Battery is dead-dead

I made the mistake Friday of using my Playbook until it ran out of power. When I got home I plugged it in with the standard charger and left it overnight. In the morning I tried it and it was still dead; I plugged it in again and saw the red LED for several seconds but no more activity. I unplugged and reconnected it, and the light flashed briefly again. I left it connected for another night and have been fighting with it off and on most of today. I followed two different stack charging procedures (2 min on/15 sec off and 2 min on/2 min off) for about an hour each and now I don't have a single sign of life from my Playbook, not even a wink of the red LED.

Is there anything I can do? I bought it in the December sales so I'm well out of the 90 day warranty, can I even call RIM for help? If I do, does anyone know if it would be covered?

ive had this happen to my PB because my charger died and i didnt know it.
plugging it into a BB phone charger got it to boot up then i plugged it into my PC
and it charges it but very slowly.

Thanks Jon, I guess I'll try the stack charge with my phone charger. I'm not so hopeful because I can plug my Torch into the PB charger and it appears to work normally so I think it's not the charger.

There is another method where you hold the power button down for 20 or 40 seconds, then plug in the charger.

i would try plugging into the phone charger and leaving it in for a few minutes and see if it boots up. even if the pb charger still works.

If you know that your Playbook charger works, use that. Plus plug it in and turn on / off at the wall to save damaging the micro USB socket.

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...arging-734470/

it wont hurt to try the phone charger from my experiences the PB charger cant boot up the PB once it is that dead for some reason. happened to a friend aswell and his charger wasent broken.

The playbook has a one year warranty, 90 days technical support, so it should be covered.

Thanks Jon, I'll try that tonight if I can't get anything else working.

Hawnz, I've given your method a try still without success, but I'll keep it in mind.

Ben, thanks for the link. I tried that yesterday and just got progressively shorter LED periods, now down to zero unfortunately, so I'm just turning the power bar on/off every 30 sec or so blindly.

DJenkins, thanks for the answer! I'm obviously not eager to pay to return my PB to working order due to bad design!

OP, try a rapid charger.

http://forums.crackberry.com/showthread.php?t=738884

Same thing is happening to me.

Currently i'm letting my usb cab;e (connected to the wall jack) charge my Playbook.

Every time i turn it on, the red light stays on for about 30 seconds and turns off, but it is followed by 5 light green blinks. After that it just shutdowns!

The black screen of death. It's like if your battery is dead, the playbook will just be broken.

A quick question: use playbook utill no battery left could make pb dead? I didn't know this. Thanks

Ben, thanks, I'll try overnight with the phone charger and if still noting, I'll maybe get a rapid charger I guess.

Rupam, I saw your thread and of course feel your pain!

Smartie, that's the case. The charge control circuitry relying on the battery having a charge pretty obviously leads to a catch-22 situation. It's a reasonably common problem -- Googling for something like "playbook won't charge" returns many results with the same thing. I have run it down to 1% or even 0% before without a problem, but at the time I was at home and could put it immediately on to charge. Running it down so much then waiting a little while to charge will allow the quiescent draw to drain the battery too far. I didn't know either, until now, so consider yourself lucky to have been warned!

Happened to me so many times! Got the rapid dock charger...done! Never happened again.:)

Here's a variety of Stack Charging methods.

Okay, try any and all of the various methods, including just holding the power button in for 30-40 seconds. Also go into a dark closet and make sure the screen is really black/off and not a lit up gray.

I was told about "stack" charging, 6 cycles of charge no charge, for 2 minutes each, charging for never more than 2 minutes.


Plug the PB in with the factory charging cable (red light comes on for a several seconds, then goes off). Wait about 10 more seconds. Unplug PB for about 30 seconds.

Repeat n times.

n == 6 for me. Finally my PB light switched to green, then began to oscillate, signalling charging. After a few more minutes my PB came back to life.

You might want to UNplug/Replug at the wall/socket end to avoid using or damaging the weaker usb port on the pb itself.


Just talked to tech support, because i'm impatient sometimes. Here is the initial process they gave me to try.

Plug in the charger for 2 mins, unplug for 10 sec -> Repeat 6 to 8 times

Then while unplugged perform the Hard reset (POWER, VOL + and - at the same time) . **When the red light comes on PLUG IN THE CHARGER**

The playbook is supposed to then start charging/boot.
...........................
Along the same lines as just above, someone posted:

FOUND A QUICK FIX HOPE IT HELPS

WOW, i tried EVERY SINGLE Step out there and the one step that worked ... was HOLDING down the power key for 20 seconds, after 20 Seconds do not let go of the power button and plug in the wall charger, and then let go... should get a steady red light for about 10 seconds, then the battery icon with lightning bolt should appear.. the it will charge with just a flashing green..... lol wasted 4 hrs for nothing hope this works for everyone else

.................
Some have now found a shorter sequence works:

Oh man I fixed it. I stack charged it! But not for 2 minutes.

