Hi folks,
Fortunately I've not had much necessity to post here for help. However, that's now change.
I am looking for suggestions on:
1) What might be the cause of an issue with my N4
2) What I might be able to do about it.
Here's the background:
My N4 was working fine. Stock device, 4.4.2, no rooting, etc.
The other day it spontaneously turned off. I was not able to turn it back on. "Google" would appear on the screen, but a few seconds later would vanish and device was off again.
I did figure out I could turn it on (most of the time) when it was plugged into a power source. But detaching from that power source (whilst it was running) would result in it turning off within a couple of seconds at most.
I managed to back up most of my data, whilst having it plugged in and turned on.
A few days later device tells me there's a 4.4.3 update. I update it.
Issue remains.
I then try to initiate a factory reset.
Device reboots during that process. But fails to restart.
I could no longer restart it whether plugged in or not.
It can sit in bootloader mode without being plugged in, for as long as it takes to run the battery down.
It can't be in recovery mode without ext power.
I load the TWRP recovery image. That is on and working fine.
I can access the device with fastboot command (via Windows 7)... which is how I got the TWRP image on there.
In recovery mode the device is not detected by windows, and adp command can't see the device.
This is about where I have come unstuck. I was attempting to install a clean Android 4.4.3 image onto the device. But I can't get ADB access to it. Tried on a Mac and a Windows 7 PC.
UPDATE: I did manage to complete instructions for installing new Android 4.4.3 image over fastboot mode. But even after completing the steps successfully, device won't start. Just "Google" flashes up, and devices stops after few seconds.
HARDWARE FAILURE?: It's possible this whole issue is hardware related and I'll have to ditch the device. If that likely? I've seen some people mentioning similar issues, which they resolved by replacing the USB port board. Is that likely to cause this kind of issue?
Does some kind person have any suggestions on steps I can from here?
I'd really like to recover this beast... it's my first and only smart phone, and would hate to drop to a cheap replacement cell phone for the foreseeable future.
Thank you...
Somehow my title was blank (just a [Q]). Might explain why I got no replies so far :silly:
Updated.
If its happening even after a full reset and flashing of the factory image, that most likely means it is a hardware issue, maybe the battery. You can try changing it yourself or getting someone else to do it. This is what I think the issue is.
lolcakes203 said:
If its happening even after a full reset and flashing of the factory image, that most likely means it is a hardware issue, maybe the battery. You can try changing it yourself or getting someone else to do it. This is what I think the issue is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi there,
Thanks.
Regarding the battery... I had considered that. Although the battery was working fine right up to the time the N4 started having issues. Even during the issues... I could charge and discharge the battery as per normal. I tested this by discharging it by leaving the N4 in bootloader mode, and unplugged. After about 12 hours it would discharge completely. I was then able to charge it up, as per normal.
So that had me thinking it was not likely the battery at fault. What are your thoughts?
Very strange situation here. It seems somehow that booting into android causes some sort of power delivery issue and that results in the phone shutting down. I don't understand how that power delivery issue can exist within the android os but not within the bootloader if it was a hardware issue, especially after flashing the full factory image. I'm not sure, but I would still bet it a hardware issue, although perhaps not the battery.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using XDA Free mobile app
It sounds like the battery to me, running in bootloader mode requires nowhere near the current that the full OS does.
DrFredPhD said:
It sounds like the battery to me, running in bootloader mode requires nowhere near the current that the full OS does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I apologise for taking so long to respond. I don't seem to be getting notifications. Will check into that.
With regard to the battery... When the phone is fully charged (and it was just like normal... prior to me toasting the OS in an attempt to refresh the device, AND it charges normally by plugging it in when turned off or in BL mode), it takes perhaps 12 hours or more to discharge, with the screen on permanently, whilst I leave it in BL mode. So if the battery is the issue, it's certainly got nothing to do with the battery being able to receive and take a charge. That happens absolutely per normal.
