Bricking Therory

I was reading a thread last night where the poster stated he is
on his third 9930 from verizon. He further explained that when he
gets the replacements he take the battery down to red then charges it
and 100% of the time has a brick in the morning. So heres my Question,
does everyones 9930 or 9900 brick if your battery is depleted to red
before you charge it. I know there have been other brickings and nukings
under different circumstances. What I would like to poll is how often
does a 99xx brick under the depleted red icon scenario.

Sorry in advance for typos

not in my case.
my 9900 went to red mark for number of times and on one occasion battery was fully drained so that it took more than 10Min to boot (stuck on battery logo).

So can I assume that running the batttery down to shut off
won't automatically brick my phone when charging?:confused:

my 2 cents about this issue : I think it might have something to do with the chip that identifies the battery. I don't really know much about the technical side of the problem, but, from what I read over the internet, 9900/30 seems to be the only BB who has this weird identification chip thingie. I saw 3rd party batteries need cloning, sometimes cloning is lost and needs to be done again... Maybe that chip goes crazy somehow.
There's something pretty similar with an android phone, Xperia Arc ( some detalis you can find here ). I had one and I managed to get it broken by simply downgrading the software version. SE service : replace the motherboard, due to faulty M/cx IC Linear Fuel Gauge chip, no way a software patch could solve the problem.

Originally Posted by kjell_j

I know a little about battery chemistry and the rather sophisticated software that controls the charging of a li-ion battery.

It appears to me that the following COULD happen (but it dows not happen every time).

1. the battery is allowed to go to its absolute lowest ground potential and shuts down
2. the software knows the battery status and porevent booting
3A - when charging, the battery status is renewed - no problem
3B - when charging, the battery status is kept in the software's status memory and the phone refuses to boot because the battery is believed to be below its lowest voltage, even if this is not true.

Battery can be fully charged and works well in another device, however, as long as the "old" status preventing booting is on the phone's memory, the phone is bricked.

The status can probably be removed by disconnecting the CMOS battery, but that will remove the bootstraploader to (the initial software that trggers the operatng system) and create another more severe problem.

Tremenous answer, So now were getting into the bios...maybe but what the **** is RIM going to do about this. At the end of the day the 64 dollar question is: can this phone be fixed ???

Originally Posted by kjell_j

I know a little about battery chemistry and the rather sophisticated software that controls the charging of a li-ion battery.

It appears to me that the following COULD happen (but it dows not happen every time).

1. the battery is allowed to go to its absolute lowest ground potential and shuts down
2. the software knows the battery status and porevent booting
3A - when charging, the battery status is renewed - no problem
3B - when charging, the battery status is kept in the software's status memory and the phone refuses to boot because the battery is believed to be below its lowest voltage, even if this is not true.

Battery can be fully charged and works well in another device, however, as long as the "old" status preventing booting is on the phone's memory, the phone is bricked.

The status can probably be removed by disconnecting the CMOS battery, but that will remove the bootstraploader to (the initial software that trggers the operatng system) and create another more severe problem.

Worded much better than my attempts to explain this problem, but yes.
(I always assume people don't understand how clever/silly Li-Ion batteries can be)

IMO your explanation is exactly what the problem is.

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...ml#post6983635

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...ml#post6983990

I do wish there weren't so many separate threads on the issue though.
As I state, this affects the new BBs using the JM1 battery imo.
ie: 9930, 9900, 9380, 9790, 9850 and 9860

I've only let my 9930 go to red a few times, but it never bricked or showed any signs of bricking, after it did.

I believe it to be faulty batteries, as my 9900 turned off randomly whilst I was out, it still had 80% battery, and with no warning, turned off and wouldn't turn back on, I was in the middle of typing a text, but, when putting the battery in at a certain angle, it would turn on, but said insert sim card and asked for my blackberry ID, but I couldn't use it, because it said insert sim, but when I pushed the battery in all the way, it would turn off as if the battery was removed.

I've run my battery down to the "red zone" several times and charged it. Its never been an issue. I don't charge it overnight though. When it's done charging, I unplug it.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Three of four of our 9900 units have bricked and non were even near being with a low battery. Mine was plugged in with 60% left and woke in the morning to a dead/bricked device. One employee's unit bricked in the middle of the day.

