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Conundrum

Wed Nov 06 2013, 06:22AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062

Hi all.
Has anyone here experienced this unusual effect of equipment just malfunctioning for no reason?
This is the third phone in a year which has failed in the exact same way, randomly powering off.

I can't see any logical reason why this occurred, the battery when it failed was near 100% SOC and
the connectors appear solid.
Turned it back on and the phone works fine, no dropped calls etc.
Its a Nokia early model if that helps, takes the BL5C.

Interestingly, my wife's Iphone 4S is also having wifi issues but the last three times it happened
I've repaired it with the "controlled overheat via camera light" method.

Thanks, -A

Patrick

Wed Nov 06 2013, 07:34AM

Registered Member #2431 Joined: Tue Oct 13 2009, 09:47PM
Location: Chico, CA. USA
Posts: 5639

Perhaps your killing them in some way , not obvious. I find it hard to believe they're failing due to bad luck, is it possible your using them in a way substantially different than most of the rest of the population?

Ash Small

Wed Nov 06 2013, 09:57AM

Registered Member #3414 Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245

It's a fairly common problem with my phone, which powered off quite often when it was new, but not so much now (Vodaphone Smart 2, If I remember correctly, running Android Gingerbread).

Apparently it's due to the phone sensing (correctly or incorrectly) that the battery is overheating. It's a 'safety feature'. It normally happens while on charge, but not always.

I had thought of 'investing' in a new, good quality battery, but it's not really a serious enough problem to really bother me (It doesn't happen very often, if at all now, but it happened fairly frequently when it was new).

(The phone only cost Â£40, so I imagine the battery which came with it isn't of the 'highest quality')

On my phone you have to remove, and replace the battery in order to 'reset' it.

Conundrum

Wed Nov 06 2013, 10:22AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062

Aha! Really interesting.
I always wondered why SWMBO's S2 kept doing the same, strangely enough that problem went away when we changed the battery.

Patrick

Wed Nov 06 2013, 04:13PM

Registered Member #2431 Joined: Tue Oct 13 2009, 09:47PM
Location: Chico, CA. USA
Posts: 5639

I got my phone so hot in my welding class near a machines heat sink , it said "Battery too hot, must turn off for safety reasons !" On the screen....felt like a dope and never did that again.

Chris Cristini

Wed Nov 06 2013, 09:28PM

Registered Member #1749 Joined: Fri Oct 10 2008, 02:04AM
Location: Claremont New Hampshire
Posts: 497

My LG Optimus does the battery too hot thing when it gets left in the car during summer.

Your issue happen when the phones are hot.

klugesmith

Wed Nov 06 2013, 10:05PM

Registered Member #2099 Joined: Wed Apr 29 2009, 12:22AM
Location: Los Altos, California
Posts: 1716

My 3-year-old LG phone sometimes powers down when its clamshell lid is flipped shut.
I've come to believe that the root cause is mechanical shock
which, sometimes, momentarily* disconnects the battery.
The phone has never shut down from me easing the lid shut.

* Does everyone here agree that momentarily still means "for a moment", not "in a moment" ?
Look at all the momentary contact switches in electrical switch catalogs.

Conundrum

Thu Nov 07 2013, 05:43AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062

Heh.Just remembered that the battery has been recovered from overdischarge.Would this cause the same symptoms?

EDIT: Just had a BIOS reset event on my x520 causing an x07B BSOD, no obvious cause.
I'd hate to have to replace the machine just for that but it bricked itself beyond even the ability of Safe Mode, even LNG failed.
Had to manually enable AHCI mode to get it booting again.

Also had two machines just crash the browser as I walked past them, one actually as I was watching to see what it did.. !

Is there some way I could really be frying stuff, because there is no explanation for three system failures in this way in such a short time.

EDIT: Actually found the cause on the x520, it had bad system memory.
One of the 2GB sticks seems to have acquired a temperature sensitivity and under some conditions such as an unexpected power off then reboot BIOS corruption can happen.
I replaced both sticks with DDR3-1333 and so far everything seems to work apart from the USBs which are still broken with large devices such as hard disks.

Also discovered that a fluorescent fitting outside the door less than 5 feet away from the laptop was spewing both RF noise AND acoustic squealing at >3 kHz explaining a lot of my 3G and WiFi dropouts as simple noise.

Coincidentally another machine at a second location (desktop with DDR3) also had the exact same problem ie the BIOS mysteriously switched from AHCI to IDE mode causing the same BSOD. I am assured that it had not been tampered with in any way and the BIOS was protected and to reset this manually by random tinkering would have left traces which were not seen.

I did read somewhere that a possible mechanism for people interfering with door openers of the Gunn variety was that the diodes are not shielded against infrared and the casing can indeed be somewhat transparent at IR between 690 and 1000nm.
If so then people who are "hot" ie emitting lots of infrared might indeed mess up the diodes and the effect just gets worse with higher frequencies as the active region is thinner and more prone to disruption.

Re. strange faults on laptops, would you believe that manufacturers don't routinely test for memory/HDD corruption at low battery levels?
I 'scoped an old machine a few years back and found that the 3.3V line varies all over the place with battery state so that obviously got dumped in the trash.

Perhaps Windows should do a "is battery < 40%" test before installing any updates, or at least ask the user if they are on mains if it is likely to take more than 15 minutes?

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