Chosen Solution
In short: I had a particular set of problems that were caused by a swollen battery pressing on something inside my Iphone. I ended up getting the battery replaced and it seemed to work just fine for a few days but then the problems came back, with some additional wrinkles, and now it’s effectively useless again. The original symptoms were as follows:The screen would go dark, although I was able to shut down the iphone (which involved swiping blindly where I knew the iphone expected me to, so the touchscreen worked, it just didn’t display anything). Sometimes it would not be detected when I plugged it into my computer, but sometimes it would.The symptoms after I got my phone back are all of the above, except I also got some weird horizontal white lines sometimes, and some other signs of something being wrong with the digitizer or the cable associated with it.Now it’s back to a completely ‘dead’ state where the phone appears to be functioning aside from not being detected when I plug it into my computer and the screen remains dark.The person who replaced the battery for me thinks it’s just a loose cable, but I’m not sure why that would affect being detected by a computer.Any ideas? I figured I’d ask so when I see him next we have a better idea of what to do. Also, it may be my imagination but it feels like the vibration when I plug the phone in is a bit more… “choppy”.. if that makes sense. Like it’s shuddering rather than vibrating.
You need to replace the screen first. As for it not being recognised by the computer could be caused by the USB restriction. You will need to enter the passcode if you have one before it will be recognised.
