IPhone – Does the oleophobic effect of the iPhone screen wear off over time

This answer is somewhat outdated as Apple has added very robust and intelligent overcharging, over rate charging, temperature controls and adaptive charging to extend the life and avoid many of the situations where 2010 to 2015 era battery and charge system tech could result in less service length than ideal.

Even for 2010 era, what is described is still certainly safe - just turn it off and enjoy your trip. Newer gear makes this even more safe to do. You really have to go out of your way to exhaust batteries - and only random failures result in swaps in my experience now.

iPhone and all other Apple Products shipping in the last 5+ years (excepting the Apple Battery Charger which are NiMH AA cells) have lithium polymer (lipo) batteries. The MacBook Pro and Air batteries are a bit more sophisticated than the iPhone/iPod/iPad batteries but the underlying chemistry is the same.

It is safe to store them for months and it's best to charge them 50% and turn off the device for long term storage. All lipo batteries work best when they get a normal serive charge and discharge cycle once a month, but slowly draining from 50% to 0% over 6 to 12 months and then getting charged back to 50% is quite safe for several years of storage.

I wouldn't worry about leaving it off even 5 months if you starting over 50% but less than 70% charge in a not-hot location.

• The worst thing for a battery is to use or charge it above 95 degrees F.
• The next worst is deep, deep discharge (well past when the device shuts off) - make sure you charge up the battery past half before long periods of storage.
• Repeated long storage while full. (don't make a habit of leaving it 100% full and off for months at a time)

I still have my original iPhone going strong (for occasional testing) by waking it up every 6 months at a minimum. If I leave it around 2/3 full and wake it six months later - it's usually got more than 1/4 battery left. I then use it for a few days charging and discharging fully before shutting it off again.

It certainly sounds like the headphones are causing this. It's likely that moisture is eventually getting into the in-line switch/microphone module which is bridging the switch terminals and sending spurious signals to the phone.

However, I'd try the following:

• Check for liquid damage inside the headphone socket: Hold your phone up to the light so that you can see down inside of the headphone port. There's a small indicator at the bottom of the port which will have turned a red/pink colour if liquid has come into contact with it. If positive, this could indicate that the phone's headphone socket may (also) be at fault.

• Obtain another pair of the same Apple headphones and see if the issue occurs again.