Nexus 4 stock ROM died.No red led.new battery.gets hot.Still dead.thoughts? - Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Sorry if this is in the wrong place,
XDA has helped me out many times in the past, I've searched but found no concrete answers with this though:
I'm a truck driver and often charge my N4 on the go, probably doesn't help the battery, which for the last few months has begun to discharge in around 6 hours. I nearly bought a new battery but put it off then the phone died.
I plugged it into a in car (truck) charger on the 12v socket whilst at 5% and the charger started smoking. Pulled it out and found the phone was off and unresponsive (no surprise) with no red LEDs or otherwise.
Each time I did the following i also tried the volume down and power key or volume up and power key combinations with and without the charging cable plugged in and whilst holding down the buttons as well:
I plugged it in at home from a mains charger, nothing,overnight,nothing.
Also tried from the computer USB port,still nothing.
Bought a new battery, no change.
Bought a wireless charger in case the USB port fried: seemed to get warm but that could be the charger induction coils. Still no power on.
"Charged" the new battery externally with a spliced USB cable, nothing
"Charged" the new battery externally with a power supply at 0.5 ah and battery voltage went from 3.45 to 3.70 still no power on.
Repeated the above at 2.0 ah and put the battery voltage up to a maximum 4.5v for 10 mins - this time the backlight came on and would stay on until long press of the power button.
Then the phone got REALLY hot. I mean to the point of "something feels like its about to thermal runaway" hot. Pulled the battery and eventually it cooled down. If I plug the battery in now it gets hot on the WiFi/Bluetooth module first then spreads out over the board. As the power management chip is on the other side of the board to the WiFi module my question is: has this phone gone to hell? Is the chip overheating because its now fried or because its not getting the right power? Am I completely stupid and should get a phone that I can look after (Nokia 3210 anyone?!)
I had a N4 before this that packed up on me and I think the PMIC may have been the problem as well,only ever seen one post about it though that went unanswered.
Thanks for any suggestions, not trying to waste anyone's time or space.
Peace

UPDATE:
I'm also trying to resurrect an older N4 that had RLOD but when I tried to replace the battery I prised the battery connector off the pcb...ye. Should stick to not touching anything and not moving from one place. I soldered a pair of leads on to the contacts this evening to see if I get anything from it and I got a solid red led so thought I'd hook up more jumpers to the battery and go from there, in so doing I ripped the track off the pcb...no pad left to solder too and I cant find where the track runs to patch into it anywhere else. So I took the pcb off the phone I first posted to see what's underneath, and look what I found:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
And also:
Judging by how much black blood these chips have bled and the exit wound on the PMIC I think its fair to say I have two useless unrecoverable phones, no hope of data recovery via JTAG and no working phone either. Hope this helps someone looking to see why their phone gets so hot and won't turn on!

Related

Car charger Modding

I noticed a few complaints on this forum and others about Goggle Navigation being too much of a drain on the handset even with it plugged into a car charger.
My suspicion is that this is down to badly made car chargers, and on a previous occasion using the Testing menu, I noticed that my own charger was being reported by the phone as USB.
So I set about trying to rectify this, using my awesome rolleyes knowledge of how the phone recognises what it's being charged with and an 'I don't care if I kill the charger, it was free' attitude.
I took it apart and tested continuity between the 2 middle (data) pins on the USB plug, there was none, and the problem was identified. I simply flipped the board over and soldered these 2 pins together and reassembled the charger.
Took it out to the car, plugged it in and lo and behold, the Testing menu now reports that it is plugged into an AC source! As my phone is fully charged and I don't have any trips planned right now I don't know how much real world difference there is, but it's looking promising, at least the phone now knows it can draw 1000mA instead of 500mA, and for 5 minutes 'work' it was worth doing.
I didn't bother with a how-to as I figured chances of someone having the same charger as me were slim, but pics aren't a problem:
Here is my universal USB charger with the cover removed:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
and the reverse side with the 2 pins soldered together:
Probably doesn't tell you a huge amount unfortunately, but to be honest that's because it really is a simple procedure with not much to tell.
where did you get your universal charger? I'm wanting to chop one up and hide the nexus dock on the side of my GTI instead of blocking my 6" double din monitor..
Almost like you can do your radar detector..
-Chalrie
It was an Xmas present, part of a universal kit. It's made by Mountech if it helps though.
thanks I'll look it up, hopefully most universal ones are designed the same usb wise then I could dremel my dash and have a easy access usb port for nav.
Fail!
Despite the mod, it's still not enough to charge/sustain the N1 with Google Navigation running (screen on full brightness). Guess it's just not man enough to produce the required 1A.
I have a USB port installed in my car as per the headunit
at full brightness and while using google navigation AND streaming Slacker via bluetooth... I do not have a -% charge
in fact, the N1 stays fully charged at all times... (however if I have less than 100%, it does take a long time for the % to go up... might take 5 minutes for 1% increase)
sooo I'm not sure what the problem is with the car chargers (as I don't use one)
I have a USB headunit and never thought to try and charge from it! D'oh!

