properly. I thought maybe the connection on the phone was loose so I wiggled it around and the connection would go in and out. Somehow I determined that one of the cables seemed to be bad so I tossed it and purchased a new one — straight from the Apple store so there would be no compatibility issues.

Tangent: Why is there no Apple store in Savannah?

My phones both charged and all was hunky dory — until I got home. I finally brought a second cable up to my bedroom. I was using the new iPhone cable and the other one that I didn’t take on the trip that was still in my bedroom. The odd charging behavior started up again. It was driving me a bit crazy because it didn’t make sense.

Chargers, software, networks, cables, clouds, and phones — what is it??

First, it almost seemed like the charging problems on both phones was in sync. It wasn’t exactly consistent but it seemed like both phones would start and stop charging at the same time.

At one point I thought maybe it had something to do with the wireless charging component getting confused when I moved both phones close to each other. But that wasn’t consistent.

Then I had an issue where I could get the phones to charge but when I set one of them down it consistently stopped charging when it touched the top of the nightstand.

Some websites suggest the charging port may be dirty but I hadn’t had the phones anywhere they could really get dirty. Additionally, that wasn’t logical because how would both phones suddenly have this problem at the same time?

I checked all my iCloud settings to make sure it was not enabled anywhere. I don’t use iCloud nor do I like how it syncs multiple devices. Not only that, these devices don’t use the same Apple account, so they shouldn’t be syncing.

I usually have bluetooth turned off when not in use and one phone basically never has that turned on.

I don’t use wifi on my phones unless required.

I even tried turning off cellular.

Now I have absolutely no network connection. It’s still happening. At least that seems to rule out some sort of issue with malware interrupting my charging — maybe. If there was some sort of malware on my phone it might still try to perform a network connection when it can’t reach the network.

The problem has to be with the phone, the cable or my charging device. At this point, I was using a different device plugged into the wall than the one I used on my trip. That must not be the problem.

That leaves the cables. But I’m using a different cable than I used on the trip and the new Apple iPhone cable that I bought to resolve the the problem on the trip so it can’t be the cables right?

I’m thinking “Oh no! I just got these phones! Is there something wrong with both of them?”

I had noticed there was an update for iOS and one phone had the update and the other did not. Well, I don’t think it’s a bug in the latest version. It could be an existing bug but why would it just start popping up now?

Dreading a call to AT&T or a trip to the AT&T store

Let me explain why at this point I’m feeling a massive sense of dread overtake my being.

Before I get started, I want to mention that I know people who work for AT&T that I believe are very smart and probably don’t have control over the process I am about to describe — and perhaps this is all now resolved since I reported it through various means to the company. But I don’t want to go through it again to find out.

At this point of troubleshooting my phone charging problems I was thinking — “Please don’t make me call AT&T. Please don’t make me hand my phone over to an AT&T person because will I ever get it back? And how will I know what happened to it while not in my possession?”

I had a huge problems getting my phones. Their supply chain seems to have issues. Or at least it did for me. But only for a phone shipped through Tennessee. Alternate locations were fine. And perhaps it was all a random pile of bad luck.

I ordered three phones (not all for me). One of the phones was lost for over two weeks, stuck en route in Tennessee while the others came in about one day through alternate locations. I waited and waited and finally called AT&T. The person said she had to cancel the order and ship a new phone. I was concerned that would cause me to lose the promotion I signed up for — but she reassured me it would not.

Well, it did.

I had to spend days of my life arguing with AT&T to get the deal I signed up for. The new transaction occurred outside the window of the promotion — presumably so that person could get credit for the sale. I dealt with some very unhelpful and downright rude phone reps who told me too bad I was going to have to spend way more than the deal that prompted me to try out AT&T again after many years.

However, a nice person in the store told me a trick to get around the first level people on the phone who were rude or simply unable to help me. I had to use that trick a couple of times during this process. The people on the workaround line were very helpful and professional. They reassured me I would get the promotion it would just take some time.

