The Motorola unbricking secret sauce
Aug. 22nd, 2012 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexRecording this for posterity, though I'm told it's a fairly common problem on all Motorola-brand Android/Droid phones.
Symptom: phone appears "dead" (bricked). Will not turn on even when plugged in, usually after trying to apply a software update.
1. Pop the back case and find out what the soft-reset key combo is for your model. For mine it's something like power+volume down, held for 10 seconds.
2. Plug your phone into external power while holding down the reset button combo from step 1.
This should get you the "Motorola screen" which is usually some graphic of a battery with 0 power. In fact, the battery does have power, but the software that checks for this fact won't run, so it thinks it has zero power. This is why the phone won't turn on, usually.
3. Let the phone charge up to 15%.
Why 15%? Apparently that's some magical threshold below which the reset combo doesn't actually work. Why does the battery go through a full charge cycle rather than coming alive and seeing that the battery is charged? Because it thinks the reported battery value is erroneous and thus doesn't trust it.
4. Perform the soft-reset operation.
This should give you the normal start-up screen for your phone, along with the "your battery is low, plug in" warning. If that doesn't happen, repeat Step 2. The written directions inside my phone warn me that the soft reset doesn't always work and may need to be repeated. I view this as a design failure, but what do I know. How often should you repeat the reset? Who knows. If it doesn't work, pray you're under warranty or have insurance cause you're getting a new phone.
5. Wait for the battery to charge fully.
6. Re-apply the update that screwed up your phone in the first place.
If this re-bricks your phone, see "pray" above.
The above process is reported to work only on non-rooted phones. If you rooted yours then you're on your own.
Symptom: phone appears "dead" (bricked). Will not turn on even when plugged in, usually after trying to apply a software update.
1. Pop the back case and find out what the soft-reset key combo is for your model. For mine it's something like power+volume down, held for 10 seconds.
2. Plug your phone into external power while holding down the reset button combo from step 1.
This should get you the "Motorola screen" which is usually some graphic of a battery with 0 power. In fact, the battery does have power, but the software that checks for this fact won't run, so it thinks it has zero power. This is why the phone won't turn on, usually.
3. Let the phone charge up to 15%.
Why 15%? Apparently that's some magical threshold below which the reset combo doesn't actually work. Why does the battery go through a full charge cycle rather than coming alive and seeing that the battery is charged? Because it thinks the reported battery value is erroneous and thus doesn't trust it.
4. Perform the soft-reset operation.
This should give you the normal start-up screen for your phone, along with the "your battery is low, plug in" warning. If that doesn't happen, repeat Step 2. The written directions inside my phone warn me that the soft reset doesn't always work and may need to be repeated. I view this as a design failure, but what do I know. How often should you repeat the reset? Who knows. If it doesn't work, pray you're under warranty or have insurance cause you're getting a new phone.
5. Wait for the battery to charge fully.
6. Re-apply the update that screwed up your phone in the first place.
If this re-bricks your phone, see "pray" above.
The above process is reported to work only on non-rooted phones. If you rooted yours then you're on your own.