What I am wondering, however, if perhaps the USB board could be faulty? I actually replaced the USB board a month or two ago, as the connector on the original one died and Google refused to repair it on warranty because there was a crack on the back glass. The replacement is an LG part. I am wondering if there might be something in that logic of that board that is screwing up... such that when the cable is unplugged the device somehow "thinks" it is plugged in and thus in charge mode, rather than drawing from the battery. I am not sure where the logic for the device to determine whether to draw current from battery or USB resides. But is it feasible that this might be going on?
I'd love to revive this little brick back to smart-phone status.
Related
Ok so I was running paranoid android 3.99 and I've been getting the OTA notices that I need to update. I did that just today, and it downloaded the update and apparently installed it. Then I was stuck in recovery (reboot just kept sending it back to recovery). So I did some googling, decided I should not have tried to OTA and decided I should try to go back to stock and properly flash the rom.
This was my first attempt going back to stock. I downloaded what I thought was the correct nakasi file for my 2012 Nexus 7 (Wifi only, grouper I believe). I got adb and fastboot installed and started sending the prompts. It appears 'fastboot flash bootloader bootloader-grouper-4.23.img" worked properly, but when I tried "fastboot -w update image-nakasi-jwr66v.zip" I got an error and the tablet just kept rebooting into recovery; it would not load past the "Google" screen.
So I put the tablet down (with 98% charge), took my kid to baseball practice and came back an hour later to work on it. The tablet had turned off. Now it appears dead. It does not show a charge symbol when plugged in, and will not power on with "power" or "power and down button." As a result, adb/fastboot does not recognize it.
I thought I had soft bricked it, but now I'm scared I might have hard bricked it. It looks like maybe I installed the wrong nakasi file (the one I installed ended in "v," but the one I just saw from Google ends in "y").
I will try letting it charge overnight and seeing if it will boot in the morning. In the meantime, any ideas, or should I just consider this brick a sign that I should upgrade to the new Nexus (and be more careful)?
Where did you get the stock image? All the official one can be downloaded from here: https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images#nakasi
If you can boot into bootloader, you can flash the proper image with fastboot, of not, then your device is hardbricked.
If you are worried about a flat battery then you can check it with a voltmeter the voltage should be between 3.6 and 3.7 if the tablet won't charge the battery you could manually charge it THIS IS DANGEROUS the n7 regulates the voltage and current to the battery but if you uses 500mA charger and tape the wires onto the battery and only give it about 30 mins you should be ok . Check the temp of the battery as you do this if it starts to get hot unplug wait for it to cool and go again.
Programming is a race between engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Thanks for responding. I charged it overnight, to no avail. I don't think it was hard-bricked, but probably is now that it shutdown and won't recharge or boot.
I unfortunately did not get the file from this site or google, as I should have. I got it from another site I have used before, which was linked to a youtube video on how to return to stock. I thought I followed it exactly, but maybe not.
there is one final thing I'm thinking. when I plug it in to my computer, I am getting the "ding-dong" sound like it's connected. Still, adb/fastboot don't appear to be picking it up. Anything i can do to get it recognized?
It doesn't sound good try plugging it in and holding in the power button for one minute use your watch it can take anything over 30 second's that works on a fully functioning n7 with a completely flat battery to get it to charge not sure if it will work on yours. A bricked device should have the same characteristics as a brick if your computer detects something well a brick can't do that otherwise back to my suggestion of manual charging
Sent from my C5303 using xda app-developers app
You may be in what is called APX mode. Sounds like you might have overwritten the bootloader with the wrong image, which usually means bad news, especially if you can't get into fast-boot mode to write over the image.
Unless it's still under warranty, you can't do much. I had this same problem when I attempted to upgrade to Kit Kat. Not sure what happened, but my tablet was hosed and it only shows up as an APX device. Luckily, it was still under warranty and I was able to RMA it with Asus and they replaced the motherboard free of charge. My purchase date happened to be 11 months prior, so I had about a month left on my warranty. Got lucky.
Try what is suggested in this post: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=30002160&postcount=10
It might help, it might not. Some have reported trying for a few hours eventually helped get it out of APX mode, but I tried it with mine for days, and nothing helped.
