My charger killed my nexus 4!!!

[SHADMOS]

Hi All,
A quick background...

I noticed that when I use gps on my phone in the car and plugged in my car charger, I noticed that it was not charging...just the battery was discharging at a slower rate. I go to best buy and ask what I can do and the guy suggested a car charger that gives a higher output. I ASK HIM..WILL THAT HURT MY BATTERY...the man says..no. I buy this charger that has an output of 2.1 when my old one was around 1600. At first things were working beautifully. I could confidently use my gps on my phone and not worry if it will die even if it was plugged in.

Fast forward 3 months, I notice that when I plug my phone in it would power down and reboot. I was confused, but then it would boot back up and things were working perfect so I plugged it in again and things were perfect.

Until last week...

I plug it in and it shuts off and I figured it was just tripping out again so I leave it to reboot by itself and things would be normal. Except....15 minutes pass and the screen is still off.

I start to panic.

I hold the power button and nothing. I decide to plug the charger in my cousins phone and his shuts off too...so I think..hmm...the charger...

My cousin is a software developer and he thinks that maybe the charger shorted the battery and it just needs to be plugged in. I leave it plugged in for 30 minutes and attempt to turn it on again and nothing. I'm freaking out now. I call Google and they take me through this whole hold the power button and volume down button to power in safe boot or whatever and that does nothing. Now at this time when I hold the power button the led light is flashing red. I do a quick google search and I'm seeing that this has happened to people, but it has come back to life. the phone is completely unresponsive. Nothing works aside from the STUPID blinking red light. Google was surprisingly helpful and sent me a new replacement which came in 3 days and now i just have to send my old phone back. I bought my phone when it first came out on Nov 13 so I thought i would be getting a refurbished phone, but I got a new one! (YAAY).

my point of all this....
the charger matters people. No matter what people say....BE CAREFUL OF WHAT CHARGER YOU USE AND CHECK THE OUTPUT.....and Bestbuy people know nothing...

Oh yes...Happy Mothers day

 

[IAmSixNine]

FYI, your fist red flag should have been when you plugged in the charger and the phone shut off or rebooted. thats NOT normal operation.
More then likely your original charger was NOT 1600mAh. The stock charger for a Nexus 4 is 1 Amp. The devices are also manufactured with current limiting capabilities to prevent them from over charging and thus over heating which can damage a unit. Over heating is bad for the unit and battery.
So the 2.1Ah charger is fine, because the device will only draw 1 amp @ 5 volts DC. If your old charger couldnt keep up with usage my guess is it was not rated at 1 amp. That or your device was drawing some serous power while you were using it.
If your cousin thought that the charger shorted the battery why on earth would you plug it back in? A shorted battery with a charger attached could start a fire. LOL Needless to say the battery was not shorted out. Now your charger definitely went bad.
This wasnt an issue of the Best Buy Guy. More like a faulty charger and user error. Remember if your charger causes your phone to power off or power cycle when you plug it in, STOP using that charger as that is not normal.

 

[TheLegoman]

Unless the charger is some really shoddy 2.1 amp charger, there is no way that it could have destroyed your phone. If you buy a charger, any charger, make sure you buy a high quality one which will not short out your battery. Some of these cheaper chargers are made with low quality components and cheap construction. A 2.1 amp charger will not short out a phone or overcharge the battery, since the charging algorithm is controlled by the phone.

 

[Tall Mike 2145]

Video killed the radio star too, btw.

 

[Eric Matic]

Video killed the radio star too, btw.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! So true...

Back on the subject; just get a GPS unit and use that instead of your superphone, end of story.

 

[SHADMOS]

FYI, your fist red flag should have been when you plugged in the charger and the phone shut off or rebooted. thats NOT normal operation.
More then likely your original charger was NOT 1600mAh. The stock charger for a Nexus 4 is 1 Amp. The devices are also manufactured with current limiting capabilities to prevent them from over charging and thus over heating which can damage a unit. Over heating is bad for the unit and battery.
So the 2.1Ah charger is fine, because the device will only draw 1 amp @ 5 volts DC. If your old charger couldnt keep up with usage my guess is it was not rated at 1 amp. That or your device was drawing some serous power while you were using it.
If your cousin thought that the charger shorted the battery why on earth would you plug it back in? A shorted battery with a charger attached could start a fire. LOL Needless to say the battery was not shorted out. Now your charger definitely went bad.
This wasnt an issue of the Best Buy Guy. More like a faulty charger and user error. Remember if your charger causes your phone to power off or power cycle when you plug it in, STOP using that charger as that is not normal.

I didn't make the correlation that the charger caused the phone to power off the first time. The second time is when I made the connection and didn't use that charger anymore but the second time is when it never turned back on. I used another charger to charge and nothing happened. Also, the charger had no visible fault in it. It looked just like when I bought it. And the person I called at Google also advised me to plug it in into a different charger and let it charge for a bit. 3 people confirmed the charger rating so . The phone never got hot when charging either.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[SHADMOS]

Why would I buy a gps .... This defeats the purpose of a smartphone....Google maps is amazing

Posted via Android Central App

 

[cheeta186]

Agreed, I will never use a GPS unit, it's unnecessary. Now that being said, if others want to that's perfectly fine. But I will stick with my phone as a GPS for the few times I use it in that way.