Database Develop

Red light of death fixed!!! (sticky???)

I think I just figured out how to fix it!!!!!!! I was tinkering around and got my red light brick to turn on!!!! I'm not sure exactly what fixed it so here's everything I did-
1. Removed the storage & sim cards.
2. Took off the backplate.
3. Removed the battery.
4. Bent these 2 pins up a little bit:
5. Put the battery in at an angle, so that the power leads were connected, but the metal shielding plate on the back of the battery was not touching:
6. Hit the power button (with the battery still "halfway" installed) Bam, green light of life.
Somebody please confirm this. Meanwhile I'll be copywriting this process so anyone who performs it owes me 10 bucks

So my replacement Tilt isn't working either, so they're overnighting me a third one. In the meantime, I haven't sent back my original (RLoDed) Tilt, so I thought I'd play around with some of your theories.
skuzz said:
Another thought I had. After the tilt goes into red brick death mode, has anyone tried plugging it into power, battery installed, and then holding down power+camera(all the way) and then pushing in the reset button on the bottom? This may trigger it to go into flash mode - although I kinda doubt it'll work. Worth a shot! Might be able to reflash it back to life! Holding down power and camera while it boots is how you manually force it to get in the Red/Green/Blue firmware flash mode. If it let us do that much when the device bricked we might have a snowball's chance in hell of getting them working. I didn't think of trying it before I returned mine tho. D'oh!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't know what to try besides installing the battery and SIM card and trying to push down the power, camera, and stylus buttons (I knew I was doing it correctly, because I had to use this to return my second Tilt to factory specs). No response whatsoever! This thing is deader than a doornail. Except for the red LED, of course... that works REALLY well whenever it's plugged in.
sWuRv said:
I think I just figured out how to fix it!!!!!!! I was tinkering around and got my red light brick to turn on!!!! I'm not sure exactly what fixed it so here's everything I did-
1. Removed the storage & sim cards.
2. Took off the backplate.
3. Removed the battery.
4. Bent these 2 pins up a little bit:
5. Put the battery in at an angle, so that the power leads were connected, but the metal shielding plate on the back of the battery was not touching:
6. Hit the power button (with the battery still "halfway" installed) Bam, green light of life.
Somebody please confirm this. Meanwhile I'll be copywriting this process so anyone who performs it owes me 10 bucks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but the only thing I can confirm is that this did NOT work on my RLoDed Tilt. Tried it several times in various ways. I think you just seriously lucked out!
As such, I'd also have to vote against stickying this... for now.
Best of luck, all... if not actually in fixing your RLoDed Tilts, then definitely in avoiding the $500 service fee if AT&T discovers we voided our warranties.

alright i will confirm this too....my phone was truely RLOD..... i did the same thing that these guys did just jammin the battery in and out and it "jump started the phone"
exact process used
Moto Razr charger
hold down power button
"bounce" battery on and off the contacts for the battery a good 100 times or so
green light apeared after the red light started to flicker a little bit..... tis as if you were giving the phone CPR or something
im not going to call this a fix all i know is that the phone was RLOD and now it is working....battery is at 54% right now and i will post back in a bit to see if it has risen at all....
no smell arising from device
running origional rom but have had other roms on there (alex's)
hard SPL still installed on device
SPB phone suite is the last software that was installed on the device
reg tweaks installed as well, the usual ones no sms, hsdpa enabled blah blah blah
that is about all i can provide....the unit was on the computer overnight charging....when i woke up it was RLOD....and i was sad....i did have the ATT store replace the battery for me as well dunno if that had anything to do with the issue...
in the time that it has taken me to write this the battery is now at 55% so it is charging.....on wall charger with MOTO razr charger
ok lets take a little closer look at what happened within the past little bit....
after gettin the device all up and running it was behaving very oddly.... it would go through multiple attempts to connect to the data network for various reasons....after showing that it was at 55% on the charger it went back down to 54%... i pulled it off the charger and took it into the other room to do something......within 10 min it was down to 46%....now having a data connection my blackberry connect should have a valid network connection....but it did not... not sure why...
the best that i can conclude is that it was trying to connect to so many things all at the same time that it exhausted its self that fast....
so the question is how many people out there that have RLOD are running the BB connect software on there devices and have made REG edits to the data connection time outs and the HSDPA mod availability
editing those settings together may confuse the device and make it think that it has to connect to too many things at one time....
just another thought process that i thought that i would throw out there...
here are some things on the my device that would use the DATA connection and automatically initiate the connection on the device rather than you opening a program forcing it to connect such as Internet explorer
GPS update
HTC home weather tab
SPB weather tab
Blackberry connect
SPB insight....RSS Reader
text messages going in and out....my phone sees quite a few of those
Edit/Delete Message

There have been a few other people who have now fixed their RLOD's. Confirmed it was done by messing about with the battery. If you have revived yours, please post your method in here so we can compare them and eventually pinpoint the fix. Thanks.

i had the same prob..took out the batterly wiped the four contact points on the phone (might of pushed them down or up) and put battery back in and worked..