Once I reported the phone lost, the new phone I ordered showed up in one day like the others. But oddly, the very next day the missing phone showed up that had been missing for over two weeks, maybe three at that point. The box for the missing phone looked as if it had been opened. It also seemed like the second phone had parts of the packing materials missing that existed in the phone from the new order.

As a security professional, I had concerns about the opened box. Had someone tampered with the missing phone? Is that why it was so delayed and it looked like the box had been opened?? Perhaps it was simply problems with shipping transfer point in Tennessee. The other phones that came on time took an alternate path.

I kept the phone from the new order and shipped back the badly packaged, opened phone.

Next, I had to argue with AT&T to get the promotion pricing and rebates I was supposed to get. I’m actually still not sure I ever did because I had to spend so much time confirming I was going to get them I never went back and verified that the bills were ultimately correct. The people available via the secret bypass line were kind and reassured me I would get them. However, I still did not get them within the promised timeframe, even if they were ultimately correct.

My bill did go down. I’m not sure if we got all our rebates for the phones we shipped back. Who has time for this?

I have experience in this area. One of my first professional jobs included the task of finding all the problems with phone bills for and oil company. I saved them $21,000 in one year. AT&T was double billing for a T1 line, for one thing! I think I saved the company more than they paid me as I was fresh out of college. I’m more familiar with phone bills and their issues than I would like to be. But I digress.

While waiting for my bill corrections and rebates for phones and such, AT&T was over-billing me to the tune of something like $300 per month because they didn’t give me the promotion until they got the phones we traded in. Then, I got partial credit but the duplicate phone sent to me that I returned held up the promotion associated with that line even longer.

At this point, I felt like I should have just thrown that lost phone in the trash so I could get my promotion sooner, since I had already told them it was missing. But alas, I am honest person, and that honesty cost me money out of my bank account for months waiting for them to “verify” my returns which resulted from their delayed shipment in the first place.

Apparently that is standard policy — they over-bill you for about three months (or longer if they fail to ship you a phone and then ship two so you have to return one and it takes even longer to validate your order) and then you get a credit on some future date.

So for the amount of customers AT&T has they are making a sizable amount of interest on that money, I presume, while you are losing it. I can only recommend and will only ever buy a phone from them in a store from now on — if I ever do.

Initially the issues I had with the AT&T wireless service made me feel like maybe I’ll just go back to Verizon as soon as I can, even though I’ve read reports that AT&T is supposed to have the best coverage in Savannah. And supposedly their 5G is fastest, but T-Mobile’s 5G has broader coverage. Verizon is trailing in third in Savannah at the moment.

Sorry, T-Mobile, as a cybersecurity professional, the barrage of data breaches concerns me. Also, while driving across country, my husband couldn’t get service in places I could with Verizon. I want my phone to work everywhere and I store things on it that are somewhat critical in nature.

I’ve had AT&T in the past and had issues with their wireless laptop cards when in motion (like on a train) back in the day, which is why I switched to Verizon. But I never had issues with the AT&T phone service back then and presumed the data issues would be better by now. I guess not in all cases. I had both calling and hotspot issues initially when I signed up.

When I got the AT&T iPhone, the phone service was spotty. It could have been an issue with Apple and the iPhone. But that doesn’t make sense because I never had that issue on Verizon. Would a newer model of iPhone actually change that much? I never had an issue where a client could not hear me on a call when I had Verizon— and consulting calls is part of how I earn my living. So that is not acceptable.

I did have issues with Verizon here in Savannah that I never had in Seattle, though. The service was simply out. Period. It was completely not working. That is really not cool when I need to have a consulting call. I have had to think about redundancy a lot more since I moved here from Seattle — including wifi, thanks to flaky Comcast service in Savannah and potential hurricanes.

Initially I also had issues with the AT&T phone’s cellular data connection. Sometimes the Internet connection for phone apps would just stop working but only on one phone not the other. An AT&T support person had me reset my network connection on the iPhone. That seemed to work but what I didn’t realize is that when I did that it turned on my Wi-Fi which I normally turn off. I didn’t have any credentials in my Wi-Fi settings.