[Q] Battery meter issue since 4.2.2 (stock, no root)

My N7 has turned off twice (seemingly at random, without any warning) since the last update, each time when there was about 20-30% battery remaining according to the device settings. It had never done this before. each time I tried to turn it back on and was unable to, saw a message about battery being too low to turn on and connect to charger. So when it most recently happened last night, I left it plugged in all night (7 hours) on the included charger and when I woke and turned it on it still only showed about 65% charged. Did a master reset, took the device to work, connected it there to a different micro USB charger (HTC branded) and got it up to 100%. now is been nearly four hours later, only light use in that time, but the battery remains at 100%, says "Charged" in the notification tray, in "Not charging" in the battery settings. So I guess my question is (and I have looked around and didnt see an answer) can I fix this without rooting?
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Rooting won't enable you to do anything special to fix this. If you've already tried a factory reset with no joy (or even if you haven't yet), remove the back cover and verify the battery connector is firmly seated- even go so far as to unplug and replug it.
Also, you may want to do a quick search of the forum, as this isn't an uncommon problem.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD
najaboy said:
If you've already tried a factory reset with no joy (or even if you haven't yet), remove the back cover and verify the battery connector is firmly seated- even go so far as to unplug and replug it.
Also, you may want to do a quick search of the forum, as this isn't an uncommon problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did do the factory reset as soon as I realized the problem and nothing has changed since then. It's now been on battery for over 21 hours and says it's at 70% which can't possibly be correct. What exactly does the battery connector have to do with the meter being inaccurate?
xmasguy said:
I did do the factory reset as soon as I realized the problem and nothing has changed since then. It's now been on battery for over 21 hours and says it's at 70% which can't possibly be correct. What exactly does the battery connector have to do with the meter being inaccurate?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Charge level is reported by the battery's fuel gauge. A poorly seated connector is a very common cause of this issue.
najaboy said:
Charge level is reported by the battery's fuel gauge. A poorly seated connector is a very common cause of this issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, i just opened her up (while device was powered off), unplugged the battery connector, reconnected it firmly, and powered back up. nothing has changed as far as I can tell, so what do I do now?
xmasguy said:
well, i just opened her up (while device was powered off), unplugged the battery connector, reconnected it firmly, and powered back up. nothing has changed as far as I can tell, so what do I do now?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then I guess you need to RMA it.

Broken - help please...