I believe sWuRv was onto something. My Tilt had the RLOD today. I tried everything, even what he suggested above to no avail. So I called warranty and got my replacement on it's way, express shipping waved and all. So I decided to everything I could think of to try and get the thing back on so I might be able to back up my data again.
I started fooling with the battery, like sWuRv suggested but I moved it all around at 45 degrees or so pushing the power on button. I noticed while it was plugged to the USB with red light on that every now and then the red light would flash when I moved the battery so the contacts moved (while holding the battery at that 45 degrees). I started getting the light to go yellow but it would not stay. So I unplugged from the USB and kept trying it while pushing the power button. It eventually started and I was able to back up to my SD card. One thing I can tell you is that this process caused the phone to get hot and smell like electronics burning a little. There is definitely a power problem inside.
I have no idea how or why this worked but it did. I think I will still take the replacement even though I have to figure out how to swap my fancy invisible armor clear protector skin.
I'll try and update on whether this phone dies again or what until I get the new one.

rlod
I tried messing with the battery in a variety of ways for 30 minutes with no sucess. RLOD stayed solid.

RLOD
Holy shoot............After bouncing my battery up and down about 40 times my phone came to life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reseating the battery and/or sim/storage cards is hardly a revolutionary procedure. Its Cellphone 101.

you guys are LIFE SAVERS. I have been on this forum for about a month now and I finally found a reason to post. I haven't posted because I always find my answers. I just wanted to thank everyone, as I have been on the phone with Amazon.com (where i got my tilt), went into an AT&T store and was on the phone with HTC tech support ALL day trying to resolve my red light issue. Unbelievable that all I needed to do was give it some "battery CPR":

UGHHHH. Well i found reason to make post #2. The fix lasted less than 5 minutes.

this did not work for me

These stories remind me off all the bad batteries/no powerup of my Motorola Q and those of others. My mother is on her 4th Q and I know its the battery, but the store just swaps out the whole phone. I've seen batteries last as little at 2 weeks, especially if let run down to empty at any point.
My questions are, is this just a bad battery problem? Does anyone with RLoD have a spare battery to try? If these batteries fail in the shorted condition, will they over draw power from the phone and mess up the charging circuit?
Roto

"Not the Mama", OR, NOT THE BATTERY
rotohammer said:
These stories remind me off all the bad batteries/no powerup of my Motorola Q and those of others. My mother is on her 4th Q and I know its the battery, but the store just swaps out the whole phone. I've seen batteries last as little at 2 weeks, especially if let run down to empty at any point.
My questions are, is this just a bad battery problem? Does anyone with RLoD have a spare battery to try? If these batteries fail in the shorted condition, will they over draw power from the phone and mess up the charging circuit?
Roto
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I certainly don't believe it's a bad battery problem. I had 2 spare batteries, fully charged with separate docking charger - none of the 3 batteries made any difference once I got the RLOD.

cushcalc said:
I certainly don't believe it's a bad battery problem. I had 2 spare batteries, fully charged with separate docking charger - none of the 3 batteries made any difference once I got the RLOD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very good, thanks for the insight!

I finished a call yesterday and then dropped my phone on to the pavement cos I was a bit drunk... Anyway this caused my phone to go from working fine (all be it with pants battery life) to just flashing the red light. Fixed it today. I tried the methods prescribed in this thread without success although I did not persevere for very long. I then put a spare battery in to the phonea and bingo the orange light comes on, phone boots up and it's now happilly charging. Note that I charged the old battery for several hours before trying the fix. Pity nobody seems to know what the problem actually is. I wish HTC would let us know....

sWuRv said:
There have been a few other people who have now fixed their RLOD's. Confirmed it was done by messing about with the battery. If you have revived yours, please post your method in here so we can compare them and eventually pinpoint the fix. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had a similar problem with my old iPAQ hw6515, and a Motorola V3. The contacts on the battery don't spring forward as well on an older phone as they do when it was new. I shimmed the battery. I did this by taking a business card and holding it against the opposite side of the battery from the contacts I traced the battery's profile and cut it out. I scotch taped my new shim to that side of the battery, then re-inserted it. This forces the battery up against the contacts better and in many times resolves inoperable phones, failure to charge, and spontaneous rebooting issues.
-Jay

My replacement tilt (first one had a bad USB connector) died Sunday.
Had it on the charger, looked down, red LED. Back of phone was pretty
warm. Pulled the battery, SIM, memory card, slammed the battery onto the
battery contacts rapidly 5-6 times, put the SIM, memory, battery back into
it, and it charged up. Did a hard reset. Battery was 100% charged, I turned
it completely OFF when I went to bed. Got up, battery was 0% drained!
Red LED again. Did the rapid thingy with the battery again, orange charge
light came on.
Called at&t warranty replacement. When I told her I had a red LED, she didn't
even ask me to do anything else. She just asked for the IMIE number and shipped me another one.
Maybe the 3rd one will be the charm LOL.......
I'm beginning to think that HTC doesn't stand for "high tech computes" but
"high tech CRAP"....

