Battery low - Cannot program?

jinxygrrl

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Another noobie question:

For whatever stupid reason, I wanted to run my battery completely down. I did. Then I plugged it into my PC to charge but I can't tell if it is charging or not. Everyone in a while the black screen says:

Bootloader
2c.6c


battery low
cannot program

What does this mean? Is my phone charging and will this go away as it gets more charged? Or have I screwed up?

Help!
 

Big Cam

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I ran my phone down until it turned off and then I plugged it into the wall charger and it didn't operate normally for about 3 minutes, then it brought up the main home screen.

I wonder if the USB si barely giving enough power to get a stable charge level.

My guess is it needs more time, but I would throw it on the wall charger since it gives it more juice.


On a side note you should only completely run down your battery about once every 30 charges.
 
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jinxygrrl

jinxygrrl

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oooohhhh, you are probably right. I did read something about the PC not being as good when connected.

Crap, don't have a wall charger at work. Oh well.

Thank you very much for your assistance! :)
 

soops

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Don't mean to hijack this thread, but thought I would share my own mystery battery problem. The droid was charged via usb a little over 2 days ago mid morning. By 5-6pm I got a red flash stating battery low (5%) pls charged. Happened once before and I recharged right away. This time I thought, I want to see how long till the droid turned off. In the last 2 days, a couple phone calls, <5min. web browsing, a few texting was all I did. Battery still display red/low. Nothing was running except wavesecure, google voice (I FC google voice yesterday). Here's the batt. usage:
2d 16h 10m 55s since unplugged
ph idle 41%, cell standby 32%, display 17%, voice calls 4%, Android sys 4%, Android OS 3%.
Could this be a software issue or usb charging like some stated here. I hardly use wall charging.
 
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jinxygrrl

jinxygrrl

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and for the record, it has been a little over 2 hours since I hooked it up to my PC and it has done nothing. I don't think it is even charging. I know I've charged it on there before when it was low, but I think the kickstart from nothing might be too much for it.

Oh well, no phone until I get to my Jeep.
 

BigMcGuire

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I know on my old cell phone (Sony Ericson T650i) - it took like 5-6 hours to charge via USB. I can only imagine that the Droid would take even longer. I just bought a second charger for work, as well as a car charger. Now I never get below the first bar of battery life.
 

iPirate

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My old Motorola flip phone would not charge itself from an empty battery using the charger that came with it. I plugged it into a charger that supplies more current and it was able to charge the battery so the LCD would display the charge status, then the Motorola charger could be used.

The PC might provide enough to power the battery so it thinks it can turn on, but the boot process drains the battery too much. If you plugged it in at 5% while the phone was still on, I imagine there would be no problem with charging via PC.
 

aaf709

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It must be a powered USB port to charge, but I'm assuming it's connected to your PC. Signal strength will have a factor in the charging rate. At work, where the signal is good, it takes a couple of hours to charge from 60% to full, but at home the same time would drop it to 50%.
 

Big Cam

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and for the record, it has been a little over 2 hours since I hooked it up to my PC and it has done nothing. I don't think it is even charging. I know I've charged it on there before when it was low, but I think the kickstart from nothing might be too much for it.

Oh well, no phone until I get to my Jeep.
Let me know, I hope I'm right and there is nothing wrong with your phone.
It must be a powered USB port to charge, but I'm assuming it's connected to your PC. Signal strength will have a factor in the charging rate. At work, where the signal is good, it takes a couple of hours to charge from 60% to full, but at home the same time would drop it to 50%.
Good point. It's highly unlikely since it's on a computer but it's possible.
 

Scribble

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The phone needs to be turned on to charge, and when you run your battery all the way down the phone shuts off... USB isn't powerful enough (not sure about powered USB) to run the boot sequence so the phone can't boot/won't charge.

Plug it into the wall charger and it will boot/charge. Use the USB charger when the phone is still on, but needs a charge.
 

Se7enLC

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I had a very similar problem but wound up at a different solution. I had run the battery down so low that it went into a loop like so:
- Droid is plugged into the wall, therefore it tries to boot.
- Once it starts to boot the charging light comes on
- Charging light blinks a few times and goes out
- Droid gets close to or finishes booting (still not charging)
- Droid reboots, starts the loop over.

The fix was to plug into a computer USB port. For whatever reason, when the Droid is charging off a computer USB port it doesn't automatically boot up like it does when you plug into a wall wart. Leaving it plugged into USB overnight charged it while it was off and when it had enough power to, it booted up and has been good as new ever since.

Try powering your Droid off and plugging it into a USB port for a few hours, see if it comes back to life.
 
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jinxygrrl

jinxygrrl

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Okay, my phone is awesome.

I took the battery out for a while and when I got back to my truck I plugged it into the car charger and it started right up and started charging.

Not a problem at all. :icon_ banana:

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, it was appreciated.

These are just amazing phones, aren't they?
 

aaf709

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For whatever reason, when the Droid is charging off a computer USB port it doesn't automatically boot up like it does when you plug into a wall wart.

When it's plugged in via the wall plug it assumes you're using the multimedia dock and stays on. That's the best guess. My earlier comment about the USB port being powered is because there are unpowered USB hubs available and if it was plugged into that it wouldn't charge.
 
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