Oops.

The unveiling of Apple’s latest iPhone models last month was met with great anticipation and excitement. But when people started receiving their new phones last week, it became clear that there was a bit of an issue: the phone didn’t always charge.

Teething problems

As demonstrated by a video on the Unbox Therapy channel, some iPhones won’t charge if the cable is inserted when the screen is off. It’s important to note that the issue doesn’t seem to happen on every new iPhone XS. However, it’s clearly a widespread problem, if the reports on the Apple forums are anything to go by. There also appears to be another less widespread issue where the phone will freeze if the screen is off and a power cable is inserted. From the limited testing done in the video, it seems that the XS Max model is also much more prone to these issues (although this may not be representative of all phones).

Root cause

At this time, nobody knows exactly why this is happening. Apple has been characteristically silent on the matter. One user describes talking to an Applecare supervisor, who said that Apple was looking into the issue. Hopefully, Apple will be able to resolve the issue with a software update (many people speculate that this issue is caused by the recently-released iOS 12). A hardware issue would be much more difficult to fix, and would probably prove to be an unmitigated PR disaster for Apple. Apple’s lack of comment on the matter has already drawn much criticism, with some users dubbing the whole fiasco “#chargegate”. It seems incredible that a premium manufacturer like Apple could overlook such a critical issue. This latest controversy comes amidst other accusations surrounding Apple’s alleged use of code from Qualcomm chips. Suffice to say — it hasn’t been a fantastic year for Apple.