Maybe you guys got the margin of error productions? I know its really unlikely that you could get them again after a replacement but it is possible, and it maybe your computer. What do you think could be making this things go crazy? Overly protective anti-virus, I know, I know but it could do things secretly and screw around like mine does and wont let me into sites I have been on before on the same app no changes . . . Well I hope you luck.

ok I just tried everything you guys said, but it didn't work for me
so as some of you have stated it must be the battery, so what I did is put it between my hands for about 1 minute and put it in and it worked again!
really weird... must be the heat?
well hope that helps the research
Cheers
Jay

Phone will not boot Please Help

Ok here is the problem. Phone is a brand new AT&T phone I purchased off of Ebay about two weeks ago.
Off of Ebay, I purchased one of the USB 3 in 1 splitters that you can plug into the phone. It allows you to connect your phone to a charger while also using the headphones.
I plugged it into my phone and then pluged in my car charger into the adapter. The left light on the phone immediately blinked red once and then continued to blink blue on the right light really fast. I sensed something was wrong and immediately unplugged the phone from the converter. It was plugged in for less than 3 seconds.
Now here is my problem. The phone will not power on. I have tried everything. Soft reset, hard reset, removing the battery, plugging the phone into a wall charger without a battery. Nothing !#[email protected]%@#$%^
I called AT&T and they were extremely nice, but politely said there was nothing they could do since I was not the original purchaser of the phone.
Does anyone have suggestions on 1) What might fix the phone or 2) Is there a warranty on the phone from HTC or 3) a phone number where I might be able to send the phone to get it fixed. 4) Can recommend a cheap phone to drop my SIM into until I can get this one fixed
I really do not want to waste $400 on a new phone.

you can try this
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=358136

No such luck for me
Once I took out my battery the first time, the red light does not even come on any more. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Were you able to use that phone for any minute since you've purchased or it was DOA? How was the phone before you plug the 3-in-1? If everything went smooth b4 you play w/ 3-in-1 then I think the 3-in-1 kill your phone mother board.
a. Try to contact ebay seller for exchange.
b. If you're living in USA, buy a prepaid phone for dirty cheap price ('bout $20); plug in your SIM, then you're good to go. Don't know if you're t-mob or at&t subcriber, make sure pick the the right one or you have to deal w/ unlock problem.
c. You may want to contact HTC USA for repair but not warranty exchange because at&t take care the warranty/technical issues for tilt.
d. If you want to recoup $$$ by re-sell the death tilt, leave me a private message.

I love me an AT&T Tech rep
On the advice of the AT&T phone customer support, I took my phone back to the local AT&T service center this morning.
The tech took one look at it and said "OH the red light of death" She asked me if I had a receipt and I told her no that I purchased it online. She then typed a little asked for my phone number and then went to the back for about 10 minutes. When she returned she handed me a new phone already set up ready to go.
I was sooooooo relieved. As a former Verizon customer, they would have never taken care of the customer like the two AT&T reps I dealt with did. Thank you AT&T
New Phone #[email protected]#[email protected] Yeah!!!!!!
I was still not sure which caused the problem -the 3 way adapter or the phone charger that the guy I purchased the phone sent me. I thought it had to be the adapter. Feeling lucky, I plugged in the car charger and the red light came on. In a milli-second I yanked the phone out and my phone shut down.
Panic. I slowly hit the power button while lifting up a huge prayer. It booted up. Hugh sigh!!!!!!!!!!!!
I plugged the adapter into my computer USB and the phone and was prepared to yank it out as well. Nothing. Phone works fine.
Car charger is now in the trash. I am convinced that the RLOD is a power/charging issue. Something is happening during this process and the phone gets fried

123Rebals said:
On the advice of the AT&T phone customer support, I took my phone back to the local AT&T service center this morning.
The tech took one look at it and said "OH the red light of death" She asked me if I had a receipt and I told her no that I purchased it online. She then typed a little asked for my phone number and then went to the back for about 10 minutes. When she returned she handed me a new phone already set up ready to go.
I was sooooooo relieved. As a former Verizon customer, they would have never taken care of the customer like the two AT&T reps I dealt with did. Thank you AT&T
New Phone #[email protected]#[email protected] Yeah!!!!!!
I was still not sure which caused the problem -the 3 way adapter or the phone charger that the guy I purchased the phone sent me. I thought it had to be the adapter. Feeling lucky, I plugged in the car charger and the red light came on. In a milli-second I yanked the phone out and my phone shut down.
Panic. I slowly hit the power button while lifting up a huge prayer. It booted up. Hugh sigh!!!!!!!!!!!!
I plugged the adapter into my computer USB and the phone and was prepared to yank it out as well. Nothing. Phone works fine.
Car charger is now in the trash. I am convinced that the RLOD is a power/charging issue. Something is happening during this process and the phone gets fried
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, you really lucked out with AT&T there!
I am totally with you on the RLOD problem - my first phone was replaced because of that. I have taken extreme care to only use chargers that have the proper ratings. I think that the dual-purpose HTC USB connector may be part of the problem because sometimes when I sync, it loses connection, then gains it back again, if I even gently move the unit a few inches. I think some USB connectors fit tighter in the port, but I am very worried about the quality and reliability of that port. I have taken extra care every time I plug in and remove a cable, and yet this is still a niggling concern. I don't want to have to go thru another return, but I may before my 1 year warranty is up.