I have a relatively new (refurbished) nexus 7 (2012) that got a sudden fault of not turning on at all.
When plugged in I get the normal charging icons (central screen) as when the tablet is off.
Unplugged it does nothing with any button press: power, power + all combination of volume buttons.
Pledged in it does something only with power button - backlight turns on with dark background and flickering stripes of static.
Plugging into pc shows nothing.
It's been sent if for repair and they said the battery was ploughed in backwards! And they've swapped it around.
I don't get how it worked for a month if it was the wrong way around in the first place.
Sent back to me this week with no change!!
Suggestions of ways to resolve it my self?
Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk
targett said:
I have a relatively new (refurbished) nexus 7 (2012) that got a sudden fault of not turning on at all.
When plugged in I get the normal charging icons (central screen) as when the tablet is off.
Unplugged it does nothing with any button press: power, power + all combination of volume buttons.
Pledged in it does something only with power button - backlight turns on with dark background and flickering stripes of static.
Plugging into pc shows nothing.
It's been sent if for repair and they said the battery was ploughed in backwards! And they've swapped it around.
I don't get how it worked for a month if it was the wrong way around in the first place.
Sent back to me this week with no change!!
Suggestions of ways to resolve it my self?
Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can open the back plate of the Nexus 7 yourself. It comes off fairly easily. You can then see if the charging port is clear of debris, if it might be slightly bent out of shape, or if somehow the battery is connected backwards... LOL. That seems highly unlikely to me.
What you are describing sounds more like sleep of death, or what happens when you drain the n7 battery completely. Something is wonky with the firmware and it "forgets" how to charge when the battery is too low. Doing this off the top of my head but I think what you are supposed to do is;
1 - plug in charger, which starts the charging animation.
2 - hold power+volume up+volume down to boot into the bootloader
3 - using the volume buttons to scroll, select reboot (or recovery)
4 - quickly unplug then plug back in the charging cable. Timing is key.
There is a thread in the Q&A forums with other methods if I didn't write that down right, or it if doesn't work.
Problem solved!
I popped open the back cover to find the connection from the battery to the main board nut fitting tightly all the way in (only by about 5mm). Pushed it in and secured it.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Now it's working perfectly! [emoji106][emoji41]
Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

[Q] Broken microUSB port, not charging or data working.

Hi,
I don't know if I'm posting in the right section, but here is the thing. I've got GeeksPhone Keon Developer Preview, It's a Firefox OS phone, but I've flashed an Android version on it. Everything worked great for about 6 months, and then the phone stopped charging, and it was also not detected by PC. When I plug it to a PC the phone does not detect it's plugged in also the PC does not detect the phone. I tried other microUSB cables and it's the same. I also tried flashing the Android again as I thought maybe it's software related but the problem still exists. Hopefully I installed recovery on it. I currently charge the battery externally, everything else works as expected.
Yesterday I decided to mess with the phone, as I don't have the warranty. I opened it up and checked if the phone actually has power when plugged to the charger. I noticed that the battery is powered so It is charging but the Android OS does not detect that, and decreases the battery via software. I think that the D+ or D- pins are broken, and I'm not sure if they are used for the phone to know if it's charging.
Here is the picture of the circuit board and my findings. Camera is not great so the picture is not that great also.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
0. Is the microUSB port, and I guess there is a problem with it, maybe D+ or D- pins got broken.
1. Those are D+ and D- resistors they are good I've tested them.
2. Those are battery pins. When I probed them when micro USB is plugged in they have power.
3. It's some kind of a IC for power, I think it's used to switch power to the battery from microUSB.
I don't have that good soldering skills so I couldn't resolder the microUSB port, so I'm asking if someone knows another approach to enable the charging via software, as software does not detect that battery is charging, when actually power from microUSB comes to the battery, and because of that it decreases the battery status on Android.
So I'm thinking if I can execute some command so I can trick the phone to believe it's charging, so the battery will charge and when I plug it out I execute the second command to turn off fake charging?
Thanks in advance!
Funny that you have this problem, I just fixed mine today that had the same problem. Basically the micro usb port stopped working because the parts soldered on the motherboard were loose after too much wiggling (cheap mtk phone I guess). I tried resoldering but its just too small, I could not event test the connexions with a multimeter. So I went to one of the million of asian cell phone shops in indonesia where I'm actually travelling and paid 5$ for a guy to fix it. They do it all the time and have expert fingers. Not my phone plugs perfectly, try to find one near your place, wherever that is
Sent from my P5 using XDA Free mobile app
vita94 said:
Yesterday I decided to mess with the phone, as I don't have the warranty. I opened it up and checked if the phone actually has power when plugged to the charger. I noticed that the battery is powered so It is charging but the Android OS does not detect that, and decreases the battery via software. I think that the D+ or D- pins are broken, and I'm not sure if they are used for the phone to know if it's charging.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What happens if you put a charge over those connections? It won't accept any? Or does it charge but the software isn't detecting it? Another way of fixing it would be making a separate charger for your battery only, of course that would mean that your phone is useless while charging. I'm pretty sure if you force a charge over it it will absorb it, but I wouldn't exactly know how you could check the battery status so that you don't overcharge it this way.