I still think it is hardware. RIM knows as they have received thousands of bricked devices back by now. Their silence reminds me of the stuttttering keyboard thing were they just kept quiet and never even admitted there was a problem.:o

I know techies in the two major carriers in South Africa (both work at head office) and I have spoken to them about the bricking... They both said that their respective companies have never received a bricked 9900 and that a few have come in with normal software issues that were rectified by reloading the software and that the bulk of the returns are trackpad related.

It would be interesting to see in which parts of the world the bricking occurs as it could be the supply voltage that is causing the issues.

Originally Posted by greggebhardt

Three of four of our 9900 units have bricked and non were even near being with a low battery. Mine was plugged in with 60% left and woke in the morning to a dead/bricked device. One employee's unit bricked in the middle of the day.

I still think it is hardware. RIM knows as they have received thousands of bricked devices back by now. Their silence reminds me of the stuttttering keyboard thing were they just kept quiet and never even admitted there was a problem.:o

I remember you had a 9900 before the rest of us, and I think you had to give it back, but I could be mistaken. Do you still have that one? Did it ever have a problem? Just curious, I absolutely believe there are some (maybe a lot of) bad ones out there.

I've drained the battery to the point of radio shut down, then phone shut down multiple times with no issues, I am running 7.1.0.74, and other than some incompatible apps have no problems. A new 7.1 leak would be nice though, as Phill-UK has pointed out, .74 is ancient.

Originally Posted by greggebhardt

Three of four of our 9900 units have bricked and non were even near being with a low battery. Mine was plugged in with 60% left and woke in the morning to a dead/bricked device. One employee's unit bricked in the middle of the day.

I still think it is hardware. RIM knows as they have received thousands of bricked devices back by now. Their silence reminds me of the stuttttering keyboard thing were they just kept quiet and never even admitted there was a problem.:o

I don't think the "bricking" issue is as widespread as these forums (and your personal experience) would have you believe.

From another thread:

Originally Posted by EvilmasterMMA

This is a snippet of an email that my bell mobility rep sent me today.


---------------
Here is a rundown of our Bold 9900 client warranty issues.

Units Sold: 13,690
Units DOA: 2
Units Returned For Repair: 319

Warranty Claim Types:

Broken Screen: 71
Water Damage: 58
Electrical Surge: 19
OS/App Install Errors: 74
Broken Chassis: 26
Battery Failure: 11
Broken Keyboard/Trackpad: 4
Broken USB Port: 22
Broken Headphone Port: 17
Broken Side Button: 6
Broken USB Charger: 5
Crushed Device: 6
-----------------


All of these with the exception of battery failure, were caused by physical damage done by the end user.

For my work, we have 278 units deployed. We have had one broken screen that happened during shipping, and one device that the user dropped in the toilet. Otherwise our fleet is 100%.

These are real numbers. Out of a total of 13,968 devices, we have zero bricked phones.

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...ml#post6995514

Mine did it while plugged into car charger and near 100% charged. It was in middle of power use multitasking at the time. Also to adress the fact its not as wide spread as believed. I took it to a Verizon store in a metro area and they had never seen one brick.

Originally Posted by Betmen

I was reading a thread last night where the poster stated he is
on his third 9930 from verizon. He further explained that when he
gets the replacements he take the battery down to red then charges it
and 100% of the time has a brick in the morning. So heres my Question,
does everyones 9930 or 9900 brick if your battery is depleted to red
before you charge it. I know there have been other brickings and nukings
under different circumstances. What I would like to poll is how often
does a 99xx brick under the depleted red icon scenario.

Sorry in advance for typos

this happened exactly to me.

I reported here on CB that the only saving grace for my 9930 was that I purchased the dock charger at the same time. The phone "woke up" when I used it. Otherwise USB micro cable would not show any signs of life.

I was running 7.1.0.457 on SPrint

Are VZW 9930s still bricking? Im waiting to upgrade.

We should run a poll of what apps everyone was using/running on their phone.

I'm pretty simple so I only had these apps:

UberSocial
Facebook
Google Maps
ScoreMobile

Pretty sure that's it.