Hello guys, this is my first time posting up in XDA and I am encountering a very weird problem with my N4
Disclaimer, the following is a long write but please bear with me and give a read.
Here's my problem after flashing the simple asop 29/5 build for mako. I come from same rom build 21/5 but i did a clean flash for the latest build. As soon as success flashing the latest build with gapps, then as usual will proceed reboot the system. Just right before the boot animation, the phone immediately went dead. I am sure that the phone is still left with 50%+ of battery at the moment.
Anyhow, I decided to plug it into charger. And voila, the phone now able to go through the boot animation and everything just fine. After setting up and restoring backups, I unplugged the charger, its 75%+ on the battery. Within 10-15 seconds, the phone immediately go dead again. I hit the power button and tried to boot up. Again, right after the Google logo screen, the phone went dead.
Commonly this indicate a problem with the battery. Yeah, but I went into recovery twrp and disabled the screen timeout & max the brightness. Guess what, surprisingly it lasted more than an hour which proves that this wasn't battery fault.
What had I tried so far, is just switched off the phone and plugged into charge for 2 hours. And obviously it doesnt solve the problem. I am backing up all the data at the moment and plans to drain the battery all the way down just leaving it screen on at recovery.
Anyone who know what happening with my n4 or encounter similar experience, please feel free to share the solution. Many thanks
Jz Chong said:
Hello guys, this is my first time posting up in XDA and I am encountering a very weird problem with my N4
Disclaimer, the following is a long write but please bear with me and give a read.
Here's my problem after flashing the simple asop 29/5 build for mako. I come from same rom build 21/5 but i did a clean flash for the latest build. As soon as success flashing the latest build with gapps, then as usual will proceed reboot the system. Just right before the boot animation, the phone immediately went dead. I am sure that the phone is still left with 50%+ of battery at the moment.
Anyhow, I decided to plug it into charger. And voila, the phone now able to go through the boot animation and everything just fine. After setting up and restoring backups, I unplugged the charger, its 75%+ on the battery. Within 10-15 seconds, the phone immediately go dead again. I hit the power button and tried to boot up. Again, right after the Google logo screen, the phone went dead.
Commonly this indicate a problem with the battery. Yeah, but I went into recovery twrp and disabled the screen timeout & max the brightness. Guess what, surprisingly it lasted more than an hour which proves that this wasn't battery fault.
What had I tried so far, is just switched off the phone and plugged into charge for 2 hours. And obviously it doesnt solve the problem. I am backing up all the data at the moment and plans to drain the battery all the way down just leaving it screen on at recovery.
Anyone who know what happening with my n4 or encounter similar experience, please feel free to share the solution. Many thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried making a clean wipe and trying either stock or another ROM, to see if it works then?
Your test doesn't prove it's not the battery's fault. Flash back to stock, see if the problem persists and if it does then you know you have a hardware problem. Could be the battery.
DrFredPhD said:
Your test doesn't prove it's not the battery's fault. Flash back to stock, see if the problem persists and if it does then you know you have a hardware problem. Could be the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello, much appreciate your reply. I flashed back to stock 5.1.1 now and yet this problem is still persisting. Thus pretty obvious thats an hardware faulty.
In another forum, a guy with Nexus 7 had similar situation as me, and he suggests that its the battery or the circuit board at the charging port went kaput.
Guess nothing else I could do right now, gonna send in the phone for repair and hope the bill wont cost as much as a used nexus 4
Hello everyone!
My parents contacted me asking for help with some phone issues that I thought would be minor but this is now something I have to submit to you guys because I just don't know how to tackle this issue;
I've got an unmodified, completely stock AT&T Samsung Galaxy S4 that has been owned since launch. My parents were initially complaining about how the phone stopped charging and wouldn't turn on. I thought, "Easy, dead battery, it's been 3 years so how could it not? It might not be delivering enough voltage for the SoC..." but i'm not sure that's the full story which is why I want your guys' opinion since this place is a wealth of knowledge.
