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Help Moto G died and now wont charge!

J

jdeville

Lurker
i bough my Moto G 2 months ago, love the phone. its on the prepaid plan, so its a great phone for the low monthly cost. (my opinion). but the problem is that i was at a dealership today signing papers for my new car (yay! :D) and my phone died. no big deal right? go home and charge it, life goes on.....BUT i got home, plugged it in, it came up with the battery symbol and said 0% for about 3 minutes. but then it went away and since then i haven't been able to get a response from it. it wont boot, and i cant get anything when plugging it in....

a lot of other forums online suggest pulling the battery, but the Moto G doesn't have that option. =/ i also read that draining a Lithium-Ion battery to 0% can cause it to be extremely difficult to get it to charge again. does anybody have some advice? im letting it sit on the charger overnight via USB connected to my pc. HOPING it will get a charge, but i don't know it if will work.

i would appreciate any advice on getting it to charge again! this phone is only 2 months old, i don't want to have to get a new one! =[
 
When the phone says 0%, the battery is normally down to about 3%. If you drain the battery to 0, tyhen try to recharge it, you have a bomb (or at least a large fire), so the phone shuts off before the battery is completely ded.

But 3 minutes won't even give it enough of a charge to turn on, tell you it's dead and die. Let it charge at least overnight. You'll probably fins a 30%-60% charge by morning. If you can, let it sit in the charger for 24 hours.

And in the future, start looking for an outlet when it gets down to 50%. Constantly discharging the battery until it's flat will shorten its life a lot. Charging when it gets down to 40-60% gives the longest life.
 
leaving it on the charger did no good, woke up at 6 am for work and it was still dead.. took it ff charger
however, i came home at 5pm and plugged it in,hoping. and it started working, i have no idea why, or what i did. but im glad its working.

and i want to thank you for helping me and giving me the advice that you did, maybe it did help, who knows. but i appreciate it :)
 
Take a look in the plug and socket used by the charger cable. They can become full of dirt or lint and prevent contact that prevents charging.

They can be cleaned with a picking with a needle and a vacuum cleaner.

... Thom
 
I've found if I let my Nexus 7 to completely die, it can take over a day for it to charge (granted, it's a much larger battery). If after a day it's still not booting and you checked the socket like Thom mentioned, it's time to look at a warranty replacement.
 
My Moto G died, and wouldn't turn on or seemingly charge. I ended up plugging it, and then held the power key down for about 45 seconds, and it finally booted.
 
There's a fix for this it happened to me too. I don't know where I found it but I didn't discover this.

But plug it in and hold the power button until the notification led blinks(this can take up to 5 mins of holding power button) . Continue holding power then the white screen with battery symbol will come on then let go and let it charge u can turn it on when its at 3 % or so.

If you search Google you can find a page saying this bug is solved that's where I got it.
 
it completely died an shut off the other night. I left it on the charger overnight and when I woke up the next morning the phone was extremely hot. also it would not turn on. I tried to hold the power button for long periods of time, tried using a thicker usb cable and bigger adaptor, and also tried resetting it by holding VOL DOWN then the power button again for long periods of time. nothing seems to work. I left it completely alone yesterday then putting it back on the charger. the LED light stays on consistent when plugged in and supposed to be charging. BUT IT WONT TURN ON! !
SOMEONE ANYONE PLEASE HELP! !
also note this phone is less than three weeks old. no water damage nothing not even a single little scratch. :mad:
 
Welcome to Android Forums.

Hot. Seems like a bad charger or the battery died ... or both ... maybe the charger nailed the battery.

... Thom
 
I've had this happen to me twice. Run out of battery and then charging won't work.

The suggestions: "check the connector" don't help: you can verify the connection is good because the phone detects the charger and shows "sign-of-life" when you plug it in. Users like me then assume things are ok and walk away.

