Curve 8320 Won't run off of battery. Tried EVERYTHING (not a noob). Really need help
- I know this is a long post, but I could really use the help, so thanks in advance to anyone patient enough to read through all this. I just wanted to be as detailed as possible.
OK. I personally have a storm on Verizon, so this was a rescue mission for a friend. Her curve had been working fine. No problems. Wasn't dropped. No water damage. It turned off one day. At first it would say it was charging (ligtning bolt icon on home screen with phone booted up) but it would just always say the battery was at 0% in the status screen no matter how many days it was on the charger for. As soon as the charger was removed, it would throw up the "battery drained .. shutting off handheld" message and turn off. On a batt pull tho, it would usually have enough power to get past the initial 3 second red led to the part where the hour glass comes up before it turned off. So you could stick the charger in before it died and it would finish booting. And yes, I tried all different chargers to make sure that wasnt it (both 5V 550mA and 5V 750mA). Same results .... That was INITIALLY!!
After a few days of monkeying around with it, it got to the point where it would not get to the hour glass screen, so the phone would not boot. Only give the plain white screen with the giant battery and lightning bolt (but of course it would never actually charge to a point where it would turn on). So I tried going to a verizon store and asking them to try a new battery for me so I could eliminate that as a cause. Same results. So the battery was not the issue. I also tried the battery from this phone in another curve, and it worked fine. Said it was 100% and worked without issue in the other handheld confirming that it was charging fine when in the phone, but that the phone was unaware of its charge state and unable to use its power.
At this point I assumed that somehow the battery was not delivering voltage to the motherboard. So i busted out my T5 and T6 and tore it down to inspect the battery connector. Everything appeared in good order, but i cleaned it just to be safe. Bent the connectors out ... did basically everything possible in order to eliminate any variables along those lines.
I WAS able to get it to do a back up with DM back when it was booting, so that in combination with the fact that the lighting bolt appears and that the phone will run off the charger and that the battery is in fact charged, makes it seem to me that the MiniUSB charging/Data port must be in good working order, however I have no real way of knowing. But even if it were bad ... why would a known good and charged battery not work in the phone. So ... It cant be that. That only left a firmware problem as a possibility in my mind.
So, since it was running 4.2.Something.Ancient ... I FORCE LOADED 4.5.0.162 (East Asia) on it with apploader to see if that would possibly solve all this. Now we get to the weird part .....
With the software updated, the phone will now boot again. Everytime. But once fully booted it will throw the "battery drained...." message and shut off. But I can batt pull it and boot it successfully all the live-long-day.
I know the obvious answer is to warranty it, or trash it, but it is out of warranty and not insured. So, any help or suggestions would be of great help. And thank you for taking the time to read this very long post. :-)08-21-09 02:56 AMLike 0 - Well since I read the whole post ill respond lol. You did everything I could think of so unfortunatly my only answer is the obvious one, new phone time. It sounds to me that it is a hardware issue from the motherboard. Even though the connectors are good, it isn't picking up the battery somewhere along the way. Its too bad its not insured that's for sure. Sorry I don't have a better answer.
Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com08-21-09 03:13 AMLike 0 - Try wiping the BB with JL commander:
http://forums.crackberry.com/f3/how-...l_cmder-53502/
Then take the battery out of the phone for a few hours.
Then use this procedure:
http://forums.crackberry.com/f3/how-...ckberry-32322/
Using the /nojvm instruction with javaloader will load the OS without trying to backup any settings from the BB.
Even though you are doing two things to start from a clean slate, I really think this problem is a hardware problem. It probably won't work.
Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.comLast edited by xliderider; 08-21-09 at 03:20 AM.
08-21-09 03:16 AMLike 0 - Try wiping the BB with JL commander:
http://forums.crackberry.com/f3/how-...l_cmder-53502/
Then take the battery out of the phone for a few hours.
Then use this procedure:
http://forums.crackberry.com/f3/how-...ckberry-32322/
Using the /nojvm instruction with javaloader will load the OS without trying to backup any settings from the BB.
Even though you are doing two things to start from a clean slate, I really think this problem is a hardware problem. It probably won't work.
Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com08-21-09 03:44 AMLike 0 - 08-21-09 03:49 AMLike 0
- You say the BB was never dropped, but there have been many who have the same problem after the BB is dropped.