Bionic won't turn on...

Well, I'm baffled.
Last night I looked down to see my Bionic bootlooping. I let it do its thing and after a few reboots it stopped. Whatever, it's android, it's buggy.
Then when I picked it up, I realized it wasn't even on anymore. I tried to turn it on, nothing. So, I pulled the battery for a minute, popped it back on, and... still nothing.
Long story short, I ended up going to Verizon, trying different batteries, chargers, etc, and I can't get an inch of life out of the phone.
I can see a white LED light up when the phone is connected via the stock USB cable. No other cable will do it, and the wall charger won't do it. I don't know if this really indicates anything or not...
Is there anything else I can even try? It won't even boot into recovery - I never see the red M at all, the screen doesn't so much as even flicker. Unfortunately I bought the phone second hand from an iPhone 4S switcher, so there's nothing I can do to get a warranty replacement.
It's back to my original Droid for now...

I had the same problem Sunday night. Called tech support and they overnight-ed a replacement.

Try holding Volume down + power from the off state for a few seconds then letting go.
Or try Both Volume buttons + Power.
If those do nothing, it sounds like you have a very expensive paperweight. You need a replacement, sorry.
Whatever you do, DO NOT send the phone into Verizon!
Make up some excuse like you lost it or someone stole it or something.

Had my first Bionic do this I said I lost it claimed on my insurance but new one acts up also usually when it's overheating got my old one to fastboot did a complete restore to stock tested it by steaming netflix that lasted for about half an hour now it's just a paper weight!
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using XDA App

Would Motorola honor the 1 year warranty?

cryptiq said:
Would Motorola honor the 1 year warranty?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it covers your excuse, yeah.

Tivo7 said:
If it covers your excuse, yeah.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Based on what details we have from the OP, it doesn't sound like he did anything to damage or modify the phone. So if the phone is stock he should be able to get help from Moto I presume?

what i did was
i had the verizon rep patch me straight through to insurion and got my o.g droid replaced.

I tried to get into recovery with no luck.
Unfortunately I'm not the original owner, so I can't send a receipt or anything Motorola's way. I do have the original box, though, and the original owner had it all of three days...
My phone was rooted to freeze some bloatware, but still on the stock ROM. It was running that way for weeks, so there's no way that would have caused it. I've never seen a phone just... completely keel over before. I'm half tempted to just use my original droid for 2-3 weeks and grab the nexus when it comes out.

If you haven't messed with any system files and you're completely stock, you can take the phone in for repair.

It's rooted, but there's no way for them to tell if it won't boot.
Motorola's live chat rep offered to let me send it in for RMA repair. The fine print says, though, that the repair stops being free the second they see anything that voids the warranty. My assumption is that they'll never be able to tell it's rooted because they will need to just send a refurb if it's shorted out, but should I bother risking it?

c0LdFire said:
I tried to get into recovery with no luck.
Unfortunately I'm not the original owner, so I can't send a receipt or anything Motorola's way. I do have the original box, though, and the original owner had it all of three days...
My phone was rooted to freeze some bloatware, but still on the stock ROM. It was running that way for weeks, so there's no way that would have caused it. I've never seen a phone just... completely keel over before. I'm half tempted to just use my original droid for 2-3 weeks and grab the nexus when it comes out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you try calling Moto? It would be one thing if the phone has been in the market for say 16 months and then the 1 year warranty period would come into question, but in this case the phone hasn't been out for more 3 months so it should be covered. I could see where they would require a receipt to make sure it was purchased from an authorized reseller vs. a grey market seller, but it's worth a shot to give them a call.
Any chance you can get in touch with the person that sold you the phone?

Same thing happened to me...
Was tethering my bionic to PC for web access when it died. It was really hot so I thought it was some sort of safety measure to keep the processor from frying and I tried all of the stuff lots of you proposed in addition to letting my phone lie on a heat sink to relieve some of that heat.
I know you mentioned that you took it to a store and tried all sorts of chargers, but did you try leaving it plugged in to a wall/car charger for a while? That's what did it for me after leaving the batteries out of the unit overnight (I don't think that part is necessary... I was just fed up messing with it and went to sleep hoping it would be magically fixed by some house gnomes) - after plugging the batteries back in that morning and having it still not work, I switch to a car charger (which is rated 1a - higher than the included 850ma charger) and on in the middle of a trip to the Verizon store it simply turned on displaying 5% power on battery.
Odd thing is, before it was tethered the last night, it was at 100% power. So either somehow phone got shorted and drained the battery really fast, or the bionic simply eats so much power with that LTE that even when being supplied power from the PC, it still drains the battery. And from reading some of the other stuff online after googling "white light droid on," it seems that white light indicator is some sort of charge indicator and that the OS won't show if the battery is less than 5%.

