[Foreverunique]

I�ll start from the beginning, about mid-February I went to use my playbook after not using it for 2 weeks and found that the battery was dead (no surprise) so I put it on charge using the provided yellow tipped charger and left it, I come back to it a day later and find out that it did not charge and was still sitting at 0%. at this point I knew something was wrong so I decided to "Google it" after hours of reading "possible" fixes and trying them everything from connecting it to the computer to a hard reset and even going out to buy a rapid charger ..... to my disappointment none of the above worked, sooo I was forced to call black berry support and got put through to a call centre and was asked to repeat some over the things above, note at this stage I already reset it so it was at factory settings and gave up trying to charge it.

bb support: please connect it to the pc to try and try and do the whole fix a bricked pb ect

me : ummm well you have 2 issues, one : its flat and the usb from the pc does not have enough power to light it up and two : I�m at factory settings and it won�t allow me to update since I have less than 35% battery so I�m guessing the software will have the same issue

bb support: please hold

me: twiddle my thumbs for 15mins or so

bb support: ** line starts breaking up, I hear every 2 words ** so to paraphrase it, we will start the RMA, did all the legal stuff even tho I could not hear or understand her

me: please just email the info I can�t hear u blah blah

bb support: ok, thanks blah blah



Got the email with all the info regarding RMA and 2 days later I got the box to send it back in. ( I must say, BEST rma experience ever !! cool little padded box that the pb fitted perfectly in and all the instructions rather simple )

Sent it off a few days later.

Got an email from the bb support asking if everything was going smoothly and if I needed anything else.

Just checked the status of my rma online and found out it was repaired and on its way back to me, so the whole process took about 3 weeks ( should have been 2 weeks but I was really lazy with going down to the post office to send it back )

thought I would just put this up for all those people with the same problem, that are bashing their heads on their keyboards right now.

*** note: from all my searching few things came up, don�t know how true they are but there was a few people saying it was a software issue that creates the problem, something about the software not shutting the pb down when its battery is to low and then the battery not being able to take charge again after reaching 0%

[Hgouck]

Is there a question in here somewhere? Sounds like you tried what you could and got it fixed. I am sorry you had to go through the ordeal. I have not heard much about the condition you have described.

[Foreverunique]

no question, as i said spent hours looking for how to fix it with no luck so i decided to post my experiance on how i got mine fixed, If i found a post with someone with the same issue that was able to resolve the problem, it would have saved me hours of searching, i guess there are 2 problems not everyone posts how they fixed it after they got it working and there are so many people that think they know how to fix the problem and just want their 2 cents thrown in. makes the whole process of finding a solution very hard.

hope that made sense i ramble ..........

[Hgouck]

I will ask a question. Has anyone else experience this problem? It would be good to know if others have and if you found A solution without having to return the playbook.

[AggreX]

My PB exhibited some strange behaviors when the battery level was extremely low...i.e. unresponsive and intermittent led signals. Fortunately it accepted a recharge on the rapid charger. Now I make it a point to recharge whenever the PB battery gets below 25% to avoid any issues at home and carry the oem charger at work

[FF22]

There's apparently some sequence of plug in charger for xx minutes (seconds?), unplug for x, replug, etc for a series that triggers a "charging fix"

Someone should be able to quote the process. Hopefully, yours will return fully fixed.

Searched my notes - sorry no attribution:

Do a stack charge on it. Plug it in to the charger for about 2 minutes. Then unplug it for about 2 minutes. Repeat 6-12 times. I was told over customer support (when I had to do this to my moms PlayBook for the same flashing leds) that the hardware requires a certain amount of battery for it to recognize the power supply is plugged in to charge it. If it dies so low that the hardware can't recognize it, then it doesn't charge it. Doing it this way will slowly charge it a little at a time until it gets enough battery for that hardware to recognize it's charging. From there it will charge like normal.

[tofnow]

There's apparently some sequence of plug in charger for xx minutes (seconds?), unplug for x, replug, etc for a series that triggers a "charging fix"

Someone should be able to quote the process. Hopefully, yours will return fully fixed.

Searched my notes - sorry no attribution:

Do a stack charge on it. Plug it in to the charger for about 2 minutes. Then unplug it for about 2 minutes. Repeat 6-12 times. I was told over customer support (when I had to do this to my moms PlayBook for the same flashing leds) that the hardware requires a certain amount of battery for it to recognize the power supply is plugged in to charge it. If it dies so low that the hardware can't recognize it, then it doesn't charge it. Doing it this way will slowly charge it a little at a time until it gets enough battery for that hardware to recognize it's charging. From there it will charge like normal.

I'm sorry but if that is what RIM designers did then they need to go back to EE Design school 101 anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. Just not right.

[hpjrt]

I'm sorry but if that is what RIM designers did then they need to go back to EE Design school 101 anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. Just not right.

Now did you post this to be helpful? Did you want to expand on this to give us the benefit of your own expertise? You are, I take it, an expert in hardware/software design? You can't just tempt us all with "EE Design school 101" and leave us hanging ...

*sigh*

[peter9477]

Now did you post this to be helpful? Did you want to expand on this to give us the benefit of your own expertise? You are, I take it, an expert in hardware/software design? You can't just tempt us all with "EE Design school 101" and leave us hanging ...

*sigh*

He's right though, hpjrt. I'm an engineer so I know for a fact that engineers never make mistakes, never make trade-offs, never ship anything with rare corner cases which they plan to fix later, basically never do anything wrong.

(They're very handsome too, and fun to be with. The only real downside is how they make lesser people feel... well, lesser.)

The fact that the RIM designers produced something with an imperfection is astounding, and a clear sign that they haven't even finished engineering school, so the suggestion they go back to EE 101 is certainly a good one.

[FF22]

My undergraduate major building, Biology, was right next "dork" to the Engineering School. Peter is WRONG but he's an engineer so what else is new! Life Science all the way!

[bllbored]

Arts n Science all the way...engineers are too friendly with their tools

[Hgouck]

School of Hard Knocks here. Graduate with a degree in Determination. We were taught if it didn't work one way try another. We were also taught find someone with the knowledge you want and learn from them.(well actually you do not ever graduate )

[Spencerdl]

Sooooo I guess the lesson here is to never let your Playbook battery get to 0%, and avoid RIM customer service by all means?? Since May, I've haven't let my battery go below 9% and that has occurred on 3 occasions. Thanks for the info (lesson)

[dugggggg]

It's the classic case of hardware versus software and being penny wise, pound foolish.

The hardware guys would have put in a dollar of extra circuitry to prevent excessive discharge and/or handle the zero power case more responsively---but were probably told "don't worry about it, we'll handle that with software".

We know now that in standby mode, the PB is plenty active. Yet, apparently the software is too busy maintaining WiFi connections to monitor the battery state and perform an orderly complete shutdown when the voltage gets precariously low. Such an oversight might have been excuseable in OS 1.0.0.1---but in 2.0.0.7971?

[crackberryjill]

I had an almost exact experience when I got my playbook back in December. It simply wouldn't charge. I even bought Peter's "Battery Guru" (great little app by the way) to monitor the battery and when talking with RIM support, the info from the app seemed to help them understand my problem better.

But support was wonderful. We did all the plug in, plug out a number of times, then charging for 4 hours, a wipe, the whole shabang, but of course nothing helped. Did a replacement RMA. Had my new playbook the next day and sent out the old one to Tennessee the following day. I thought fantastic customer service.

[Foreverunique]

**UPDATE** just like crackberryjill, the whole unit was replaced not fixed, picked it up from the post office today