Things that are known:
When you charge the phone, the basic "battery charging indicator" that is shown when Android is not booted into or powered on freezes, or sometimes does not detect a battery so does not even turn on. Doing battery pulls seems to change how the phone responds. This is what my parents were experiencing. I thought, either dead battery, dead micro-USB cable, AC adapter, or charging circuit within the phone. Since this was obviously a big job, I took the phone back home for this weekend to play with and now this is what i'm experiencing.
So I got the phone to charge using one of my AC adapters for some reason, despite using the supposed broken charging cable to transfer data successfully without corruption using my own phone (LG G2) to confirm if it was just the cable. So now the SGS4 has a battery that is 100% charged, I turn on the phone and tried various methods to get the phone to boot successfully back into android. The first obvious one was to boot into safe mode using PWR, letting go of PWR, and then pressing VOL UP. It booted ONCE or TWICE successfully into safe mode into android, it shut off after 5 seconds being into the system due to low battery. This was BEFORE I was able to successfully charge the battery to 100% with my AC adapter but has failed to boot since.
Now since I've been failing to get into safe mode as when I boot the phone up, the phone freezes or has graphical glitches at the Samsung post/splash logo as seen here:
After some desperation, I considered using KIES/Odin to reflash, but mostly I tried going into download mode to see if the phone would even go into it by doing PWR + VOL DOWN. It did get into download mode but it froze/restarted forcing a battery pull and ever since then I keep getting occasional error messages such as "System software not authorized by AT&T has been found on your phone.", or this screen with a Samsung logo and an open padlock. I notice sometimes that when I'm at this open padlock screen, it sometimes begins to boot into the system but quickly freezes when it plays the boot jingle:
At any rate, I ordered a new battery but I fear this might be EMMC corruption or just something I don't quite understand. The phone has valuable information that I have to recover despite my parents CANCELLING a backup of the phone, they failed to heed my due diligence and are now freaking out about the data (photos, contacts, etc). I just need the phone to boot so I can make a nandroid backup, export the contacts, transfer media off the phone and wipe this thing and start anew. However i've already let them know that it might not be possible. The most important thing is to get this thing out of this soft-brick?
Please help because I have no idea where to steer this ship from here on out aside from waiting to receive that new battery and hope these instability issues are caused by low voltage. I had an SGS2 which had the crazy EMMC bug so I'm hoping its not EMMC corruption.
Thanks for your time everyone! I'll update this thread to reflect new information as I play around with the phone.
Edit: Here is a video, I go through a lot of the same information posted in this thread but here it is.
https://youtu.be/EXUKU68CyQQ
Possible loose connection inside the phone? Was the phone every bumped, dropped, or exposed to moisture?
audit13 said:
Possible loose connection inside the phone? Was the phone every bumped, dropped, or exposed to moisture?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not that I know of. I'm going to check the water damage stickers if I can to ensure that's not the case but i've been told it was sudden. It had been dropped once before but had been working fine for quite some time up until recently.
Maybe the effects of the drop and manifesting themselves now?
Hi people.
So i'm having a problem with my S7 Edge and i don't think it is common. A few weeks back I was using my phone and it would suddenly turn off and the battery would be drained too. After this first incident with the problem it happened more often, and the phone would start doing boot loops to the point where the phone just froze and turned off. When these problems occured it will usually need to be a problem where I do a safe boot (Volume up, Home button and power key), and everything will be fine (or to charge it if the battery drained), but recently, the phone just didn't work at all, to the point I waited for the battery to drain (10 hours), and try charging it, nothing happens.
So firstly I was watching a video and checking my CPU/Battery tempretures to see if that was the problem (the tempretures at the time were around 31 degrees), and mid way through the video it bugged out through the audio in a high screech and turned itself off.
I tried turning it on again but no response to the screen, i tried safe booting it, or every alternative booting option, it did not work at all.