hanafubuku said:
Was tethering my bionic to PC for web access when it died. It was really hot so I thought it was some sort of safety measure to keep the processor from frying and I tried all of the stuff lots of you proposed in addition to letting my phone lie on a heat sink to relieve some of that heat.
I know you mentioned that you took it to a store and tried all sorts of chargers, but did you try leaving it plugged in to a wall/car charger for a while? That's what did it for me after leaving the batteries out of the unit overnight (I don't think that part is necessary... I was just fed up messing with it and went to sleep hoping it would be magically fixed by some house gnomes) - after plugging the batteries back in that morning and having it still not work, I switch to a car charger (which is rated 1a - higher than the included 850ma charger) and on in the middle of a trip to the Verizon store it simply turned on displaying 5% power on battery.
Odd thing is, before it was tethered the last night, it was at 100% power. So either somehow phone got shorted and drained the battery really fast, or the bionic simply eats so much power with that LTE that even when being supplied power from the PC, it still drains the battery. And from reading some of the other stuff online after googling "white light droid on," it seems that white light indicator is some sort of charge indicator and that the OS won't show if the battery is less than 5%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah your computer USB port does not provide enough power to compensate for the draw you will get off LTE. Your phone will eat much more juice than you are giving it. Leaving the battery out allows the phone to fully discharge any built up charges (ever had this with a laptop? Looks like a bad motherboard but you pull out the battery ans hold the power button down to drain the capacitors and then reinstall the battery and instant boot.) Same thing happening here would be my guess.
Leave the battery out overnight or hold the power button down for about 30 seconds. Put the battery back in and let it charge for awhile. Profit?
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using XDA App

[Q] My note won't turn on !!!

Hey guys...seriously need your help,
I just got the note a month ago and i'm pretty amazed by it's capabilities. this is my first android phone and i'm kind of new to it. I hope i didn't make something dumb, yet i flashed my note with a .tar file just to add arabic language to it as it's not in by default. I follow the instructions explained on the webpage literally using Odin3. I got a passed flash and then disconnected the note as explained. since then it doesn't turn on. I tried almost everything using all kinds of button combinations to get to either download or recovery mode but nothing came out of the screen it's simply dead.....very disappointed, wish anyone could help me please....Thank you.

seems you have bricked your phone, if it does absolutely nothing it is bricked

Tried yanking out the battery and reseating?

Try getting Download mode with JIG
You may get JIG from market, or manually make with this guide
http://droidangel.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-make-samsung-galaxy-s-download.html

If the phone wants to start,you can do something. If absolutely no,then it is bad.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using XDA App

My Galaxy Note won't turn on too. The problem came after I was downloading a magazine from Zinio using the Reader's Hub app. Before I started the download, my battery level was almost empty. In the middle of the download, the phone died before I could get the chance to plug it in to charge it. Unfortunately when I tried to recharge it using the stock USB cable, the phone wouldn't turn on anymore. I plugged it in my computer but it did not recognize any USB device being plugged into it. It's as if I didn't plugged in the device at all. I've tried every button combination to reset the device as well as try other batteries and then tried the button combinations again to no avail. There was absolutely no response from the phone.
It was pretty obvious at that point that my Note was bricked. It's been only 2 weeks since I bought it and I'm really frustrated that this happened, especially now that I'm already hooked with Android coming from IOS devices for a while.
I decided to send it back to a Samsung Service Center for their evaluation. The front line technicians couldn't get my device to turn on as well. The attendee told me that they will have to keep the unit for further evaluation and told me that I have to wait for 3 business days before informing me of the results. I'm hoping that they would just replace my device with a new one.

wolfmanx said:
My Galaxy Note won't turn on too. The problem came after I was downloading a magazine from Zinio using the Reader's Hub app. Before I started the download, my battery level was almost empty. In the middle of the download, the phone died before I could get the chance to plug it in to charge it. Unfortunately when I tried to recharge it using the stock USB cable, the phone wouldn't turn on anymore. I plugged it in my computer but it did not recognize any USB device being plugged into it. It's as if I didn't plugged in the device at all. I've tried every button combination to reset the device as well as try other batteries and then tried the button combinations again to no avail. There was absolutely no response from the phone.
It was pretty obvious at that point that my Note was bricked. It's been only 2 weeks since I bought it and I'm really frustrated that this happened, especially now that I'm already hooked with Android coming from IOS devices for a while.
I decided to send it back to a Samsung Service Center for their evaluation. The front line technicians couldn't get my device to turn on as well. The attendee told me that they will have to keep the unit for further evaluation and told me that I have to wait for 3 business days before informing me of the results. I'm hoping that they would just replace my device with a new one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
daaaaaaaang, i would cry... good luck!

mkoger said:
daaaaaaaang, i would cry... good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. Yep, I sobbed for a bit after the attendee told me they need to keep it for further evaluation and no service unit was available.
My hunch on what happened to my Note was that it was writing to the flash when the power went out and did not get the chance to finish the write cycle. Thus, the unit was left out with a corrupted flash. I'm thinking that the OS should have prevented this from happening since it should know that the battery is about to die out. Moreover, even if the main flash got corrupted, there should have been a different controller (MCU, FPGA or similar) apart from the main processor which contain a boot loader code of some sort that would kick in to enable recovery of the device even if the main flash is corrupted.
I've been browsing through other threads under the SGN forum pertaining to units that won't respond to key presses to reset the device or to enter into downloading mode. I'm now lead to believe that there is no redundant system inside the Note that will ensure device recovery. Can anybody here who knows the hardware on the Note confirm or debunk this? Anybody from Samsung here?
I've been working with IOS devices (different iPhones) for a while now and had, on a number of occasions, made mistakes in jailbreaking the device but I would always be able to trust that I could re-enter DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode with some key press combinations and be able to recover the device completely. I think this is absent on the Note.
I was hoping that the Note had this feature.

anybody here who encountered a similar problem?