What seems to happen is that the phone charges for about half a minute and then decides it is time to turn on. Apparently the phone wants to be on during charging. Fine. However, somewhere during boot, it turns off the charger(*), planning to turn it back on later on during the boot. But it crashes/turns off due to low battery before it gets to the point where the charger(*) is turned back on.

I contacted motorola support about this. They have a "you can try" this. suggestion.

After having been plugged in for a while (IMHO after the try-to-boot nothing happens, the current draw from the powersupply is zero), press and hold the power button for two minutes. Then let go and you should get a boot menu. Try the normal boot or the recovery.

Back then I didn't know for sure that "recovery" wouldn't wipe my phone, so I only tried the "normal boot". As was to be expected it did exactly the same as during the "normal boot", i.e. turn off half way through the boot. Or flash the notification led three times ("not enough power to boot") and then shut down.

Anyway, both times this happened to me my colleague said: Hand it to me, let me try. And after a minute or two the phone starts charging and we decide: "don't touch it", and then it works again until it ends up at 0% again....

So when this happens to you... just hand your phone to my colleague, and he'll have it charging again in no time... You don't think this is a good solution? No? Neither do I.

Motorola further adds: If that doesn't solve it, send it back for repair.

My opinion on this matter is that it should simply charge if you plug it in when it's dead. It is "not perfect, but might be acceptable" if there is a "guaranteed to work" procedure that gets it to charge again.

The situation now is that after some fiddling with the phone it sometimes starts to charge again.

I'm considering "letting it run down again", then trying neofreak's suggestion above that I haven't tried, and if that doesn't work, send it in for "repair". This can be planned for some time when I don't need the phone (that much).

I have to plan this when I can switch phones back to my old phone, as I'm not convinced that my colleague will be able to "perform" again next time. He might have been lucky fiddling with the phone until it randomly started working again.

Oh, one thing I'm going to do next time: Motorola says to use an AC charger. The thing is you probably have to use an AC charger that is detected as such! Some of my AC chargers are detected as "USB". Settings->battery then you can see how your charger is detected.

For the technically inclined: when the datalines (USB_D+ and USB_D-) are connected together the phone detects this as "ac charger".

The motorola charger allows charging at around 900mA (at 5v), while the above D+/D- short only results in 500mA charge current. I would still like to figure out how to get it to charge at > 500mA, as I have a 30A@5V powersupply on my desk that is able to handle anything the phone might want..... :-)

(some modern RC-flying batteries are able to charge in about 12 minutes at 5 times their rated capacity ("5C"). So that would mean charging the 'G at 6A during 12 minutes. Sounds neat. Alas this battery, the phone and the cables/connectors are all probably not up to that job.... Anyway, my power supply would be able to handle that no sweat!)

(*) Here "charger" refers to the chip inside the phone that does the "5V-from-micro-USB -> LIPO battery" function...
 
@ rewolff : suggestion of joining D+ and D- fixed my charger being recognized and utilized by moto G, very helpful of you !
 
I need help!! Ive tried everything and it wont charge, im sending it back but need my photos off the phone....can anyone help???????
 
Some of my previous Android devices would automatically shut down when the battery got to around 8%, which I always assumed was to let the device shutdown properly and to protect it from completely draining and causing issues.

I've noticed my partner's Moto G allows the battery to drop much lower than my old devices and one day her first one ran out completely and could never be recharged again. In the end it had to go back and be repaired under warranty. I believe they fitted a new battery.
 
Same problem, left my Moto G completely discharge and it wouldn't charge at high current.
It would charge at 140mA and try to turn on every few seconds and turn of right away and then restart the charging.

After connecting D+ and D- together in my AC charger (I left them floating, i.e. not connected to either power supply pins) it wouldn't try to turn on every few seconds but the charging current was still only 140mA.

Then I decided to use the cable that came with the phone and voilà it worked. It started with 330mA for about 30 seconds maybe and then went up to 950mA.

I do not know why the other USB cable would cause it to limit the current because it's otherwise completely functional.

