Final fix for Nexus 4 red light of death

[yev.gavrikov]

Hello i'll try to explain how i fixed the red notification light when my friend's phone died.
The situation was that he charged the phone from the car built in USB and after he unplugged the charger the phone never powered on.
I tried all the solutions that google search can provide and nothing helped.
The problem was that when you plug the charger the red light stays on without any blinks and nothing helped.

Tools you need:
*Torque screw T5 screwdriver
*Small Philips screwdriver (thanks scream4cheese for remind)
*Plastic handle or something else (to open the back cover without damage it)
*Thin wires
*old/new phone charger

So lets start - hope it will help some one that stuck in this situation
1. First of all you need to remove the back cover to get access to the battery.

2. Unscrew the 2 screws that holds the battery flex cable.
3. Disconnect the flex cable from the phone.

4. Now you need two thin wires that you can connect to the battery flex cable.
5. Find some old phone charger ( i used old nokia charger ) that can provide about 5.0v-5.8v.
6. If you have volt meter find where is the positive and negative (+) and (-).
7. Connect the battery positive (+) to charger positive (+) and negative to negative.

8. Plug the charger to power and wait about 15-13 minutes, do not leave in that charging position too much time because the battery may EXPLODE.
9. Disconnect all the wires and reconnect the battery to the phone (if not working wait few minutes and start over from step 7) maybe the connections is not good or mot enough charged.
10. power on the phone and you have solved that issue.

 

[scream4cheese]

This is really helpful. It should be a sticky. :thumbup::thumbup:


Also I would like you to add the type of screw drivers is needed to open the phone's cover and the pins.

Torque screw T5 screwdriver
Small Philips screwdriver


Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

[gie62001]

Good to know in case it happens so thanks but I was just wondering whether just disconnecting battery terminals wasn't enough as quite a few mentioned that that's how they fixed it so not sure how this method works.
Anyway thanks

Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app

 

[nowster]

It looks to me that there are circumstances where battery drain is such that the battery voltage drops too far too fast for the phone's charging circuits to cope. (Hence it happening mostly to people running battery-sapping benchmarks.)

 

[yev.gavrikov]

Good to know in case it happens so thanks but I was just wondering whether just disconnecting battery terminals wasn't enough as quite a few mentioned that that's how they fixed it so not sure how this method works.
Anyway thanks

Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app

As i mentioned the battery discharged fully under the 0.2 Volt (after charging the phone with incompatible charger which output is about 3.5V) *in this case the battery is much powerful than charger and it forwarding the power back to charger and not the charger to phone*
so the phone doesn't know that the battery is OK and thinks that it is bad battery, in this case you should use my method or replace to new one if you have an choice to receive it fast or find in local shop.
I'm not guarantee that my method will save your battery you may need to replace it.

 

[jutezak]

According to the service manual, the wireless charger is also separate from the other phone circuitry.

The red light indicated trickle charging, which is slow. And maybe the phone uses more charging than even trickle charging can provide.

A Qi charger should charge the battery normally even if it is empty, as the phone does not need to power up to achieve high charge currrent.

That sounds a lot easier than opening it up and charging the battery manually!

 

[yev.gavrikov]

According to the service manual, the wireless charger is also separate from the other phone circuitry.

The red light indicated trickle charging, which is slow. And maybe the phone uses more charging than even trickle charging can provide.

A Qi charger should charge the battery normally even if it is empty, as the phone does not need to power up to achieve high charge currrent.

That sounds a lot easier than opening it up and charging the battery manually!

In this case the Qi or Original nexus charger not helping, because it connect to the same circuit as usb charger, the mother board controls the battery charging so in this case you cannot charge in any way if the phone thinks that the battery is bad.

Any way in most cases like that you will change to new battery because the old one is totally dead :/

 

[io53]

Neat. So you basically used a defibrillator on the battery . Sad to see the battery management being so poor on this device that it lets the battery drop that low.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium

 

[Android1126]

Ummmmm. I think people are just being impatient. I had my N4 powered off while overseas for 2 months. When I returned and turned my N4 on, I received the "Red Light of Death".

I read through all of the forums and found the same fixes everywhere.

Open the phone up and reset the battery terminal bar, etc etc...

Now, I have no problem doing that, but I just couldn't accept such a major flaw from this phone, not to mention the problem appeared to be widespread.

Anyways, back to my original point, people are just crazy impatient and freak out over each and every little thing. The first thing they do is rip their phone open and start tinkering.