I have the same problem. At the morning a tried to turn on my SGN, but no response. All th simptoms the same: no charging, no reactions to buttons combinations, no PC detection.

RommaS said:
I have the same problem. At the morning a tried to turn on my SGN, but no response. All th simptoms the same: no charging, no reactions to buttons combinations, no PC detection.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you describe what exactly happened before you bricked your SGN? Have you done any further evaluations so far or have you sent your unit to the service center too?
I'm just curious, where did you get your SGN from? I'm from the Philippines and got mine from Abenson's.
I'll keep you posted as soon as I get additional information from the service center.
Good luck to us.
---------- Post added at 02:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:56 PM ----------
I'm not sure if our problem is somehow related to this as well:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1422781
This is regarding a faulty USB interface. Could it be a weak USB interface circuit design or a weak bootloader implementation? The root cause will certainly be useful so that we can take extra precautions in the future as we work with the SGN.

same problem
I have the note, just a week old.
was reading a book when the display went all bizzare.
I had to remove the battery to shut it down.
Never got it to boot so far..
PC does not detect it and it doesn't charge either..
I am taking it to the service center in the morning, will update everyone on what they say.

wolfmanx said:
Can you describe what exactly happened before you bricked your SGN? Have you done any further evaluations so far or have you sent your unit to the service center too?
I'm just curious, where did you get your SGN from? I'm from the Philippines and got mine from Abenson's.
I'll keep you posted as soon as I get additional information from the service center.
Good luck to us.
---------- Post added at 02:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:56 PM ----------
I'm not sure if our problem is somehow related to this as well:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1422781
This is regarding a faulty USB interface. Could it be a weak USB interface circuit design or a weak bootloader implementation? The root cause will certainly be useful so that we can take extra precautions in the future as we work with the SGN.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I traveled at the train on vacation and connected my SGN to this device for charging and it became charging. At the morning I tried to power on SGN but it was bricked. I'm from Russia but now I'm in Ukrain and can't send my SGN to service center.

After the visit to the service center.
sunnysurya said:
I have the note, just a week old.
was reading a book when the display went all bizzare.
I had to remove the battery to shut it down.
Never got it to boot so far..
PC does not detect it and it doesn't charge either..
I am taking it to the service center in the morning, will update everyone on what they say.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey guys,
updating as promised.
the service center tried to "upgrade" software: I guess that's code for flashed new ROM.
After which they told me that the "Motherboard" is being replaced and that I have to wait till tomorrow noon.
So there you are guys, Motherboard
Will update further once I have more details.

I called-up the local Samsung service center today to follow-up on my unit and informed me that they will be replacing the motherboard as well. They said that they already ordered the replacement board from Korea and should arrive within the next 3 days. Darn.
Although I'm happy that I will have my unit repaired, I'm still a bit worried that until the root cause is determined, I may end up with bricking my Note again given the same circumstances.
What part of the motherboard is responsible for bricking the device then? We need to get to the bottom of this in order to avoid the same thing from happening again or determine whether this is really because of a faulty hardware design.

I agree..
wolfmanx said:
I called-up the local Samsung service center today to follow-up on my unit and informed me that they will be replacing the motherboard as well. They said that they already ordered the replacement board from Korea and should arrive within the next 3 days. Darn.
Although I'm happy that I will have my unit repaired, I'm still a bit worried that until the root cause is determined, I may end up with bricking my Note again given the same circumstances.
What part of the motherboard is responsible for bricking the device then? We need to get to the bottom of this in order to avoid the same thing from happening again or determine whether this is really because of a faulty hardware design.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree Wolfmanx, I have asked for a detailed report on how this happened. Now that I know more people are facing the same issue, I will ask them for more details.
Cheers!

Almost same issue
I just got my phone delivered by Fedex. I unboxed it, slapped in the battery, charged it and tried to turn it on. The only thing that happened was the boot up chime. The screen never turned on and still won't light up. I can hear the sound all right, so I know the machine is not completely bricked, but the screen never activates and the 2 capacitive buttons never light up either.
It's really frustrating since I took the day off to play with it. Such a fine piece of hardware, but it seems to be very fragile and prone to problems.

