Database Users

[Q] Trying to restore Nexus 4, would shutdown when unplugged… seeking help

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.

Nexus 7 will not charge or power on

Hi everyone,
yes this may seem at first similar to several other posts, but rest assured, I have googled from one end of the galaxy to the other and so far no solution has helped me.
Basically, my N7 a month ago was bootlooping loading android, this has happened before and usually i just re-load the factory image and i'm good for another few months. This time however, I was busy and said, no problem, i'll load the image in 2 days or so. By then, my N7 appears off and does not react to me pressing the power button or plugging in the charger. My assumption is it was in my bag and kept bootlooping and eventually drained the battery.
On my google searches, i've noted that there is a huge issue where when the battery drains completed, it is a pain to get it to turn on. Most people seem to be okay letting it charge for a while and holding the power button for 30 seconds or so. I've looked at google's official video about this issue and their steps to fix it, and i have not gotten any of this to work. I've held the power button for not 30 seconds, but several minutes until my finger became sore and it won't turn on. I've also done this holding down the power and the volume up button, volume down button, both etc. all combinations. I've left it on the charger for days and when i unplug and re-plug the charger, i don't get a hint of the screen powering on, let alone the battery charger icon you are supposed to see. I've tried this with my other chargers as well. The n7 charger is fine, i use it for other android devices no problem. If i plug this in the computer, i get a driver install failed error as well.
I've gone as far as taking off the back cover and double checking the battery connection which apparently gets loose quite easily and this is fine. I know my charger is fine, because i use this charger for other phones and they work fine, i've also tried using the usb cable to the computer and that does nothing either.
I would rule out an issue with the usb port on the device itself, because i have the dock which can charge the nexus 7 from the connections on it's side, i think it would be highly unlikely that both these pieces failed.
I am at my wits end, i really liked this tablet and want to salvage it as best i can. Only thing is i can't really do anything with it, all my google accounts are saved on this device and i'd rather not reset all my passwords if i attempt to sell this for parts.
I'd like to know if anyone has any other recommendations on what i could try, even if it is swapping out hardware inside the device. If i can salvage and sell this for something, i am willing to do that, i'm just not sure if it's something with the hardware at this point or if it's that dreaded battery drain issue.

[SGH-I337 AT&T] Unmodified, Stock SGS4 boot loops, freezes, graphical bugs HELP!

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?

Samsung S4 VE I9515 wont turn on

Hello,
So let me give you a brief so you'd know everything - a few days ago, I'm gonna call it day 1, I walked under light rain with the phone in my pocket, it worked until the night of
Day 2 - started to lag a bit, it was like I was running some heavy apps and like the ram was insufficient. Restarted the phone, everything seemed normal.
Day 3 - Phone went off while was browsing. So I have to make a note here. I was running cm13 with android m and twrp 2..something and there were occasional reboots by itself rarely prior to Day 1. Also, I was using a supercharger (or whatever it is called, it is a charger that charges faster) for about a month.
So when the phone went off while I was browsing, it started by itself and stuck on the android loading. I restarted, cleared dalvik and regular cache - still stuck on boot. Flashed many times, changed the recovery to twrp, and still was stuck on rebooting and occasionally it didn't turn on. There were random occurrences of errors on flashing roms, which never happened before (for example, "cant mount system or data"). Within the time passing by, the phone started not to turn on when I tried to. By this time rarely got stuck on the first boot screen saying with the text "Samsung S4". Yesterday, Day 4, the phone never turned on, except one time. I don't remember doing anything special. I just pressed and held the power button and it turned on, but went off shortly after the android boot animation appeared.
Also there was times on Day 3, when I was trying to boot into the system, it got stuck on the android booting animation.
On and prior to Day 3, while I was charging, whenever it is on or off - I had the indicator light for charging. Now when I plug it in to charge - nothing happens.
To skip any unnecessary questions, I will make a short QA.
Q: Did you tried to boot into recovery/bootloader?
A: yes, nothing happens
Q: Any sign of life on adb while connected to a pc??
A: no
Q: Is battery dead?
A: I don't think so, but actually I'm not that sure. When I connect a separate led light to it, the led lights up Whatever, if it was a faulty battery when I plug the phone on the charger, it should've worked fine.
Q: Why don't you just buy a new phone?
A: I was planning to buy a new one, but after just 4 months when I have to renew my contract. I don't want to buy a phone off contract.
Q: Are you stupid, if you can't manage to fix it by yourself, why don't you give it to a repair?
A: I truly believe that the professionalism of repairers doesn't exist in my country via old experiences with them.
So in the worst scenario I will loose time by trying to fixing it and for 4 months I will use my old android phone.
In the best scenario, my almost 2 years old phone will revive.
Also, I have a multimeter - I can check the electricity. Just tell me what to check.
Thanks.