Good luck.
 
Yesterday I connected my "motoG" to a development-usb-acessory board. The USB-accessory specs say the phone has to be able to charge at 500mA from the acessory. Due to long wires and it being a development board, using a few patch wires, the resistance from the 5V supply to the phone becomes "measurable". The phone started to charge, and then quickly gave up. This happend a few times. I'm guessing it was switching back on the charge current each time. So, I know for a fact that long/bad quality cables can cause your moto G to step down the charging current. (the cheap chinese cables are not good enough to provide 500mA or more of charging current). It seems the phone will "cope with it" and find a "way that works" if it is up-and-running, but it seems this mechanism doesn't work if it is "discharged to 0%".
 
rewolff said:
Yesterday I connected my "motoG" to a development-usb-acessory board. The USB-accessory specs say the phone has to be able to charge at 500mA from the acessory. Due to long wires and it being a development board, using a few patch wires, the resistance from the 5V supply to the phone becomes "measurable". The phone started to charge, and then quickly gave up. This happend a few times. I'm guessing it was switching back on the charge current each time. So, I know for a fact that long/bad quality cables can cause your moto G to step down the charging current. (the cheap chinese cables are not good enough to provide 500mA or more of charging current). It seems the phone will "cope with it" and find a "way that works" if it is up-and-running, but it seems this mechanism doesn't work if it is "discharged to 0%".
Click to expand...


Following your post I decided to shorten the cheapo chinese cable and it worked. It's now only about 5 inches long. So the detection circuit inside the phone is quite sensitive to the impedance of the cable. The contact resistance of the USB plug to the AC charger socket also plays a role since changing it's position sligthly also changes charging current. I don't want do the test to see if it's the impedance of D+ and D- (which are shorted inside the charger) or the voltage drop on the 5V wires when the phone starts drawing higher current.

Anyway I guess what could be working for many would be to use a really short cable (or the original one) and make sure the D+ and D- are shorted and left floating inside the AC charger.

The phone should then start showing signs of life after at most a few minutes, in my case the screen turned back on after less than 5 min.
 
My experience for what it's worth if I let mine "die" - it will only charge on my hudl charger (rated at 1.5amp). Any charger less than that and it just sits there never getting enough to switch on.
 
neofreek01 said:
There's a fix for this it happened to me too. I don't know where I found it but I didn't discover this.

But plug it in and hold the power button until the notification led blinks(this can take up to 5 mins of holding power button) . Continue holding power then the white screen with battery symbol will come on then let go and let it charge u can turn it on when its at 3 % or so.

If you search Google you can find a page saying this bug is solved that's where I got it.
Click to expand...
Your technique worked great thank you
 
neofreek01 said:
There's a fix for this it happened to me too. I don't know where I found it but I didn't discover this.

But plug it in and hold the power button until the notification led blinks(this can take up to 5 mins of holding power button) . Continue holding power then the white screen with battery symbol will come on then let go and let it charge u can turn it on when its at 3 % or so.

If you search Google you can find a page saying this bug is solved that's where I got it.
Click to expand...

Worked for me as well. I was so worried when my 4 month old Moto G suddenly died. THANK YOU.
 
This should only be applied if you have no guarantee or any other come back on your supplier.

My phone failed 3 days out of guarantee - would not charge even when high capacity charging unit connected (2 amp).

Having voided any guarantee by removing the battery cage I was able to monitor the battery voltages. With the charger connected the voltage rose from 1.7 volts to 1.78 volts at which point the phone tried to boot, as soon as the screen back leds came on the voltage dropped and the phone shut down. Assume this is due to the power being drawn for the back light is constant and as the battery voltage is low the current draw from the battery will be high and hence even with a high capacity charger attached the voltage falls below that required by the system and it shuts down - voltage builds up and the cycle starts again.

Ok the phone is bust, nothing to lose - this is the process I applied and it worked.

1) disconnect the charger

2) disconnect the battery lead from the main board.