Here is all the diagnostics and repairs I did, but no luck:
- Tried turning it on
- Different boot options (Volume up/down, Home button & power key)
- Cleaning the port for moisture detection
- Replacing the battery for a new one (Genuine one)
- Doing all of the above, with it on charge
- Connecting to a PC, but no detection
One positive I found was that when i put the phone on a wireless station, it would change colour to show that the phone is charging. I have however took the wireless out of the phone as it was in the way of the battery, and safely in my draw.
Before this final fault happened, I did do a recovery to a previous Android version, just incase if it was a software fault, but it wasn't. The phone is not rooted and I had it since September of 2016.
Is there any alternative options to do? As i'm running out of ideas to do as every solution on the internet is to turn it on, which i can't whatsoever.
The warranty is voided also as there is a crack on the screen lens, and it's way too much to pay for a repair.
I need some explination of why this is happening, so I can go in the right direction and not to waste money if i was going to a repair service, or purchasing the parts for myself.
Any help would be highly appericiated.
Check your installed apps to see if there any viruses on your phone. All you said are signs that your phone might have a virus (check how to remove it here: https://www.unlockunit.com/blog/how-to-tell-if-your-phone-has-a-virus/
However, there is a chance that you do not have any viruses on your phone, but at least you have to isolate this possibility.
Did you recall installing any app prior to this behavior?
This may be the case, however i can't turn on the phone at all. I tried every possible reboot possible, download mode, bios mode, safe boot, reboot, but nothing happens unfortunately. Unless i can do it whilst it is turned off, i can do something. I have a PC if i can do anything else with it.
I don't think I have installed any weird apps on the phone.
sounds like a brick to me. Not a lot I can thing of you can do.
If you place the wireless card back in does it boot?
IT sounds like you've messed with the internals, so possible you damaged something?
I don't particularly think that I broke it from the inside as it was behaving the same before i opened it. And when i used the wireless charging, it will only indicate it was charging or getting detected on that charging pad and not on the phone regarding a red led, or the charging icon
Have you tried holding volume down + home + power for 15 seconds and try turning on the phone again?
As mentioned in the description, I have unfortunately
MOweenSalah said:
As mentioned in the description, I have unfortunately
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you had any luck? Am in the same boat.
Essential PH-1 has continued to be my daily driver for almost 5 years now.
I haven't backed up the data, not even to GDrive. Yes, quite dumb. I finally found time to start to look into backing up recently, with the ADB route.
For the past 2 or 3 years, rebooting was problematic where it'd take 5+ minutes or required pressing the Power button down for a second buzz from off state, releasing it only when the animation with small circles would start. It'd then boot up to completion.
Recently, after fully charging and booting up from off state, it started showing new symptom where it'd be stuck indefinitely the Essential logo splash screen. At that time, I was still able to go into bootloader/recovery menu.
I rebooted and let it continue stuck on the Essential logo, hoping maybe it'd just take longer. After an hour, I forced it to shut down and rebooted again and put it aside to wait for it.
Within less than 2 hours, I noticed the display went blank/black.
After that, regardless of how long I press the Power button, the phone would never wake up anymore.
Plugging in the Essential OEM power adapter also does not even show the LED turning on. Can't tell if the USB port was busted or not but would be surprised if it did as charging and data transfer had always gone through a magnetic plug that's permanently plugged-in to the USB port.
Bootloader was never unlocked and, as such, also never attempted to gain root access to Android.
It was running the official Android 10 ROM from February 2020 (?).
There was no smoke or any unusual smell.
1. Is this a known/previously reported problem? I'd like to read on what others who experienced the same may have tried to resurrect.
2. If, let us say, the problem is actually with the battery, would the phone not show any signs of life when plugged-in to power adapter?
3. What are the chances some other electronics may either have slowly deteriorated or have gotten fried inside that casing?
4. If it's never powering back on, are there instructions on how to de-solder the internal storage component to try to recover the data?
5. What other possibilities can cause an Android device to not even show any signs of life?
6. Any other ideas?
Appreciate help from the community, including any pointers even if referring to a different Android device.