edbr said:
Hello,
So let me give you a brief so you'd know everything - a few days ago, I'm gonna call it day 1, I walked under light rain with the phone in my pocket, it worked until the night of
Day 2 - started to lag a bit, it was like I was running some heavy apps and like the ram was insufficient. Restarted the phone, everything seemed normal.
Day 3 - Phone went off while was browsing. So I have to make a note here. I was running cm13 with android m and twrp 2..something and there were occasional reboots by itself rarely prior to Day 1. Also, I was using a supercharger (or whatever it is called, it is a charger that charges faster) for about a month.
So when the phone went off while I was browsing, it started by itself and stuck on the android loading. I restarted, cleared dalvik and regular cache - still stuck on boot. Flashed many times, changed the recovery to twrp, and still was stuck on rebooting and occasionally it didn't turn on. There were random occurrences of errors on flashing roms, which never happened before (for example, "cant mount system or data"). Within the time passing by, the phone started not to turn on when I tried to. By this time rarely got stuck on the first boot screen saying with the text "Samsung S4". Yesterday, Day 4, the phone never turned on, except one time. I don't remember doing anything special. I just pressed and held the power button and it turned on, but went off shortly after the android boot animation appeared.
Also there was times on Day 3, when I was trying to boot into the system, it got stuck on the android booting animation.
On and prior to Day 3, while I was charging, whenever it is on or off - I had the indicator light for charging. Now when I plug it in to charge - nothing happens.
To skip any unnecessary questions, I will make a short QA.
Q: Did you tried to boot into recovery/bootloader?
A: yes, nothing happens
Q: Any sign of life on adb while connected to a pc??
A: no
Q: Is battery dead?
A: I don't think so, but actually I'm not that sure. When I connect a separate led light to it, the led lights up Whatever, if it was a faulty battery when I plug the phone on the charger, it should've worked fine.
Q: Why don't you just buy a new phone?
A: I was planning to buy a new one, but after just 4 months when I have to renew my contract. I don't want to buy a phone off contract.
Q: Are you stupid, if you can't manage to fix it by yourself, why don't you give it to a repair?
A: I truly believe that the professionalism of repairers doesn't exist in my country via old experiences with them.
So in the worst scenario I will loose time by trying to fixing it and for 4 months I will use my old android phone.
In the best scenario, my almost 2 years old phone will revive.
Also, I have a multimeter - I can check the electricity. Just tell me what to check.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probabily the rain damaged a part of your hardware. Did you solve?

If the battery is dead, the phone won't work.
The battery needs to have at least a bit of charge in order for the device to work, even if it is plugged in.
If the battery can't hold the charge, and the device uses more power than it gets, it turns off. I speak from experience.
These devices don't seem to work without a battery. Power goes to the battery, and the phone takes the power from there. Power doesn't go straight to the phone.
Anyway, I don't think a bit of light rain hurts the devices, especially if it was in your pocket. I walked through rain with my device in the pocket many times and no problem.
It looks to me that the hardware is failing. I don't believe that a faulty battery can cause a bootloop. I also don't believe that the power button causes a bootloop.
What I suggest would be:
1) Try going back to stock ROM.
2) Maybe try to get an S4 with a broken screen and switch the motherboards.

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Not Turning On

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.