Bricked with low battery

[irishprodigy]

Okay guys,

So stupid me managed to brick my Droid 4. I've followed the sticky to unbrick it, but I've found myself now in a low power scenario. So far charging hasn't been of any use, but I'm also at work and not at my factory charger which is in the wall at home. I have the original charger that came with my Droid 1. So far the thing refuses to charge at all. With the cable in USB it will power off and leave with a solid green light, but in the wall it only sits at the AP Fastboot Flash Mode (Boot Failure) screen.

Hopefully the factory charger will work once I'm home, but if I'm open to advice. Should I make/order a factory cable, pull the battery (which I'm comfortable doing), sacrifice a USB cable to provide straight power to the battery connection or anything else you guys know of?

Thanks in advice

 

[bdsullivan76]

I would suggest that you try the factory cable when you get home. I dont think it will charge in fastboot mode. If not Try to get into stock recovery by powering off then power back on while pressing both volume keys. Wipe data/ cache and power off then attempt to charge. Start there before tearing the phone apart. There is a thread on xda developers site in the d4 section on this very thing. Check it out for additional help.
People i am not trying to be rude here but this seems to happen often. These batterys are not removable nor should you attempt to do it. And never, ever, ever attempt to flash a rom or make system changes unless you have at least 80-90% charge. The fastboot files take a huge amount of power to flash. If you end up stuck in fastboot with a low battery you are asking for trouble.

Sent from my DROID4 using Tapatalk

 

[bdsullivan76]

My error. The topic i am referring to is a little way down in the roms section here on droid forums. It is discussed in the droid 4 fastboot article. I am on tapatalk so i cant get you a link. There are a few suggestions on how to possibly fix your problem.

Sent from my DROID4 using Tapatalk

 

[irishprodigy]

Happy to say my Droid 4 is up and running again! I ended up making a factory cable and following the rest of the steps in the sticky. Thanks for your input! :icon_ banana:

I guess these new droid's are a new ballgame...

 

[B-Unit]

Yea, when I softbricked mine, I was stuck in a bootloop to the Fastboot screen. Had to let the phone die, then could plug in and would go into the powered off charge mode.

 

[r314bd]

Happy to say my Droid 4 is up and running again! I ended up making a factory cable and following the rest of the steps in the sticky.

Good to hear. A few others have had the same problem so I'm curious what exactly happened so I can put a disclaimer of sorts in the sticky. Did you try flashing the fastboot file without a full charge or did the low power situation happen afterwards? And how exactly did the factory cable fix it? Did it just start charging the phone, or did it remove the low power notification?

 

[bdsullivan76]

Good to hear. Please give details on what you did to get the phone to charge. People are not used to the issues posed by the non- removable battery.

Sent from my DROID4 using Tapatalk

 

[irishprodigy]

Okay, here's what happened. When I started out with Safe Strap I flashed the newest Gummi ICS to the safe system, which got stuck in the boot animation. The battery was at about 80-90% at this time. I went to do a nandroid restoration to get back to the functioning system as it was. This is where I messed up the boot loader and got stuck in the Fastboot loop. At first the battery was OK, but once I found your sticky the battery was now low. I ended up making a factory cable, which involves sacrificing one of our micro charging cables. Cut down to the wires at the micro end, find the red power cable (I think it carries the +5V), splice it with a new wire before it reaches the pin, then solder the splice. Finally, solder the other end to the unused pin on the micro tip (number 4). I used a short section of speaker wire as the new wire because it was what was readily available. Here's the forewarning, the wires inside the USB are tiny. They are easy to break the wire themselves, break from the pin (I did twice and had to re-solder), and require steady hands. And if you cross the wrong wires you can royally screw up your phone or computer.

For a good resource, check this: here

What this cable does is when the Droid 4 powers on and discovers that pin 4 has the +5V on it, it bypasses the low power. It's the same thing they use in the factory so they don't have to charge the battery to program. Once I had it made, I connected the fragile micro end to the phone, put it in a place where nothing would get shocked, and connected it to a USB port in my laptop. When it went to the Fastboot menu, the battery was OK and I proceeded to program.

Another thing I discovered that worked I'll add for the sake of knowledge. When you're at the Fastboot menu, if you will hold the volume up, volume down and power button together for 10 seconds, the screen will power off. Release the power button but still continue to hold both volume buttons. You'll now have a menu for Fastboot, BP HW Diag, etc, etc. None of these did me any good, however, if you select the bottom one with "Tools" in it, then when it comes back to the Fastboot the battery will read OK instead of Low. Do this once though, when you are ready to program it because it only worked once for me.

And lastly, here's a pic of what my cable looked like after my phone was saved:

 

[markmda]

What wires exactly did you connect to make that Factory Cable? Cause I made one but all it did was turn into a normal usb charger.

 

[irishprodigy]

hey,

I'm sure you saw that the cable had four wires in it and the tip had 5 pins. The unused pin (pin #4) is where you will solder the new wire too.

The current wires in the usb cable you should have:

1. Red: +5V (this carries the power)

• Green: +3.3V (this carries data)

• White: -3.3V (this also carries data)

• Black: Ground

Now, the other tip of the new wire will be spliced into the red (+5V) wire. This is what substantiates the Motorola Factory Cable, and the phone interprets the +5V on the unused pin #4 in the micro tip to be an interrupted power source and a bypass for the battery.

Here's a few links that will give you plenty of info:

How/Why to make your own Motorola "Factory Cable"l

USB cable schematic

 

[irishprodigy]

And good luck

 

[Krooked247]

I am in this same situation right now. I didn't wanna butcher my cable to make a factory one though.
None of the other suggestions helped.
If u have an old phone you can go to verizon wireless website and put ur # on it til u fix ur bricked phone.
I ordered a factory cable clone made for programming from hong kong off of ebay for 10 bucks.
I am waiting for it to show up and I'll post back with my results.

 

[Krooked247]

The factory cable clone off of ebay saved me some serious paper.... it said it was for droid 2, droid 1, kindle fire, and droid razr but worked with my droid 4 just fine.... best investment i've made by far. Never have to worry about a dead battery again when flashing.

 

[calvertdw]

The factory cable clone off of ebay saved me some serious paper.... it said it was for droid 2, droid 1, kindle fire, and droid razr but worked with my droid 4 just fine.... best investment i've made by far. Never have to worry about a dead battery again when flashing.

You are a champion. I just ordered mine. Thank you for confirming that the cable works. Searched forever for a cable, and didn't know if the one on eBay was legit. Here is link for others:

2.5 ft Micro USB Factory Cable Fastboot mode for Motorola Xoom Droid Razr Atrix | eBay

 

[calvertdw]

I got my Droid 4 working again! I couldn't stand to wait for my hong kong cable to come in, so I went ahead and made my own using this thread:

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-labs/146492-how-why-make-your-own-motorola-factory-cable.html

I will post a picture of my cable when I get my droid fully charged. (It's charging now.) I'm so happy.

Thank you all,
Duncan