How can I tell if the current issue is the battery?

[greenace92]

So, my N920 started to act up. My primary email account (GMAIL) did this weird thing were instead of showing the newest message receive count, eg. 13, or 1, it was showing like every single unoppened mail so the count was 999... the numbers were overflowing out of the small square tile... that does not seem normal.

I am also concerned about something else, sorry to deviate but... this was a photo I took when I first bought my N920, my current 920 is one sent to me after I sent in my original. The photos don't seem to be comparable. I'm not sure if it was the light on that particular day but... I am somewhat bummed that these brilliant photos aren't happening anymore... Well, I would compare current photos but I can't access my phone haha

I had once entertained the thought that perhaps, these phone companies or the cellular service providers purposely made their phones malfunction thereby having the original "good" phones sent back to the store/factory and a crappier one is sent to you as your actual phone. I had an Infuse 4G a few years ago and I kid you not, I dropped the phone face down about 2 feet and the screen was destroyed. That was the first one "original" then I was sent a "new" phone...

Back to the battery, I initially tried a reset from the settings menu. I have to admit that I didn't have my phone plugged in but the battery was fine, my phone lasts basically the entire day if not more... so when the initial reset attempt failed... I tried random methods of reseting, volume, volume + power + camera... nothing. Now the screen is stuck on the red battery, when the phone is plugged in, this icon is flashing with the charging symbol (chord overlay). If I try to reset the phone while the phone is plugged in, the gears are shown but this process has taken overnight and no end has yet to be seen.

I am not sure if the battery is the problem... did I brick my phone ? *Gasp!* :shocked:

This would be a bummer as I am a linux user and so the Windows OS flashing may not be applicable to me... last time I tried this on a Windows XP computer I don't think it worked... at that time the solution was to let the phone finish charging... right now though I am not sure if it is the battery. I just disassembled my phone (for case replacement) and I disconnected the battery, I noticed that without the battery, even if the phone is plugged in, it won't start!

Any thoughts?

 

[greenace92]

I just performed an all-four-button reset with the phone plugged in, this showed me a gears screen.

I left the phone for an hour or two and I noticed the screen was backlit but dim. The screen color was black. When I pushed the power button, the battery sign came up.

I don't understand. How could the problem be battery? It has been fine always until I tried to do this reset. Though yesterday I did buy one of those walmart USB car chargers but I would think that a device as advanced as this would have some sort of power regulator for random chargers.

I measured the battery voltage, 3.55 volts. Seems healthy to me.
I wasn't able to measure the capacitance though. Maybe my battery has false voltage reading, as soon as you start to draw a current it fails... or, it's an OS issue.

 

[greenace92]

Thanks to cooltaj :

This needed to be documented for bricking or spinning gears problem on L920

Okay, I contacted Customer Care chat. They said:

Normally, it takes only 30 minutes at most to reset it. In the event that it would take longer, like what happened here, you can press and hold both on the volume down button and power key for about 10 seconds.

The phone should then reboot. If the phone would still be stuck to spinning gears, here is a hardware reset that you need to press.

Input these keys on the following sequence, press them one key at a time:
Volume up
Volume down
Power key
Volume down

Make sure that you try this while the phone is charged.

When I did this... the gears continued to spin for about 5 minutes, but then the phone restarted and made it back to the "Welcome to your phone" screen. Success!