Nexus 4 Not powering on at all. Battery dead or phone dead?

Hello. Recently I decided to pick up my old Nexus 4 again and try seeing what happened to it.
I was using my Nexus 4 one day and dropped it from my bed, about a foot or so, and it just cut out.
I opened it up to find out that the battery cable had snapped because I had done an earlier battery repair, and forgot that I should have let the cable slack a little bit.
A few months later I get a replacement battery, and tried booting on the phone. It would get to the lock screen and say the phone is critically low, and shut off.
TWRP said the battery was at 80% charge, but the UI was flickering a bit. I asked the XDA Discord and was told it was a storage failure.
A few more months pass by to now, and I decide to try and revive my N4. I want to see if maybe the battery was seated wrong, it could've been.
I reseated the battery and tried plugging in the phone. Now, I get a solid red light, that changes to flashing, and then nothing. or a flashing light that stays flashing.
I have not gotten past this. Is the battery toast, or is the phone toast? Can I test the phone without buying another replacement battery? Thanks.
- Honkette
You can try getting a V+ measurement from the battery to get an idea of it's condition.
If it won't charge it's cable or connectors may be damaged.
Even if the battery failed it should take some charge. Obviously it's producing some voltage but maybe not enough to boot.
If the battery seems to take a charge allow it the charge overnight and see what it's voltage level is. If it still won't boot it's either the battery or hardware damage, but doing this would give you more information to make a call.
blackhawk said:
You can try getting a V+ measurement from the battery to get an idea of it's condition.
If it won't charge it's cable or connectors may be damaged.
Even if the battery failed it should take some charge. Obviously it's producing some voltage but maybe not enough to boot.
If the battery seems to take a charge allow it the charge overnight and see what it's voltage level is. If it still won't boot it's either the battery or hardware damage, but doing this would give you more information to make a call.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've left it on the charger multiple times, and the phone seemingly doesn't do anything. never gets warm. I tighened down the connector screws and am using a cable I know works. I'll try to get a measurement from the battery.
Honkette1738 said:
I've left it on the charger multiple times, and the phone seemingly doesn't do anything. never gets warm. I tighened down the connector screws and am using a cable I know works. I'll try to get a measurement from the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check the other ribbon cables, port jack/pcb, mobo etc. carefully for damage or looseness.
UPDATE:
I was able to get the phone booting, but now when i try and start android it immediately says "Power Off" "Shutting Down"
now what? bad battery? it's plugged in, it shouldn't do that.
Honkette1738 said:
UPDATE:
I was able to get the phone booting, but now when i try and start android it immediately says "Power Off" "Shutting Down"
now what? bad battery? it's plugged in, it shouldn't do that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May be the battery as it may draw quit a bit of current when booting.
More than the charger may be able to sink.
blackhawk said:
May be the battery as it may draw quit a bit of current when booting.
More than the charger may be able to sink.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Should i let it charge overnight and try again?
Honkette1738 said:
Should i let it charge overnight and try again?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cable>charger>port>battery
Yeah try that. Eliminate the cheap possibilities first. Seems like a battery or power issue.
well that might explain it
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Yay!
Phones working, forgot to say this on Monday. Although the battery percentage is fluctuating after charging overnight under LOS 15 and 17, no clue why.
New battery's dead. I'll try and get another.
I know this thread's old, but i'll just update my results with this:
She's cooked.
I got the new battery, worked fine for a bit, but the battery percentage was completely jank and would go up and down. Not too long later, it doesn't even boot. I'm guessing the EMMCs fried. If I find a smashed up Nexus 4 locally i'll for sure do a mobo swap since mine's in really good shape physically.

Categories

Resources