kaiser is DEAD, att refuses replacement

[theromanone]

so pretty much we had a blackout on campus and my phone was low on battery. to salvage my laptop's battery, i used the USB charger on the phone while the laptop was closed and barely even booted up (did not "log in" to windows). so, later in the night my battery went dead, and i'm sure my turning it on and off 15 times with a empty battery just to see the home screen did not help.

next day, I plug in the charger and get the RED LIGHT!!!
i give the phone "CPR" and plug it back in the charger to get an amber light a few minutes later. The phone eventually charged to 30% before i took it out with me to lunch, when I got back I plugged it back in and now it would would not charge at all. the battery % would just gradually decrease.

i tried cleaning the battery connections with alcohol and im pretty sure this made the sticker turn pink (means "water damage"), and att wont give mea new one because of this.

anything i can do?



PS- i never got the red light back since i "fixed" it the first time, now i need to plug it in to turn the phone on and even then it turns off after 2-4 minutes by itself!!! If plugged into wall charger without a battery i just get a red flashing light. with batter, a constant amber.

[whk]

Take it into a store and try swapping out the battery temporarily with one from the one in the store - if it works then purchase a new battery?

[theromanone]

not an option, dont have any stores by me and have no car :(.

***update - i did use the usb charge trick but splitting the wires and connecting to the battery for 5 or so minutes.. it got up to 17% but is now going back down even though its plugged into the wall charger

[ChumleyEX]

Did they ask you if the sticker was pink? Did you yell at a manager or something. Just because the sticker is that color doesn't mean there is damage.

[khaytsus]

If the sticker is not the default color, they won't warranty the phone. That's just how it is. Someone might get lucky and they do it anyway, but in general that's their policy.

Why else would the plaster the stupid things in 6+ places in/on the phone?

I still don't buy the "I got it wet cleaning the contacts" part myself. But the overall story seems unfortunately common for the Kaiser (other phones too?) with it deciding to die after the battery gets too low. Most people have decided it's not the battery that fails and even if they get the phone to charge, it does not work properly afterwords.

I think HTC should take some responsibility here.

[theromanone]

OK, I finally got to try a seperate battery and the charger still would not charge the battery (the charger used was also a new one). What can I do!? Should I buy a parted one from ebay and replace something?

[kilrah]

and replace something?

The whole mainboard...

[theromanone]

is that possible, something anyone could do themselves?

[AthenaLod]

The whole mainboard...

wow, i hope it is not that!

[theromanone]

anyone else have suggestions on how to fix my kaiser?

-better yet, any successful repairs of this? thanks!

[theromanone]

this is old and all, but i finally now have another kaiser to fool around and part out.. any suggestions?

[gimini]

well first off if there is truely water damage and not just a freek bricking then i would try the rice trick first, simply place the phone on a box of rice for a week (or silica gel). not u can not reflash the device because u can not get a 50% charge correct? it almost sounds if the battery is dieing that quickly that u have a short somewhere in the phone cuasing the displacment of energy, also i know that i had a phone a while back (not an htc) but it would only take a charge from a car charger, so try possible expermenting with USB/WALL/CAR chargers. if i were u i probably wouldnt take the phone completely apart unless u are sure that neither the original or the parts phone can be used as anything more than a paper weight.

on an un-related subject if ur looking for a replacment i have a tilt i am looking to sell if u want to pm me we could negotiate a price.

[theromanone]

thanks for the reply, i ended up leaving it in the wall charger overnight, and if charged up to 17%, so it is working, i'll try other methods as well.

if it bombs, i'm sure you'll be receiving a pm very soon!

[Flying Kiwi]

i ended up leaving it in the wall charger overnight, and if charged up to 17%, so it is workingI've cleaned the battery terminals and spring contacts many times on my TyTN II and not had this problem since. The key is to use a cotton bud sprayed with contact cleaner/IPA to rub the contact cleaner on/off and not spray it around the area directly. If a cotton bud isn't used as well as the contact cleaner/IPA then much of the grime wont be cleaned off. This still sounds like a conductivity issue to me.

[neurocutie]

still not clear what you think happened...

in any case, using a FULLY CHARGED BATTERY (charge it using something else, or just jimmy rig to the battery terminals for a while), does the Tilt function properly ? If so, then the most it can be is the charging circuit of the Tilt. Worse case, get one of those charging cradles and charge your battery on that instead (a pain, but cheaper than replacing a Tilt)...

in other words, I wouldn't give up just yet, given what it sounds like has happened...

does the tilt function when plugged into a powered USB port ?