...My G4 just died in my hand at 1:30AM?

[Gigahorse]

In all my years of having phones I have never seen anything like this happen. I was reading a post on Reddit and my phone went black. I laughed to myself that I'd never seen something as simple as web browsing cause a phone to crash and reboot. Battery had plenty of life. It didn't reboot by itself like when you get a crash, the red Verizon screen never came on. I held the power button down and never got a vibration.

I have 2 batteries from the LG free battery promotion. Spare one was sitting in charger cradle glowing green. Put different battery in. When I hold the power button down, I get a quick vibration that feels weaker than normal. I can now get as far as the LG - Powered by Android screen, but it loops after that. I've tried taking my SIM and SD card out just to eliminate everything.

This phone is the only phone I can say I have literally never dropped. Never stepped out of the car and had it fall out of my lap or anything. Glass screen protector, cases all the time, etc. Gave up rooting and ROMing after having problems on a G2 I had, so this phone never had any of that done to it either. Pure stock. No recent system update, last time I saw one was a week or so ago.

I have no idea what just happened. I used the phone heavily today outdoors, I took about 300 pictures. Got home this evening, transferred photos to my PC, text a few people, no problems.

Is Verizon going to help me? I don't have insurance. But this wasn't an accidental drop or anything. Literally bricked in my hand.

 

[Gigahorse]

Shows how out of the loop I am, there is apparently some widespread bootloop issue? I hadn't heard of it in all the months I was more active on forums or anything. Now I'm digging around a bit and see a ton of talk about it. Sounds like what just happened to me. Great, I had my mom get a G4 too when she had an upgrade because I thought this phone was so great.

 

[ManiacJoe]

The G4 is a great phone. It just happens to be that a larger-than-normal percentage have a manufacturing defect that results in the boot loop. Contact LG; they will fix it or otherwise replace the phone.

 

[JGLdn]

The motherboard has died, or better known as bootloop. You should insist the handset is replaced and not repaired. Mine was repaired and it happened again. This time I got a replacement.

 

[RapidTurtle]

I just had the bootloop, and AT&T replaced the phone. I owned for over 13 months, so it was out of warranty, but they took care of it.

 

[tadpoles]

I have a new V10 and there is also a lot going around about bootloops (that's why I'm reading this thread). Seems to be an issue with some LG phones. I have a couple of days still that I could take this back bit it's been perfect so far.

OP, I hope LG will help you. They know their products are having these issues and all they need to do is treat their customers correctly and work to engineer a fix going forward (hopefully, they've done that and the V20 won't have the same propensity to boot loop). Please keep us posted as to how this gets resolved.

 

[Gigahorse]

Got mine back from repair today (one day extra because I missed FedEx yesterday). Everything looks good so far. If the repair sticks, then they haven't totally turned me off their brand forever, although I definitely might think twice about LG for my next phone. I understand these first world problems are bound to happen, but it's especially bad when it's something that causes you to lose data. Luckily my photos and stuff were sent to SD card, but internal downloads, conversations, screenshots, all gone. I tried the freezer trick a few times and got it turned on just long enough to save a few conversations, but I didn't feel like freezing the phone 20 more times just to try to get more.

My phone is older than a year so I'd assume normally I'd have no warranty coverage. I never even spoke to anyone at LG, just used the repair form online to initiate the process. In the box with my phone I included an news article about LG acknowledging this is a known problem, a scan of my proof of purchase and original receipt, and that's it.