I ASSURE YOU. JUST LEAVE IT PLUGGED IN USING THE WALL CHARGER FOR AN HOUR OR SO, and it WILL turn back on.

Now, maybe there are situations out there where my method doesn't work, in that case, shame on LG and Google.

Though, I would be willing to bet, if this happens to anyone else, just leave it the hell alone and let it sit on the wall charger for a couple of hours, turning it on and off a few times in between (or at least attempting to), it will come back to life.

 

[snak3ater]

It took a month to get my phone...When i got it finally..it had no charge at all..tried to switch it on but all i got was a red flashing led.it scared me a lot but i plugged in the charger and it stayed there for an hour until it turned on..

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

[yev.gavrikov]

There is a lot of cases for the red button, in my case nothing helped only that solution, I'm not telling people to use my advice when you see red light first of all should try easier way to solve it, like charge with original charger for few hours etc

Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium

 

[PhilipL]

Hi

This is defeating a safety mechanism. When lithium batteries are over discharged they can become permanently damaged and then are not safe to recharge. Recharging could result in gassing and or an explosion and fire, this may not happen right away or at all, however the chances of this happening is significantly increased after a deep discharge or some other fault causing over-heating etc. Why did LG build in this protection mechanism in the first place? Do people just think it was to annoy owners and have returns for no reason? Lithium batteries can be lethal which is why there have been world wide recalls in some cases, and they are only safe now because of safety devices built into the battery and phone.

I wouldn't want a phone exploding in my pocket or against my face or in my hand or setting fire to my home. Lithium batteries are generally pretty safe only because of these safety mechanisms, defeat them and lithium batteries become pretty dangerous.

Read up on safety issues here: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/lithium_ion_safety_concerns especially under the "What every battery user should know" section and please realise you are literally playing with fire by defecting or shorting out the safety mechanism which this direct charging method is likely doing.

Regards

Phil

 

[esigolo]

Very good thank you

 

[magote]

Must say this has saved me from the trouble that would be sending my phone to RMA! Thanks a lot!

 

[rfunderburk39]

This worked for my girlfriends Nexus 4 that she allowed to go completely dead. 3 buttons, etc...would not get a response from the unit.

Hello i'll try to explain how i fixed the red notification light when my friend's phone died.
The situation was that he charged the phone from the car built in USB and after he unplugged the charger the phone never powered on.
I tried all the solutions that google search can provide and nothing helped.
The problem was that when you plug the charger the red light stays on without any blinks and nothing helped.

Tools you need:
*Torque screw T5 screwdriver
*Small Philips screwdriver (thanks scream4cheese for remind)
*Plastic handle or something else (to open the back cover without damage it)
*Thin wires
*old/new phone charger

So lets start - hope it will help some one that stuck in this situation
1. First of all you need to remove the back cover to get access to the battery.

2. Unscrew the 2 screws that holds the battery flex cable.
3. Disconnect the flex cable from the phone.

4. Now you need two thin wires that you can connect to the battery flex cable.
5. Find some old phone charger ( i used old nokia charger ) that can provide about 5.0v-5.8v.
6. If you have volt meter find where is the positive and negative (+) and (-).
7. Connect the battery positive (+) to charger positive (+) and negative to negative.

8. Plug the charger to power and wait about 15-13 minutes, do not leave in that charging position too much time because the battery may EXPLODE.
9. Disconnect all the wires and reconnect the battery to the phone (if not working wait few minutes and start over from step 7) maybe the connections is not good or mot enough charged.
10. power on the phone and you have solved that issue.

 

[Don2k9]

works like a charm, just fixed mine by following the steps.
I dropped my phone in the pond and it was totally submerged under water for about 3-4 minutes, can't power up after, dry for couple of days still doesn't work, all I got was a red led light while charging (not flashing).
I thought the phone was beyond repair so just leave it in a bag of rice to see if there's any miracle. Take the phone out after 3 days, connect to the charger and I get a red flashing light, I think it is a good sign, so I did a google search and redirected to this post, connect the battery flex to an old nokia charger for about 14 minutes and it was fixed, how amazing is that.
My sincere thanks to yev.gavrikov!
-----------------------------------------------------------
update:
the phone turns off automatically after 20 minutes, the red flashing light comes back, will try again tmr, too late to go through that again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
before I connected the wire with the battery flex I took a read with a volt meter the voltage is 0.36, after a 14-minutes charge the voltage increased to 1.30, still way below the 3.8v standard voltage. But the phone is ok to power up with the stock charger and the battery status bar shows 99% after charge for about half hour. I thought it was fixed, though the the charging rate seems little bit too high, from 1.3v to 99% just within half hour !
Will try again tonight, but I figure might be something wrong with the power management module of the main board.