3) disconnect the ribbon connecting the main board from the screen - are is needed here to make sure the ribbon comes out evenly.

4) reconnect the battery lead to the main board

5) reconnect the charger for about 3 mins (I was able to monitor the voltage which rose rapidly to 3.9 volts on the battery charging circuit)

6) disconnect the charger.

7) disconnect the battery from the main board

8) reconnect the ribbon connecting the main board to the screen - are is needed here to make sure the ribbon is connected square to the socket.

9) reconnect the battery lead to the main board

10) secure the battery cage to the phone body

11) reconnect the charger

At this point my phone showed a 3% charge and went on to charge to 100% and since have had no problems but must admit have not let the phone fall below 10% charge.

Hope this helps - good luck.

Burnie
 
Last edited:
cbpowell said:
With the charger connected the voltage rose from 1.7 volts to 1.78 volts at which point the phone tried to boot,
Click to expand...
WHOA! I always thought that some over-discharge-protection was kicking in. Those should kick in around 3.0V. The phone should remain dead, off, black as long as the voltage is below 3.0V. LIPO batteries will damage if you discharge them below their "minimum charge level". The exact voltage can vary, 2.5V, 2.75V or 3.0V, but in each case, you'll get less than a minute of phone-time if you shut down at "between 3.0V and 3.2V". You need a little margin to account for leakage current when the phone is off and waiting for the charger to be connected.
 
cbpowell said:
This should only be applied if you have no guarantee or any other come back on your supplier.

My phone failed 3 days out of guarantee - would not charge even when high capacity charging unit connected (2 amp).

Having voided any guarantee by removing the battery cage I was able to monitor the battery voltages. With the charger connected the voltage rose from 1.7 volts to 1.78 volts at which point the phone tried to boot, as soon as the screen back leds came on the voltage dropped and the phone shut down. Assume this is due to the power being drawn for the back light is constant and as the battery voltage is low the current draw from the battery will be high and hence even with a high capacity charger attached the voltage falls below that required by the system and it shuts down - voltage builds up and the cycle starts again.

Ok the phone is bust, nothing to lose - this is the process I applied and it worked.

1) disconnect the charger

2) disconnect the battery lead from the main board.

3) disconnect the ribbon connecting the main board from the screen - are is needed here to make sure the ribbon comes out evenly.

4) reconnect the battery lead to the main board

5) reconnect the charger for about 3 mins (I was able to monitor the voltage which rose rapidly to 3.9 volts on the battery charging circuit)

6) disconnect the charger.

7) disconnect the battery from the main board

8) reconnect the ribbon connecting the main board to the screen - are is needed here to make sure the ribbon is connected square to the socket.

9) reconnect the battery lead to the main board

10) secure the battery cage to the phone body

11) reconnect the charger

At this point my phone showed a 3% charge and went on to charge to 100% and since have had no problems but must admit have not let the phone fall below 10% charge.

Hope this helps - good luck.

Burnie
Click to expand...


I had the same problem, or so I thought initially. I was planning to follow your method but mine was a much more troublesome issue.

When I try to unlock the latch to pull out the battery ribbon cable the entire power connector came off the board. Obviously it was due to a bad solder job by the workers at Motorola factory since I was just prodding at it lightly. But I realize as long as there was pressure on the connector, the current will still be able to flow.

I was thinking of soldering the connector back on the board but as it turns out, my soldering iron was dead and I couldnt do it.

So what I did was to secure the connector in place with some electrical tape. Then took a small piece of paper, folded it twice and taped it to the small sponge on the bottom left corner of the battery cage where the power connector is. Once I screwed the cage back on, the paper pressed down and forced to connector to touch the contact point on the board and the phone was able to draw current from the battery again.
 
WORKED for me. Plug in to wall, press and hold power button for 60+ sec. The white LED glows. Left it plugged in for 30 mins and it charged up to 6%, I could power up and start using it there after.
 
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