Battery pulls do not help your droid

[ikith]

The droid is not a blackberry quit pulling the battery out of the phone. If you need to restart the phone turn it off then back on this does the same thing as a battery pull but without any negative side effects from pulling the battery!

You are doing more hurt then help when you pull the battery so stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it!

 

[entwined82]

Ive had twice where it was necessary. The power on/off button doesn't always work if its locked up.

Agreed most of the time though it is completely unnecessary to pull it out.

 

[johnolesen]

agreed. i try to avoid telling my customers that.

there are times when its nessecary though.

 

[Chris Kerrigan]

+1. I've only had to do a battery pull once, and that was when the power button would not power down the device after it locked up.

 

[TootNBerry]

My Droid has locked up and wouldn't respond to anything battery pull very necessary at that moment..

 

[Cory Streater]

The droid is not a blackberry quit pulling the battery out of the phone. If you need to restart the phone turn it off then back on this does the same thing as a battery pull but without any negative side effects from pulling the battery!

You are doing more hurt then help when you pull the battery so stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it!

I have 2 batteries, and go back and forth between the 2 throughout the day. Before I swap them out, I power down via the power button. I do this because it *feels* like a cleaner way of shutting down the system.

Having said that, I'd like to hear your reasons for encouraging a power down. I'm unable to find a single warning in the user documentation about battery pulls, nor have I read anyone post that their phone failed to restart after a battery pull.

 

[prometheus]

Thank for offering any advice to help my droid run better and not do any harm. But, I'm always interested in "WHY". I agree it's definitely NOT a Blackberry, and I have to work hard to get that blackberry mentality out of my head.

But, I rarely do / do not do something without knowing the reasons for it. I trust that you have our best interests in mind and offer the advice to help... and I appreciate that a lot. I'm just interested in why battery pulls are no good for the device.

 

[CSI Guy]

According to the manual, if all else fails, battery pull.

 

[j7469]

According to the manual, if all else fails, battery pull.

Good to know that the manual references this. This way if a battery pull does damage the phone, at least we can say the manual said it was OK.

 

[Adawg1203]

There are times when a battery pull is necessary and doing so will NOT harm the device. A battery pull is a HARD reset and when your device just doesn't quite act right then I suggest doing so. Powering down the device is NOT the same thing.....

 

[DeeMat]

The only time I pulled the battery was to see what was behind it... On my Storm1 that was a different story.

 

[willymakit]

The only time I pulled the battery was to see what was behind it... On my Storm1 that was a different story.

For sure....

 

[Newps]

A battery pull is not a hard reset, it's a soft reset, the same as cycling with the power button. A hard reset brings the phone back to the same condition as when you first pulled it out of the box.

 

[Dapke36]

The only time I pulled the battery was to see what was behind it... On my Storm1 that was a different story.

Preaching to the choir here.

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

Powering down via the button allows the ramdisk (a "fake" file system written to memory when system boots) to flush in the correct order, and writes any permanent data to the system. Pulling the battery just quits everything.

Unless you've been fiddling in the /dev or /sys or /proc directory there's very little chance you can harm anything by pulling the battery, but it's not necessary.

If your phone locks up, and you're rooted/monkeying around with it, here's my best suggestion:
Plug it in to your PC
type the following from the command prompt while in the SDK tools folder:

adb shell
logcat -d > /sdcard/frozen.txt
reboot

This reboots (if possible) and saves an error log on your sd card as frozen.txt . This is v-e-r-y helpful when testing something, or generally doing things the phone wasn't designed to do

 

[stuckingoo]

Isn't the battery pull pretty much the last resort anyway? Who wants to pull it if it isn't necessary. I've had two lockups that didn't respond to the on/off button so out goes the battery. And since I've got a tight fitting glove case on my Droid, it ain't a lot of fun taking that off first.

 

[takeshi]

A battery pull is not a hard reset, it's a soft reset, the same as cycling with the power button. A hard reset brings the phone back to the same condition as when you first pulled it out of the box.

Not necessarily -- depends on the device. For example, hard resets (i.e. battery pull) on BB's do not affect data as a wipe was distinct and different from a reset. I wouldn't refer to a battery pull on a Droid as a soft reset either. There are some cases where a battery pull and cycling power with the power button do not have the same results.

 

[CSI Guy]

Straight out of the Owners Manual. Troubleshooting
we’re here to help
Crash recovery
In the unlikely event that your phone stops responding
to taps and key presses, try a quick reset. Remove the
back cover and battery (“Assemble & charge” on
page 3), then replace and switch your phone on as
usual.

 

[tdawgui]

The droid is not a blackberry quit pulling the battery out of the phone.

It annoys me that people are so gung-ho about jumping on the "the droid is not a blackberry" bandwagon... WE KNOW THIS. IT WAS OBVIOUS WHEN IT WORKED OUT OF THE BOX!

but seriously... SOMETIMES, it is pretty necessary to pull the battery (i do like gbhil's suggestion though!)... I've had a few of these times, especially when i was monkeying with rooting and customizing the phone this weekend. I've also experienced it a few times when swype (the app I don't have *wink wink*) blew up...

So here is my suggestion if your phone freezes up...

1. Try holding down the power button and rebooting, if that doesn't work...

2. Try holding down ALT+SHIFT+DEL and rebooting, if that doesn't work...

3. Follow gbhil's suggestion, if that doesn't apply, you don't have a computer nearby or if it just doesn't reboot (i've had a few instances I couldn't force reboot from my computer)...

4. Pull that battery. OMG DId He juST SAY that? yes... i did.

 

[primodroid]

The droid is not a blackberry quit pulling the battery out of the phone. If you need to restart the phone turn it off then back on this does the same thing as a battery pull but without any negative side effects from pulling the battery!

You are doing more hurt then help when you pull the battery so stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it!

Tell that to Verizon Technical Service...as I had my phone in recently when the tech was about to perform a battery pull on my phone...I asked the tech that shouldnt you turn off the phone first before pulling battery? The tech just shook his head and continued to pull the battery. I asked whether or not it would damage the phone and the tech said it would not damage the phone at all. The tech also said that a battery pull with the PHONE ON is the only way to perform a battery pull when toubleshooting phone.