Every time my PB red signal goes off I removed the connection from the wall charger and placed it back within a second. I repeated it for almost 25-30 times and all in the sudden a big charger button showed up on the screen and a green light on the charging LED. I left th e power connection for 2 more hrs and started using it.
................
And another posting that might help....

There are a few solutions and some are mentioned above. SO try the things I am mentioning below.... Let me know if it works .

Problem Scenario: 1. Blackberry wont boot or turn on, on pressing the power button, the red light stays for a few seconds and does not turn on 2. Sometimes you will see the red light followed by a green/ yellow light that blinks 5 times and does not turn on.

Reason: The main reason why both of the above things happen is because the battery is completely drained out, you could call it " Flat out". The problem with playbook is that the playbook wont charge if the playbook is Flat out drained. whereas other tablets or cellphones does....Playbook has to fix that issue. Meanwhile we do have a solution to go around that problem and that requires some patience. Some of the solutions mentioned in the previous comments indicate to charge it via computer.... "It doesn`t work" not if the battery is drained out flat.... so dont even bother trying it if u see the above mentioned problem.

Solution: try this step by step and this are 3 different solutions so one of this would definitely work. 1. Press the Power button and you will see the Playbook Logo ( chances for this are low ) 2. Press the power button and the volume together, if there is 1 % charge left there is a chance that it would boot on, when you see the logo, immediately charge the playbook ( chances are medium ) 3. This solution requires patience. plug the charger into the socket and plug the USB into the playbook, the red light stays for 8-10 secs. Remove the USb from the playbook wait for 2 to 5 sec and replug the usb back to the charger and wait till that red light comes and goes again. repeat this step atleast 20-30 times. you might be asking why? the only power that the playbook gets is when that red light is on when plugging the usb into the playbook, once that light goes the playbook is not charging.. so what you are doing here is forcing the playbook to get charged for 8 sec every time u plug it to the playbook....this way the playbook gets that power needed to boot. Once the Playbook has that power to boot. The red light stays and changes to green but this time it blinks slowly and keeps blinking. you would also see the playbook logo return.... this green light keeps blinking until there is enough charge for the playbook to stand on its own and then changes to a solid red until it gets fully charged.

Knowledge Base Article

KB27705-BlackBerry PlayBook Power - Battery charge and discharge characteristics


And support

The PB has a one year warranty to the original purchaser. It also has 90 free Tech support. I do not know how Rim deals with "quasi-tech support v. warranty"

Rim Support
Tel:
Canada Toll Free: 1-877-644-8405
United States Toll Free: 1-877-644-8410
Puerto Rico Toll Free: 1-855-651-4936
Email: [email protected] (this route generally does not work and a call is necessary)

(UK Support) 0800 096 2805

Playbook French Support
http://fr.blackberry.com/playbook-ta...ok-support.jsp
Phone : 0800 914 533 (within 90 days from activation)

Originally Posted by philburt

Ben, thanks, I'll try overnight with the phone charger and if still noting, I'll maybe get a rapid charger I guess.

Rupam, I saw your thread and of course feel your pain!

Smartie, that's the case. The charge control circuitry relying on the battery having a charge pretty obviously leads to a catch-22 situation. It's a reasonably common problem -- Googling for something like "playbook won't charge" returns many results with the same thing. I have run it down to 1% or even 0% before without a problem, but at the time I was at home and could put it immediately on to charge. Running it down so much then waiting a little while to charge will allow the quiescent draw to drain the battery too far. I didn't know either, until now, so consider yourself lucky to have been warned!

I was suprised this is an issue. I know for laptop battery, people actually suggest you should let them out of power once for awhile and make it healthy. is this unique for playbook or also happened for other tablet say Ipad and galaxy

Happened to me once, I plugged it to my pc then launch the desktop manager and that turned my pb on. Same thing happened with my 9810 twice.

OP just leave it charged.

When you plug the charger into the playbook, do you see a red battery icon...which goes away and comes back?

Happened to me. I couldn't get it to come back to life no matter what method I tried. And that would be thanks to all the good people on this forum. Had to send it in and RIM sent me a new PB.

Originally Posted by philburt

...I bought it in the December sales so I'm well out of the 90 day warranty...

Originally Posted by djenkins6

The playbook has a one year warranty, 90 days technical support, so it should be covered.

phew. for a second I thought it was only 90days.

Called BBTechSupport today and a nice guy walked me through to the trickle usb charge then insta-swap to AC Plug. Talk about convoluted...so sad.