iPhone 16 Pro Max Stopped Charging | Diagnosing a 3-Stage Board Failure

Case category: Dead / No Power Failure type: Multi-stage charging circuit failure Actual billed price: Standard Recovery ($750) Start your dead iPhone data recovery here: https://www.iboardrepair.com/ Read the full case study here: https://www.iboardrepair.com/post/iph... Are you a tech? Join our Discord:   / discord   This iPhone 16 Pro Max stopped charging and died after getting hot on the charger. At first, that might sound straightforward: bad charging chip, replace it, move on. But this board repair was a good reminder that charging failures can get messy fast. The phone would not charge through the port at all, yet the motherboard would still respond when powered another way. That immediately told me this was not just a normal dead phone. It was a charging problem serious enough to leave the customer with a dead device, but not simple enough to solve with one obvious move. I found the first fault and fixed it. That part was real. The measurements changed exactly how they should have. But the phone still was not right. That is what made this case worth documenting. When that happens, it is very easy to get lost and start second-guessing your microsoldering work. Instead, I just kept following the board step by step. Fix one problem. Re-check. See what changed. Separate the original fault from what is still left. That is how you stay grounded on a complex diagnostic case like this. In the end, this turned out to be a catastrophic multi-stage charging circuit failure, with damage in several parts of the circuit caused by a single bad charging event. The phone charged again, stabilized, and the customer's data was 100% recovered. If your iPhone stopped charging, died suddenly, or another repair shop already gave up, start your mail-in repair at the link above. Chapters: 00:00 Catastrophic charging damage preview 00:20 Intro – 16 Pro Max died after charger got hot 00:46 First bench test – no charging through the port 01:02 DC power supply test at the battery connector 03:02 Explaining the 16 Pro Max charging circuit 09:30 U9500, ROM, and the charging logic path 12:02 Measuring the key charging rails 15:48 Injection testing BATT_VCC vs VDD_MAIN 16:58 Thermal cam points to U4000 19:42 Finding the measurable short 23:19 Harvesting and reballing U4000 26:49 Testing after the first repair 29:01 It still will not charge 31:10 Rethinking the original leak 35:00 Back to the schematics 37:36 The first chip was bad, but not the only problem 48:07 Process of elimination points to U9500 51:59 The enable line is shorted 57:24 Pulling the suspect chip 59:07 U9800 short cleared 59:24 Still flashing the charging icon 59:57 VBUS vs VBUS_RVP 01:02:30 Replacing U9500 and the paired ROM 01:05:23 Final test 01:05:44 Normal charging current returns 01:06:30 100% successful data recovery