Why is my phone not charging/turning on?

[AC Question]

Why is my phone not charging/turning on.

My phone is a sony ericsson xperia m. When the battery died on Sunday night but i didn't get a chance to charge it until this evening.

When I first charged it, the led kept flashing red but wouldn't switch on. I tried the power on/volume up as well as power on/volume down but with no joy. I also took the charger out and held power button so as to drain the battery completely.

But now when i put it on the charger the led is flashing yellow but still won't switch on. I can't seem to find anything on internet as to what the problem is? Does anyone have a similar experience of this or can anyone help me fix it?

Thanks, Paddy

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Why is my phone not charging/turning on.

Welcome to Android Central! The battery is probably irreversibly dead, which happens if you allow a lithium battery to completely discharge. When your battery runs out and the phone automatically shuts down, there is actually still a little bit of charge left in the battery, which prevents it from completely dying. But when this happens, it is important to charge it up as soon as possible, because otherwise, the battery will continue to discharge. Once it hits true zero, it's gone.

Fortunately, it looks like your phone's battery is removable, so try a new one.

 

[Rukbat]

Re: Why is my phone not charging/turning on.

Assuming it didn't quite reach that ppoint yet, charging a dead lithium battery for an hour or two puts just about enough charge into the battery to turn the phone off. Plug in the charger and don't even look at the phone for 24 hours. If that doesn't give you at least enough charge to get to the homescreen before the phone shuts off, you'll need a new battery. It's not user-replaceable so unless you've had experience working inside cellphones, I'd suggest paying to have it replaced if that's what it needs. (Doing it yourself, breaking something and paying to get that fixed could cost more than a new phone.)

And, as B. Diddy said, you shouldn't let the battery run down that far - especially in a phone in which you can't just pop off the back cover and replace it. When it gets down to 40%-60% is the time to charge it if you want to keep it running as long as possible. If you need more than that to get through the day, buy one of those external, plug-into-the-microUSB-port, batteries. They make them as large as 20,000mAh, which will give you about 12 times the charge-to-charge time that the internal one will. (IOW, if the internal battery gets down to 40% in half a day, a 20,000mAh battery will last about 6 days between charges at the 40% point.) They make them smaller too. You can figure out how much you want to spend against how long you want a charge to last and get a battery that will power the phone for a whole day between charges, 2 days, etc.

But there's only one thing you can do to a cellphone that's worse than letting the battery constantly discharge to the point that the phone tells you to recharge it, and that's dropping it in a lake while it's turned on. Or driving over it with a tracked vehicle. Or smashing it with a hammer. That's how bad letting the battery constantly run down is. (As a dealer, I made a lot of profit selling batteries - some people just won't listen, and the same people came in every 6 months for a new battery.)

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Why is my phone not charging/turning on.

Or smashing it with a hammer.

Aw, dangit, I thought smashing it with a hammer was a good thing!

 

[belodion]

Aw, dangit, I thought smashing it with a hammer was a good thing!

A friend of mine once tried destroying an old tennis racquet with a hammer, forgetting that the whole purpose of a tennis racquet is to bounce things back very strongly. She still has her teeth, but it was a close thing. How we all laughed.

Also, I've learnt a lot from Rukbat's posts, about batteries and other things, and I'm sure that there are many members who have in fact listened to what he has to say, and acted on it. You may tell him not to worry. His knowledge combined with practical experience are much appreciated.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[B. Diddy]

Rukbat is our technical guru.