 

[traviscannon]

works like a charm, just fixed mine by following the steps.
I dropped my phone in the pond and it was totally submerged under water for about 3-4 minutes, can't power up after, dry for couple of days still doesn't work, all I got was a red led light while charging (not flashing).
I thought the phone was beyond repair so just leave it in a bag of rice to see if there's any miracle. Take the phone out after 3 days, connect to the charger and I get a red flashing light, I think it is a good sign, so I did a google search and redirected to this post, connect the battery flex to an old nokia charger for about 14 minutes and it was fixed, how amazing is that.
My sincere thanks to yev.gavrikov!
-----------------------------------------------------------
update:
the phone turns off automatically after 20 minutes, the red flashing light comes back, will try again tmr, to. o late to go through that again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
before I connected the wire with the battery flex I took a read with a volt meter the voltage is 0.36, after a 14-minutes charge the voltage increased to 1.30, still way below the 3.8v standard voltage. But the phone is ok to power up with the stock charger and the battery status bar shows 99% after charge for about half hour. I thought it was fixed, though the the charging rate seems little bit too high, from 1.3v to 99% just within half hour !
Will try again tonight, but I figure might be something wrong with the power management module of the main board.

I went in the pool with my Nexus 4 in a plastic bag to keep the sand out. Realized it after several minutes that I still had it in my pocket and got it out. Didn't have any rice so I wrapped it in a diaper for a day. Then I got some rice and left it in the rice for about 2 days. I pulled it out and it looked dry enough. Plugged it in and got the battery charging white icons. They went away, I waited a few minutes and tired to turn it on. Nothing. So I waited a while longer and tried it again. The red light started blinking and I couldn't get it to do anything. I tried different cords but no help. When I tried to plug it into another charger base I noticed some condensation in the front camera and in the back flash. So I stopped the whole deal and put it back in rice and laid it up in a window sill. I'm not sure what my next move is. I think the flashing red light might have saved me from turning it on and screwing it up further. I've rooted my previous phones and I feel fairly comfortable with that stuff but I'm a little nervous taking the back off this phone though. I would finally like to try a wireless charger first before I go ripping into the back of this thing. Plus I don't have a volt meter to check the charger. Any suggestions on how I could try a charger without buying one? Or what my next step is?

 

[Draegloth]

QI chargrer

Hey there I actually was looking for a soluiton to this, since i HAD the same problem. I didnt wanted to open up my phone, so i decided to charge it back somehow else. With the normal factory charger wasnt really successfull try, so i bought a QI charger, with USB pluggable slot at the end, and plugged to the factory 1.2a converter. After 1-2 hours my phone started to charge, and displayed the charging white battery instead of blinking light!

So im actually really thankfull on all the ideas here, hope my suggestion will help on more ppl.

 

[RueTheDay]

A little over a week ago I was driving to a client in a very rural area. Had my Nexus 4 running Navigation and playing music over my car's AUX port. Also had my USB plugged into the car's cigarette lighter port to keep it charged.

All of a sudden, the music stopped playing. Looked at the phone and it was off. Pushed the power button to turn it back on and the red LED started blinking. At this point I panicked because it was a 4 hour drive in the middle of nowhere, had no idea where I was going, and now no Nav or phone calls.

Over the next 10 minutes I kept pushing power and holding it for a variable length of time, from just an instant to 30 seconds or more. No dice. Then after what must have been the 20th try or so, the phone booted up. Relief! When it was fully booted, I noticed the battery was around 90%. No problems since then.

FWIW, YMMV.

 

[Sharvil Birodkar]

Nexus 4 Red light of death FIXED

@yev.gavrikov

Thanks a TON Friend :highfive:

Finally My Bros. Nexus4 Worked we just did till Step 3 and again installed it Back

Amazingly phone booted back to basic

The Story:

Device Info Nexus 4
Kernel : Franco nightly R156
ROM: PA 3.6
@Stock Speed Stock CPU Governor
was running AnTuTu Benchmarking the battery was @50% suddenly in between the test phone screen was off, when we checked phone was not booting up :crying:
So i saw this Thread and watch 2-3 videos How to dismantle the Nexus 4
Skills : Moderate (Needs Precision and patience)
I just removed and reinstalled the battery terminal.

And amazingly the phone Started ....WOW Awesome :good: @yev.gavrikov

Thanks