iPad Charge Port Repair

Charging problems have become fairly common in these models of the iPad.  The most likely culprit is the charge port flex because of poor design.  Here is a picture of the internals of an iPad 6th Gen.  You can see the charge port located at the top of the image with the four screws holding it in place.

The apple defect is within these screws.  The more the charge port is wiggled, the more the screws back out, which allows for more “play” in the port.  The “play” in the port causes the flex to crack, which breaks some of the lines that lead to the logic board.  Looking at the flex under a microscope, you can see the cracks a little better.

This is just another poor Apple design.  Apple’s solution is to upgrade the device to a new one for $500-$600.  Well, good news is that we can fix this problem by replacing the charge port.

We can diagnose the issue with a $145 tristar tester.

Similar to the car OBD scanners, we can plug this little device into the lightning port of the iPad and tell whether the flex port is broken or not.  If the flex port is not broken, then we can also diagnose whether the charging chip is bad, which is another common problem in these iPads.  You can watch a video of our repair here.