Hey guys. Not a regular user of the Note but my brother bought one about a week ago and got into the same issue some of you guys have had. Basically the Note was left uncharged (he plugged the Micro USB into the phone but forgot to plug the other end into a power source) overnight. When he woke up in the morning the phone was off, wouldn't turn on and didn't respond to any button combo. It also wouldn't charge even after trying with several different cables and leaving the cable in for several minutes.
Anyway we bought the phone back to the AIS (a carrier in Thailand) shop. Got to talk with a rather condescending salesperson who insisted that we had to take the phone to a Samsung customer service centre. Pretty frustrating experience but that's another story.
When we finally got to the Samsung repair centre, some technicians looked at the phone and determined that the battery has run flat out. This is not the normal "complete discharge" you would see in normal operation of a battery where there will be some voltage left in the battery. The battery was discharged completely in such a way that there was no voltage left which means that the charging mechanism on the phone doesn't detect any battery being inside the compartment.
Anyway the technician "jump-started" the battery by putting a bit of charge in it and after that the phone would charge and turn on fine. We were told that if the problem happens again leaving the phone in the charger for a while would fix the problem, and if that fails you can take the battery to a technician to jump-start it. Basically we can just avoid the problem by not draining the battery completely in the first place.
The customer service lady also claimed that this is a common problem for all Samsung phones, which is a bold-faced lie since I've owned several Samsung phones and never had any problem like this. Any decent electronic device should be designed to cut down the power before the battery has a chance to completely deplete in the first place anyway. It had been a long day by then so we didn't have the energy to call them out on this. We also didn't want to replace or repair the phone, since we are going abroad tomorrow and they don't have any new Galaxy Note in stock for immediate replacement.
So the root of the problem seems to be some sort of hardware or software problem that would cause the battery to occasionally completely drain. Not sure if this problem would affect all Galaxy Notes or just certain units. Since my brother will be keeping the same phone I will keep you guys updated if this problem happens again.
tl;dr, it's a problem with battery charging

Chrono_Tata said:
Hey guys. Not a regular user of the Note but my brother bought one about a week ago and got into the same issue some of you guys have had. Basically the Note was left uncharged (he plugged the Micro USB into the phone but forgot to plug the other end into a power source) overnight. When he woke up in the morning the phone was off, wouldn't turn on and didn't respond to any button combo. It also wouldn't charge even after trying with several different cables and leaving the cable in for several minutes.
Anyway we bought the phone back to the AIS (a carrier in Thailand) shop. Got to talk with a rather condescending salesperson who insisted that we had to take the phone to a Samsung customer service centre. Pretty frustrating experience but that's another story.
When we finally got to the Samsung repair centre, some technicians looked at the phone and determined that the battery has run flat out. This is not the normal "complete discharge" you would see in normal operation of a battery where there will be some voltage left in the battery. The battery was discharged completely in such a way that there was no voltage left which means that the charging mechanism on the phone doesn't detect any battery being inside the compartment.
Anyway the technician "jump-started" the battery by putting a bit of charge in it and after that the phone would charge and turn on fine. We were told that if the problem happens again leaving the phone in the charger for a while would fix the problem, and if that fails you can take the battery to a technician to jump-start it. Basically we can just avoid the problem by not draining the battery completely in the first place.
The customer service lady also claimed that this is a common problem for all Samsung phones, which is a bold-faced lie since I've owned several Samsung phones and never had any problem like this. Any decent electronic device should be designed to cut down the power before the battery has a chance to completely deplete in the first place anyway. It had been a long day by then so we didn't have the energy to call them out on this. We also didn't want to replace or repair the phone, since we are going abroad tomorrow and they don't have any new Galaxy Note in stock for immediate replacement.
So the root of the problem seems to be some sort of hardware or software problem that would cause the battery to occasionally completely drain. Not sure if this problem would affect all Galaxy Notes or just certain units. Since my brother will be keeping the same phone I will keep you guys updated if this problem happens again.
tl;dr, it's a problem with battery charging
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, this is what happens to all rechargeable devices when completely drained and left that way for a long time. That's why I try to avoid calibrating batteries unless it's really necessary. But the technician is right, sometimes you only need to leave it plugged in to revive the battery. I've tried this a lot and I still get nervous every time.

Had that problem with my Evo, left it charging over night and the battery came back to life

Won't charge or power on

Hiya,
My Gear Live arrived today after shipping it overseas and I've got it plugged into my old gear 1 charger due to USA plug shipped but there's no sign of it charging, doesn't want to power on via the button either.
Ant ideas?
Sent from my SM-N9005

Pcmanrules said:
Hiya,
My Gear Live arrived today after shipping it overseas and I've got it plugged into my old gear 1 charger due to USA plug shipped but there's no sign of it charging, doesn't want to power on via the button either.
I have found not all USB cables will not charge my watch. Try a Charging Cable only with a different wall wart and see if it works. Good Luck
StevieJ
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Hiya,
Tried several different cords and combinations on ports and wall adapters including the included one with an adapter, looks like i'll have to return it.
What should appear on the screen if it's charging? at the moment i get nothing.

My first Gear Live arrived DOA too....
Not a fan of quality control.
Got my second device, and it powered up had 65% battery life out of the box.
Sounds like you have the same issue.

AstroDigital said:
My first Gear Live arrived DOA too....
Not a fan of quality control.
Got my second device, and it powered up had 65% battery life out of the box.
Sounds like you have the same issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I'm not holding out hope for Samsung NZ helping, so it's gonna cost a bit to send it back to the states for RMA.
I was soo excited when it arrived but no.