A last ditch thing to try is to drop the BB onto a firm, but not too hard surface like a wood/vinyl floor, a countertop, from about a foot. Laugh if you want, but the resulting "shock" just might get the BB working again.
Like I said, last ditch effort.
Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com08-21-09 03:55 AMLike 0 -
- Well ... I tried Dropping it on all four sides and all four corners. The good news ... it didn't break it. The bad news ... it didn't fix the problem. LOL. Someone on here has to have some knowledge of this motherboard and where to look for a problem like this.08-21-09 04:45 AMLike 0
- C'mon. I don't mean to mindlessly bump my own thread, but i know there are people out there modding these phones that know more about the motherboard in these things than I do. I'm hoping one of them will stumble across this thread.08-22-09 05:31 AMLike 0
- You said you tried everything but have you tried switching another battery to it? Perhaps the phone is DEAD.08-22-09 05:36 AMLike 0
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OP, here's my ? for you: did you have Verizon charge the battery before they gave it to you? Could have been a dead battery.
Only other thing I can think it might be would be a single snapped wire from USB to battery, or the highway in between.
ah-HA! I BET I KNOW WHAT IT IS!! I'll bet one of the battery lines is broken slightly. Get a voltmeter if you can and test EACH LINE. That will tell you where the problem lies. 4.2 had worse power management than 4.5, if I remember correctly. Therefore, I wonder if 4.2 wasn't getting enough power, but 4.5 was to boot it up. Then, as the radios kicked on, etc etc, the power was again too low - dead battery message.
I'll bet that's your problem... the line somehow got messed up going b/t the pins and motherboard. Proably one of the single ones, so it's got 75% of battery power.
LET US KNOW!!!! (Or me, anyways).08-22-09 06:02 AMLike 0 - Alright, ... well I got reall excited when I read your post, cuz it was the first real good idea in a week! LOL So, I pulled it apart and tested the battery connector. But .. alas .. 0 ohms of resistance accross all four battery terminals.
But it led me to start checking more down that avenue. So, I started booting the phone with individual terminals of the battery taped off one by one, to see if having any of them not in contact would result in the same condition. My thiniking was ... that having any one contact on the battery not in contact with the motherboard should result in some strange behavior of some kind so, ... if I could find one that, when not in contact, led to the phone working the exact same as it does ... then I would know which path is not working.
The Second contact from the left, if covered up, results in the phone doing the exact same thing it always has. So, now I just need to know where it goes. You cannot trace the four battery paths on the motherboard as it is two sided, so on the back side you see only the keyboard connectors, not the circuit paths leading away from the battery contacts.
I tried covering up all four contacts on my storm battery and each time it resulted in the phone either not booting, or not turning on at all. So it's obvious to me that all four paths are needed.
When using a volt meter on the battery, the three contacts on the left all work as a ground when tested agains the far right contact which is plainly labeled as Positive. But they all show different voltages. Anyone on here know what the different voltages are for? Or which parts of the phone are supplied power from which of the three different ground contacts on the battery?08-24-09 04:36 AMLike 0 - I'm following this with interest. I just had a similar problem happen -- I got Force Radio On, and I can actually use my T-Mobile Curve as long as it is attached to a power supply. I can't scan for wireless, but I can hook into it if I know the name of the network. It does everything it ought to, as long as it's connected to power. The second that the power supply is removed, boom! Battery drained, shutting off.
The idea of checking the terminals by taping them off was brilliant. I too am amazed that there isn't someone here or anywhere who knows the solution to this problem. I have actually run into another person who had it happen, but they were warranted and insured. Sadly, I am not.
Edited to add: Also, I started having the problem of the headset plug being intermittent about two or three weeks before I had the whole device go south. I did notice that if I moistened just a bit (licked) the plug, it worked fine for about thirty seconds or so. None of the usual fixes for that problem did anything. I wonder if they might be related some how.
Thanks for the completeness of the process here. I watch with bated breath, or eyes, or something.
Cheers,
PixLast edited by pixsmith; 10-01-09 at 12:29 PM.
10-01-09 11:38 AMLike 0 - Don't you know another friend who has the same handset and has insurance on it and get them to send it away for repair.
Might work. Might Not.
Worth a try before you send it up to the BlackBerry Pearly Gates.10-01-09 12:15 PMLike 0
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Curve 8320 Won't run off of battery. Tried EVERYTHING (not a noob). Really need help
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