Well, resetting the phone solved the issue with the app data connections momentarily. But eventually the problem would return. It took me while to figure that having the WiFi on but not connected was causing the problem. When you reset your network connections on an iPhone wifi automatically gets enabled. When I turned off wi-fi the problem stopped. Hours on the phone AT&T and on hold did not help. I figured that out myself.

Side note — The phone call issues occurred in the same location of my house where the hotspot didn’t work. And that location happens to be exactly where my desk is in a 3,000-ish square foot house. Really?! I had to move out of my office to make a consulting call. And the hotspot — never mind. I just went and did something else for a while and after coming back often found that Comcast was working again.

I’m not sure if the issues are completely resolved but haven’t noticed them in a while. (Knock on wood.) I was able to use the hotspot on my trip. I haven’t tried it recently in my home.

I ultimately got 5G hotspot service from a separate company because I need to make sure I can get on the Internet when I need to do so, since I’m having random Comcast issues as well. So now I have three ways to get on the Internet. In a pinch, I can make phone calls using WiFi if needed. I presume I can connect my AT&T phone to a wifi hotspot of another cellular provider and make a call — but I haven’t tested that yet.

Considering the phone as the source of my charging problems

I spent days of my life when I switched to AT&T on the phone with them. Now perhaps you can imagine my trepidation over calling them or handing my phone to someone who takes it off into some back room.

Remember — there is no Apple store in Savannah — not that I want to give them my phone either.

I thought, maybe I’ll just upgrade my phones to a newer version in the store to avoid all of this. Then I started thinking how ridiculous it would be for these two phones to fail at the exact same time.

Is it really the phones? This doesn’t make any sense. Why would they both start having this issue at once?

It could be the charger plugged into the wall but I was using a different charger on my trip. Did I throw away a perfectly good charging cable?

Back to the charging cables

So I start to ponder the charging cables and perhaps it is the watch or some other weird thing. So I start to swap out the cables in my charging device, which has multiple USB ports.

I plug in one at a time to verify which one or ones work. As it turns out, when I plug in only one cable, everything is fine — the Apple iPhone cable. Then I plug in the watch only. That’s fine. Then I test the third charging cable.

Aha.

I try both phones (independently) on the bad cable alone plugged in only and they don’t work. I try both phones on the Apple cable and they do work. I plug in the bad cable and the Apple cable at the same time. Wonkiness reappears. I plug in the Apple phone cable with the Apple watch cable. No problem.

I spend a bit more time reconfirming all of this to make sure I am not just getting lucky. I also go downstairs and get yet another phone charging cable and try it with the Apple charging cable and that works too.

Bad charging cables from Kroger??

I am not positive but I think I got the two bad charging cables from the local Kroger store. They were handy and I just grabbed one on the way out on two separate occasions. It is possible that those were not the two cables causing the problem but pretty sure I had one charged in downstairs and one upstairs and never had a problem with any of the other cables I’ve had for a long time. So I’m guessing those two I just bought in the past few months might have been faulty — or something.

I don’t have time to troubleshoot it further than that at the moment to see if something else is going on, but this whole issue did cause me to revisit this article about fake lightning cables containing malware.

I don’t really know what is wrong with the cable and how plugging it in could cause all the other cables I’m using to stop working in my charger. I don’t know how plugging in one bad cable can cause charging to start and stop simultaneously in both phones (but also not with 100% consistency — sometimes one was charging and one stopped, and sometimes in that state they both flipped to alternate states.) I am not a boxes and wires gal so I’ll let someone else noodle over that.

And I don’t really care because I don’t have time to care. Life is too short and I have too many other things to do. Just glad it’s working now.

But perhaps someone should be looking into that. Like perhaps the people who source cables for Kroger if that was the source of these cables. Or anyone who is sourcing such cables for resale through other stores where you can get these types of cables. Either they are faulty — or worse. Do you know if the cell phone cables you sell are from a trustworthy source?

Just for sanity I plugged in the cables again right now and everything seems to be charging normally still. Time will tell if that continues to be the case.

Teri Radichel

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