If you got it from Google they would provide return shipping of the defective watch.
The only thing is they actually ask you to go through the motion of purchasing a second watch, so if they do not get the original watch back they would charge you after I think 20 days.
Me I called them,
They emailed me the instructions, UPS label.
I clicked on the link ordered the replacement.
Taped up the original defective watch, used the supplied UPS label.
Dropped the box at UPS drop box location.
They sent out the replacement the same day.
The original defective watch arrived at Google in two days.
Got an email the cost of the replacement watch was completely refunded.
Got the new working watch in 3 days.
Now you being overseas may complicate things.
I know NZ does not use 110volts 60hz, the power could be an issue but I sound like you dealt with this issue before. (Can not see why the Gear adapter would not work) it should supply the same required 5v DC, USB is universal.

Pcmanrules said:
Yeah, I'm not holding out hope for Samsung NZ helping, so it's gonna cost a bit to send it back to the states for RMA.
I was soo excited when it arrived but no.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Was playing around with it and it turned on for a second and showed the logo, gonna leave it on charge, may just be completely flat after shipping for a while, took almost a month to receive it.

I saw a video on YouTube where the watch was already turned on out of the box. Maybe your are in the same situation, most likely due the delayed delivery.
Mine comes o 5 August in Romania, ordered from Google Play. Can I use the charger that comes with Gear Live with an adapter? I bought a Nexus 4 from US a year ago and I used it only with the adapter and original charger, no problems until now.

Pcmanrules said:
Hiya,
My Gear Live arrived today after shipping it overseas and I've got it plugged into my old gear 1 charger due to USA plug shipped but there's no sign of it charging, doesn't want to power on via the button either.
Ant ideas?
Sent from my SM-N9005
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have found that the Live does not like chargers that put out 2.1a. I've also found that 1a basic chargers are hit and miss.
I'm currently using a charger that puts out 1.8a and everything works perfectly.

Sent it back under warranty and have a new one on it's way, hope it's a good one.

I have run into the same thing. I had a Gear Live delivered last month and I didn't have time to unbox it until yesterday. It wouldn't turn on so I used the charger that came with it. When I plugged it into AC power it showed a battery charging indicator on the screen. I waiting until morning and it would not power on.
I have tried the following:
AC Power with original charger
AC Power with charger from another Gear Live (which works)
USB power from Desktop with both chargers
USB power from MBP with both chargers
USB power from 1 mA battery pack with original charger
USB power from 0.5 mA battery pack with original charger
Holding down the button for 3, 5, 10, 15, 30 seconds many different times
What am I missing?! I guess I might have to make a warranty claim at this point, but I was planning on giving it away as a prize at a big Android DevFest event tomorrow!

same problem here
i bought the watch in July
days ago i removed from the charger as usual to find that was dead
i try all sort of thing nothing happen
i need to call for warranty if not solution come in

AFor sure FIX
So many people have had this same problem including me, I have tried all the different ways posted if trying to fix this but I know that the only way that will for sure fix it guaranteed is this;
The problem is that the charging port does not make direct contact with the battery, it actually runs through the main board and then to the battery which is only connected by exposed contacts, in other words the battery is not actually plugged in, it's just one half of the watch sandwiched up against the other half containing the main board and all the other components.
To fix this problem of the watch not responding to the power button or to charging, you need to disconnect the battery from the main board, like isaid it is not actually plugged in so all you have to do is take the watch apart for aminute and put it back together. This will reinitiate the connection and it WILL start working again. If you go to ifixit.com there is a good teardown guide which is all you need. It is only four screws and than the only hard part is separating the two halves but that's it.

all good is working for me
thank you for your help

bda714 said:
So many people have had this same problem including me, I have tried all the different ways posted if trying to fix this but I know that the only way that will for sure fix it guaranteed is this;
The problem is that the charging port does not make direct contact with the battery, it actually runs through the main board and then to the battery which is only connected by exposed contacts, in other words the battery is not actually plugged in, it's just one half of the watch sandwiched up against the other half containing the main board and all the other components.
To fix this problem of the watch not responding to the power button or to charging, you need to disconnect the battery from the main board, like isaid it is not actually plugged in so all you have to do is take the watch apart for aminute and put it back together. This will reinitiate the connection and it WILL start working again. If you go to ifixit.com there is a good teardown guide which is all you need. It is only four screws and than the only hard part is separating the two halves but that's it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so so much glad i found your post . Opened it closed and it powered on.

bda714 said:
So many people have had this same problem including me, I have tried all the different ways posted if trying to fix this but I know that the only way that will for sure fix it guaranteed is this;
The problem is that the charging port does not make direct contact with the battery, it actually runs through the main board and then to the battery which is only connected by exposed contacts, in other words the battery is not actually plugged in, it's just one half of the watch sandwiched up against the other half containing the main board and all the other components.
To fix this problem of the watch not responding to the power button or to charging, you need to disconnect the battery from the main board, like isaid it is not actually plugged in so all you have to do is take the watch apart for aminute and put it back together. This will reinitiate the connection and it WILL start working again. If you go to ifixit.com there is a good teardown guide which is all you need. It is only four screws and than the only hard part is separating the two halves but that's it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now is working ....
Thank you!