Why is my phone shutting off when I drop it.

Hi Carl,

Reminds me of the old Hee Haw TV show routine:

"Doc, it hurts when I do this."
"Then don't do that."

Yeah, I know, not helpful.

You've got kind of a difficult problem. Ordinarily you'd think it's simply a matter of something being loose inside the phone and that opening up the phone and tightening or reconnecting something would fix it.

Unfortunately, iPhone connections inside the phone are all locked down with metal plates and screws, so the chances of a connector being "knocked loose" are virtually nil. That leaves the possibility that a cable leading to one of those locked down connectors may have gotten nicked or suffered one too many bends in its lifetime and could possibly explain your problem.

You might check your phone for something called a panic log; that occurs when the phone encounters an uncorrectable error and reboots the phone in an attempt to recover. @flannelist has an excellent Wiki article showing you how to access and interpret them.

iPhone Kernel Panics - iFixit

It's by no means certain you'll find any panic logs, but if you do they may provide a clue as to where the problem is coming from. Come back and edit your question to add the first page or so of any panic logs you find and we'll see if we can figure out what they're trying to tell us.

Other than that, about all you can do is open up the phone and check the cables and connectors inside. I'd probably start with the battery connector first, as that would be the most likely reason for an instantaneous, complete shutdown. You could always try replacing the battery as long as you've got the phone open and see if that cures the problem. Be sure and hang onto the old battery in case you want to get rid of the non-genuine part warning that will most likely pop up when you replace the battery - well, unless you pay Apple to do the replacement, that is.

Best of luck with your phone; let us know what you find!