Chosen Solution
My screen goes black after a couple of minutes and only goes ‘normal’ when I plug it in to charge. I can’t use the home or on/ off buttons because they are broken. I use assistive touch to get around the buttons issue normally but of course I can’t see it when the screen is black. I have restored the phone to factory settings through iTunes on my pc. The reset worked fine but black screen persists. How can I repair this?
When you insert the charger, that should prompt the screen to wake up. If the phone has booted and is in normal mode then insert/withdraw the charger and the screen will light up and be normal.
My guess is that your phone is NOT booting normally—-the normal presentation of a phone that is autobooting to DFU mode is that it has a blank image. Does iTunes recognize your phone in recovery mode or normal mode?
One thing you could try is just reseating the battery which is pretty easy to do in an iPhone 4—-unscrew the bottom screws, slide up the back cover, and then unscrew the battery, lift it out and put it back. (Follow a guide on iFixit for pictures)
