Nexus 5 won't turn on or charge, no bootloop

[finnzz]

I've had my Nexus 5 since it was released in 2013. About two years ago I started getting a dreaded bootloop and determined it was the power switch failing. I had the power switch replaced and all my problems went away.

About 6 months ago I started seeing the symptoms of a failing power switch. Random reboots which would go into a bootloop which I could stop by smacking my phone or cleaning it with video cleaner.

But then I that was getting less effective so I finally had the power switch replaced again. I have tested the switch itself, and it does close the circuit when pressed. But I am still unable to turn on my phone. When its plugged in I dont see the charging battery icon either.

But if I let it sit for a while, and hold down on the power button occassionally it will turn on and I will see the google logo, but then it shuts down. I can also hold down power+vol down and somtimes turn on in recovery mode before the phone turns off.

I can only seem to keep the phone on for 1-4 seconds before it turns off.

I'm assuming that there must be some hardware damage somewhere. Perhaps its thermal related? I havent tried freezing or heating the logicboard yet, but am now considering that. I need to boot it up long enough to transfer a couple files.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what I might try?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Have you considered replacing the battery (or at least testing it to make sure it's still good)?

 

[finnzz]

Thanks Diddy. I do actually have a second new battery. I tried swapping it and was able to power on the phone into the bootloader without it shutting down. But if I tried to boot normally it would stop at the google logo and then reset and repeat, a sort of bootloop. But it was odd because I could see an ocassional artifact appear on the screen while loading which I had not observed before. I was also not able to boot into recovery mode, it would just bootloop. So I turned off the phone and and completely reassembled the phone with the shielding and the guard that holds logic board in. But then the phone would no longer turn on at all.

I swapped the batteries back and forth to try to get it to turn on again. Finally I put the original battery back in and rapidly pressed the power button 10 or so times, and magically the phone booted up and loaded with all the apps. I've now copied all the files I needed. But im afraid that if I turn the phone off it wont turn on again.

The fact that pressing the power button rapidly seemed to get it to turn, seems similar to the known issue with the power switch going bad. But im sure that the switch itself is fine, it was brand new, and actually the second button that I had soldered on in the last week. I also checked continuity to make sure the switch wasnt faulty, and that the ground and main were correctly connected, with the circuit closing when the button was depressed.

So I dont know if there is another component beyond the power switch that begins to fail over time? It seems that my problem is related to the power on circuit. I dont know if there is much else I can do. For now im just keeping it on and charging to make sure the battery is full when I try to reset it.

 

[B. Diddy]

Wow, it sounds like you've McGyver'd the heck out of that thing! It sure sounds like there's something wrong with some component responsible for powering on, but this is way beyond my scope of knowledge -- sorry! Hopefully some other wizard can help.

I'll move this to the Nexus 5 forum for more specific traffic.