Photon wont charge or power up - Dead

[cdubya1]

Did a search but couldn't find anything.

Photon 4g is dead. Been running errands all afternoon, then this evening I went to check my phone and it was powered off. Can't get it to charge, power up or anything.

Tried pwr button with volume up, down, and both, even tried camera button. All held for varying lengths up to 35 seconds.

Battery pulled, sim pulled, SD card pulled,,, for 30 minutes, reinstalled and nothing. With or without them being installed.

I get a white light for about 1-2 seconds when I plug it into the computer. (computer does not recognize anything is plugged in)

Found another forum where someone used usb cable with stripped end and put red wire to + and black to negative for 15-20 minutes(one user reported success) but nothing happened for me.

Have new batteries on order. Phone was rooted 4 months ago and was working great! No new apps or changes were installed in the past few days.

Purchased from radio shack. Purchased 9/15/2011

Thoughts? Sprint store has never been much help cause I didn't buy it from them.

 

[BoJangles]

My charger and cord crapped out on me a year ago. Have you tried different cords /chargers? You can take it to radioshack to troubleshoot the problem. (And they usually have good batteries at a cheaper price ) but that was two years since I've worked for them. Not sure now.

 

[cdubya1]

Yea, I have tried different chargers and cables. Charge tried from car, home and PC.

When I charge from PC, I can get a white led with one of the cables I tried, but nothing else happens.

I spilled tea yesterday before starting my errands, but I'm pretty sure it didn't hit the phone. Where can I check to see if I have liquid damage? If I did spill on the phone I will bite the bullet and pay for a new phone, but if it is as I suspect, no water damage, then I will send it off to Motorola.
I have no colored stickers on the battery or under the battery,,, just black and white text.

Thanks,

 

[tirith]

I know when powered down completely dead, it takes forever to get enough charge to reboot....

The water damage strip is inside the phone...

Sent using my MoPho-King photon

 

[kmcochran]

Did you install the latest software update? The reason I ask is that I participated in the SOAK test and with the latest update, it bricked my phone. I had to get a new one.

One thing to try is to leave your phone plugged in for at least 30 minutes via the wall outlet and see if it will come on then. Someone suggested that to me and my phone did come back on (and it was at 90% before it went dead) and then when it got to 100% I unplugged it and it went black again. I could never get it to turn back on.

Hopefully yours won't react like mine did, but will come back on after an extended time on the charger.

 

[cdubya1]

Thanks for the tip. I took it to Sprint and they said they would look at it and either fix it, or replace it for $35 save for water damage. Well, the phone had no water damage so they ordered me a new phone. I was glad to pay $35 for a new photon.

Should be here this week.

Question!
My phone is rooted and also happens to have some important docs on it. I have it backed up, but the data is still on my phone. what happens to my old phone, is it sent back to moto for diss assembly and repair? And what of my stuff on the phone? Nothing on the phone is detrimental or top secret, but it does have copies of my documents and other stuff.
Since the phone won't turn on, I suspect there is no way to restore factory settings and delete my stuff.

Thanks

 

[tirith]

When they send it in to be refurbed, they basically get it to work and flash whatever version they are currently running. They SHOULDN'T go through it, but no promises there... (I'd hate to think of them going through mine... They'd find a lot of pics of my fiancee...)

Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk 2

 

[cdubya1]

lol,

They said the phone is on back order. So they said it could be another 10 days. Think I'll be lucky enough to get ICS ???? not!

 

[kmcochran]

Yeah, when I took mine to BB, the Photons were on backorder, so they just gave me a new one there. Wonder if they could check to see if any other Sprint stores have any Photons in stock so you don't have to wait for another one. And, I wonder if they are even making any more???

ICS, I wish!!! I was a little sad when BB told me they were going to just give me a new phone because I was kind of looking forward to using my Pre again. Oh how I miss that OS.

 

[agthad]

Re: Photon wont charge or power up - Dead - Possible Solution

I've had my Photon for a year and half now and have gotten the dead phone / won't power up a few times over the last month or two. Today it was working this morning with a full charge since it had been plugged in all night -> I did battery pull because I had just done a lot of updates over WiFi and it wasn't acting normal -> phone would not respond at all, not to battery, wall charger, computer. I pulled the battery and replaced it, still nothing.

I found one person on Phandroid saying they thought they had fixed the sleep of death by padding the battery so it didn't move around. That got me thinking about the actual battery contacts. I'm a mechanical engineer so I tend to think more about the hardware side of problems anyway. So I pulled the battery again and noticed I felt no resistance to pulling the battery off and on the contacts sticking up out of the phone. The contacts in the battery look to be possibly spring loaded but the unloaded gap looked pretty wide.

I decided to modify the contacts sticking out of the phone to add a bit of preload to the interface to ensure contact. I took a small flat blade screwdriver and bent the two left terminals to the left and bent to the two right terminals to the right, not much, just enough to barely see a slant to one side. The idea is that the four terminals are now pushing in opposite directions against the battery contacts so the interface is maintained under slight pressure.

I put everything back together and the phone booted right up. I'm not claiming it's a 100% fix but I believe it was related. Use at your own risk and good luck.

 

[Joey Hill2]

Did a search but couldn't find anything.

Photon 4g is dead. Been running errands all afternoon, then this evening I went to check my phone and it was powered off. Can't get it to charge, power up or anything.

Tried pwr button with volume up, down, and both, even tried camera button. All held for varying lengths up to 35 seconds.

Battery pulled, sim pulled, SD card pulled,,, for 30 minutes, reinstalled and nothing. With or without them being installed.

I get a white light for about 1-2 seconds when I plug it into the computer. (computer does not recognize anything is plugged in)

Found another forum where someone used usb cable with stripped end and put red wire to + and black to negative for 15-20 minutes(one user reported success) but nothing happened for me.

Have new batteries on order. Phone was rooted 4 months ago and was working great! No new apps or changes were installed in the past few days.

Purchased from radio shack. Purchased 9/15/2011

Thoughts? Sprint store has never been much help cause I didn't buy it from them.