[SOLVED] Desire C - no LED, screen lights up (slightly), but no boot

OK, maybe someone out there can help me - I've been googling and reading XDA for answers, but not really found anything.

My GF's daughter has a Desire C, and dropped it off this morning reporting the following;

It started playing music without anyone doing anything this morning, and the screen wouldn't turn on. The only way they could get it to stop was pulling the battery.
Replaced the battery and the phone wouldn't start.

I read up a bit and left the phone on charge (no LEDs showing) for 2 1/2 hours. Came back, still couldn't boot.

I took the mains charger out and plugged it into my PC USB and tried volume down + power - still no boot, BUT, the screen did lighten slightly...

So, I WAS thinking the phone was bricked, then, as I was typing this and retried the plug into PC bit - the phone has booted

I was going to delete the post, but decided it may be of use to someone, so I added 'solved' to the title.

In a nutshell: if you have this issue, be patient - it might not be the end of the world (or phone!)

rudi_j7 said:

Any idea what the problem was?

Sent from my HTC Desire C using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I'm thinking the battery is getting to the end of it's life - it's gone again, so I've left it on AC charge until a friend gets around with another Desire C so I can check with his battery.

Now it seems to be REALLY fixed...

Battery age? no idea, it was a secondhand phone.

Look at the picture though - I've circled the relevant area.

It seems the battery cover has a 'tag' which fits into this and makes contact with a thin metal strip which enable the power button - well, in my case, pushing a plastic stick in there made the power button go on and off anyway.

Looking at the rear cover, the tag seems a little worn, so I trimmed that off with a sharp knife (without cutting myself either!), and trimmed a small piece of old credit card folded over to fit the hole.

And it works - power on, power off.

The battery is reporting to be full so no LED still (does the LED come on when it has full power? I've not noticed), I'll drain it a bit and try plugging it in to see if the LED comes on.

When my pal gets around with the other Desire C, I'll try his rear cover in this phone and see if it was just down to a small worn piece of plastic...

Been an interesting day for me - just hope this 'adventure' will be of help to someone else - I was thinking mainboard/battery problem and it turned out to be a 2.5mm x 1mm piece of plastic...