Thunderbolt won't turn on or charge... help!

[ninetales]

-My phone is not rooted.​

I got an HTC Thunderbolt today, it's used. It worked fine the first hour, I turned it off, went to the movies, and turned it back on, it worked fine. Then, I got home and was skyping and texting, etc. I tried plugging it in, and it wouldn't charge. The port is really lose and it won't keep the charger in there, I thought, no problem, it had charged in the car, it must be the battery. The phone was really hot at this point. I turned the phone off, flipped it over and took the battery out to see if there was anything wrong, of course, there wasn't, so I put the battery back in and attempted to turn the phone on...
It doesn't turn on. At all. And it won't charge. I've tried three different chargers and none of them have worked. I've also taken the sim card out and the memory card and nothing. At this point it is cooled down, but still won't turn on, nor will it charge. I can't change back to my other phone because I don't have any of the account information. I'm not sure if the battery is fried or if it's the phone that's being dumb. It's really frustrating me. I can't get a new battery until my dad gives it to me. The phone still had about 40% charge when it stopped working. Any suggestions?
-I'm using the larger battery, I don't know what it's called.

 

[Green_Laser]

When you attempted to turn the phone back on, how long did you press the power button at the top? (it takes a looonngg press. Keep it pressed down until it turns on. Try that if you haven't)


Sent from my ADR6400L using Android Central Forums

 

[defcon999]

-My phone is not rooted.​

I got an HTC Thunderbolt today, it's used. It worked fine the first hour, I turned it off, went to the movies, and turned it back on, it worked fine. Then, I got home and was skyping and texting, etc. I tried plugging it in, and it wouldn't charge. The port is really lose and it won't keep the charger in there, I thought, no problem, it had charged in the car, it must be the battery. The phone was really hot at this point. I turned the phone off, flipped it over and took the battery out to see if there was anything wrong, of course, there wasn't, so I put the battery back in and attempted to turn the phone on...
It doesn't turn on. At all. And it won't charge. I've tried three different chargers and none of them have worked. I've also taken the sim card out and the memory card and nothing. At this point it is cooled down, but still won't turn on, nor will it charge. I can't change back to my other phone because I don't have any of the account information. I'm not sure if the battery is fried or if it's the phone that's being dumb. It's really frustrating me. I can't get a new battery until my dad gives it to me. The phone still had about 40% charge when it stopped working. Any suggestions?
-I'm using the larger battery, I don't know what it's called.

It is called an extended battery. Here is my question about it. Did you buy it from Verizon or an approved OEM?. I ask because I bought a extended battery from eBay.....big mistake. It killed my radio signal and had nothing but problems for the week I used it. Went back to the stock battery......problems gone. My reccomendation is to not use aftermarket stuff...buy Verizon if you must. The expection is my car charger which I bought at Walmart and have had good luck with it.

It sounds like your battery might be fried. I would go get a new one or order one. You can order a REZOUND battery....they work and fit the Thunderbolt. That is what I am running right now in mine without issue.

 

[Jude526]

Where did you buy the thunderbolt. If a private person and something is wrong you're out of luck. If an insurance replacement then there is a chance for a replacement. And as mentioned I also don't recommend off market batteries.

Sent from my Thunderbolt using Tapatalk

 

[ninetales]

I've held it down for as long as 2 minutes. The other time I turned it on, it turned on within 5 seconds.

 

[katmann2005]

I agree.. a new Verizon battery, regular or extended, is the first and cheapest thing to try. If the actual charging port in the phone is loose..that could be a big part of the problem. Only easy solution I can thing of would be to go to an induction charging setup. They can be had for around 75bucks give or take I think . good luck

 

[dpham00]

you can try an external battery charger. I bought one directly from Verizon for $5 months back, but not sure if they are still selling it. If not, 3rd party chargers exist

 

[wazup7]

I've experienced the "phone is stone-dead, won't even begin charging" problem with my TBolt (about 16 months old). I've heard that putting the dead battery in the freezer for a while, then taking it out, making sure it's dry, and charging it then will actually work. This worked once for me--left phone on the charger for a half a day, and when it didn't start charging, froze the battery and tried again and it worked.

BUT...that wasn't my real problem with the batteries...

In the time I've been using my phone, it has "killed" 2 stock Verizon-supplied batteries. By "killed", I mean the battery physically bloats or swells up. When this happens, there are two consequences--the back cover does not close properly, nor does it make proper contact with the antenna connections, which causes the radio to suffer badly, and also the battery life gets all jacked up. It will go from 100% to 30% in like 1 hour, then shut off, then when you turn it back on it has 80%, then it shuts off...etc. I once shut my phone off with 40%, plugged it in for like 6 hours, and when I turned it back on, it reported 25%! It frustrated me greatly...

So completely random battery-percentage reporting, random reboots when there is plenty of juice left, and random 4G, 3G, 1x, no service switching. I have actually not seen any reports on the boards that are like this one, but after the second dead battery, I can't imagine it's just me...I probably didn't look hard enough

So like I said, this happened to two of my stock batteries, using stock chargers, stock rom, no overclocking/undervolting, etc. I got frustrated the second time it happened, so I went to Amazon and got two 1550mAh Anker brand batteries with an included external universal wall charger (charges pretty much any cell battery that has + and - on the same edge, less than 2 inches apart. Also, the stock batteries are 1400mAh, so these have a slightly higher capacity, but are the same size as the non-extended batteries. The whole order cost like $16.

So I fully charged both new batteries using the universal charger, put one in my phone, and like night and day, the phone started lasting about 30+ hours on a single full charge. (I'm a moderate user--usually have about 5 hours of screen time on each charge now). When one dies, I swap it with the other one that's in the charger, and get another 30+ hours on that charge, so I don't really ever plug my phone in anymore. It forces me to reboot the phone every day, which is also a healthy practice for Androids in general, and these batteries haven't bloated (yet...).

I'm not affiliated with the company that makes these batteries by the way, but they *completely* resolved any qualms I had about the battery life on my TBolt. Even with a fresh stock battery, I would get maybe 18 hours (sometimes 24, sometimes 6). These batteries are consistent and cheap.

I know some people don't like the idea of aftermarket batteries, because they might be skimping on the internal circuitry that controls charging, but for $8 a battery, I really don't care.

 

[bigberries]

I have this problem. I got an Asurion replacement in July. Last night, while plugged in to the charger, the green light that was on went off and now nothing will get it to respond. I called Asurion and after a bunch of tests they are sending me a new phone.

They had me pull the battery and then press the power button three times (go figure?) then plug it back in with no response with and without the battery. (I have three fully charged batteries and none would work) Oddly, they never suggested the hard reset option (Power plus the down volume) The only possible relevant observation I would have is that I recently started having problems with the phone randomly rebooting. Never had that problem until getting this
Asurion replacement.