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[Q] My Nexus S is DEAD, won't even turn on

I was using my Nexus S on Google Maps, with GPS turned on, as battery was low, (about 15%) I was charging it with a car charger bought from ebay. I turned my car off, and took my cell phone with me. I tryed to turn it on, but no success. Thought it was battery drain... but it woldn't charge anymore!!
Tryed:
1. Car charger
2. WAll charger (about 4 of them! Including the one that came with my wifes Galaxy S)
3. Charging the spare battery and inserting on my phone! (doesn't even vibrate on power buttom)
4. Connecting it to a PC (windows and ubuntu can't even detect that I have inserted a USB device!)
5. Leaving the battery out of the device for a night
6. Exchanging batteries with my wifes Galaxy S!
Anybody have ANY idea besides taking it back to bestbuy?
I hate to realise that I may be in deep sh*t
Thanks for any help!

Bad idea to be using cheap eBay car charger, probably incorrect voltage, screwed up your phone big time. It sounds like you've exhausted all your options. Could be a software issue if you haven't tried that yet, otherwise, yep, you're screwed.

What do you mean by software issue?
I have tryed turning it on Holding volume up key and nothing.
Kinda sucks!
Anybody know's when Will Galaxy S II will be released?
I don't want a Atrix with froyo

From what you describe, it looks like an hardware issue. There is virtually no way that you could inadvertently destroy the software in your phone by what you describe.
The most likely explanation is, that some voltage spike or isolation brakedown or whatever in the car charger fried the hardware of your phone.
However: It could also just be a unfortunate coincidence and there is no way for you to know for sure. (However, I wouldn't advise on using that car charger any more)
So my advise is to send your phone in under warranty and tell them not to do anything on it that will cost you money before speaking with you first.

I'm always worried something like this will happen.
But I agree with cgi. Definitely sounds like something you'll have to have fixed.

can't see what else you can do... i really think it's a hw issue.
i'm pretty sure it won't help (as you already tried another charged battery), but when i had a milestone, i was able to bring it back from the dead following this guide: http://www.droidforums.net/forum/te...oid-not-booting-odd-behavior.html#post1025466
but if you can claim for the warranty, you really should do.
just don't get bad ideas from the guide and good luck! =o)

return it. your ebay thing screwd up the voltage/charging component that directs the voltage form the micro usb to the battery.
wel thats what i asume.
so its a HW problem you cant fix.
sorry for your loss man.

You should never turn off the ignition or start your car with something plugged into your cig lighter socket. The sudden jolt of electric current can fry whatever electronic you have connected. I have a GPS that comes with a big warning "turn on ignition before plugging device into cig lighter socket" and "unplug before turning off the ignition".

zero383 said:
You should never turn off the ignition or start your car with something plugged into your cig lighter socket. The sudden jolt of electric current can fry whatever electronic you have connected. I have a GPS that comes with a big warning "turn on ignition before plugging device into cig lighter socket" and "unplug before turning off the ignition".
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I think that only proves extremely bad engineering on the part of that power adapter maker and the attempt to pass on any problems from it to the user.
I never saw anything that asked to use it only with the engine running. Where I come from the majority of people uses manual transmissions. If every engine stall on a intersection would kill off a phone, then I think regulators would have done something about it.
Also it is just not realistic. How often would you just forget to pull out the plug?
It surely is not trivial to protect from overvoltage, but it is by no means very difficult, especially in an isolated environment like a car.
No one asks you to take out your radio before you start the car either.

It doesn't mean that you have to use it while the car is running. I think you're missing the point. What I meant was that don't have anything plugged into the cig socket while turning off the car or starting the car. I tested it with a multimeter. There's a huge fluxuation of current from the socket as you do those two things.

zero383 said:
It doesn't mean that you have to use it while the car is running. I think you're missing the point. What I meant was that don't have anything plugged into the cig socket while turning off the car or starting the car. I tested it with a multimeter. There's a huge fluxuation of current from the socket as you do those two things.
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I do get the point, but maybe I wasn't clear enough. I know that the in-car power grid is not a very "clean" power source. I would fully expect to get voltage spikes (no idea what you mean with current fluctuation).
Consequently, every piece of hardware I would design to work off such a power source, would be specifically designed to work flawlessly in the face of these conditions. The radio (and every other electronic device) in your car proves that this is possible.
With a standard multimeter you can't even measure what's going on, since it is not fast enough, but even if it was, you couldn't follow it. You would need at least something that samples and holds the highest voltage value and then display it.
What I was trying to say is that the company sold you a defective by design piece of hardware and tries to transfer responsibility for it to you.

[Q] How does wireless charging works?

This might look like a stupid question. But I really wanted to know how is a phone charged without a wire connection. I mean you need to pass electrons while charging right? There must be a layer of air(No matter how slight) in-between the charger and the device which has a resistance of about 10^13 to 10^16 ohms. So how does the electrons passes through this layer?

Induction

Krazhil said:
Induction
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Thanks. I just got it. The process is something like an electric transformer. Just one part of it is on the charger side, and the other is inside the Cell phone. So ain't we wasting a lot of power through the process. I mean efficiency is never 100%, is it?

I believe the wasted power is related to the coil's material (the less resistive, the less dissipated power).
So yes, efficiency could never be 100% because there's no material with 0 resistivity.

Slazur said:
So yes, efficiency could never be 100% because there's no material with 0 resistivity.
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I mentioned compared with the wired charger. It's wastage r8? And it's not really wireless(got a cable between the charger and wall socket) so what's the point?

I can't recall correctly, but there will be a little bit more of wasted power compared to wired charging (due to the air's permeability to let the electromagnetic field produced by the coil "flow")
Well yes, it's still wired, but the joke is to not plug the phone.
Personally, I always charge my phone on the same spot when I'm home, so it certainly could come in handy.

Slazur said:
Well yes, it's still wired, but the joke is to not plug the phone.
Personally, I always charge my phone on the same spot when I'm home, so it certainly could come in handy.
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So you are keeping the charger plugged into the wall socket all the time? If not than I still didn't get the point why if yes you are wasting a lots of energy of over the day. I thought we are looking for an energy efficient world. I'm I wrong?
I do support if it's built inside a cars dashboard or something like that. Just to put the phone on your dashboard and it's charging. But in case of home still wired is better. Though if it was something like wifi that could work from a distance would make a good point. You know what I mean....

Add Wireless Charging To Your Pixel XL

Hey guys, Rydah805 here with a nice little review on something cool that was sent to me from Chotech; A USB Type-C wireless charging kit. Basically, what it does is awesome by simply adding wireless charging capabilities to devices (such as my Google Pixel XL) that do not support it out of the box. You will obviously need a wireless charging pad for this to have any function. I personally own two, a Samsung branded wireless fast charger and Choetech’s very own wireless fast charger. For this review, I tested using both in which results were the same. Before we begin, I'd like to make it clear that I am in no way associated with Choetech.
How it works is even simpler too. You plug the wireless charging receiver into your USB Type-C charging port, stick the actual wireless charging receiver to the back of your device (sticking not necessary is using a case but do note that it will leave an ever so slight bump with a case.) After plugging it in and having the wireless charging receiver mounted to the back, you're pretty much set. Now when you want to charge your device, you may just dock it onto your wireless charger.
As for wireless charging speed, I wasn’t able to get it to charge “rapidly” as my Google stock charger states, but charging time wasn’t too far off and isn’t noticeable if charging overnight or if just sitting on your desk at work, like me in both of those scenarios.
When it comes to quality of looks and materials, it meets my expectations but then again, what could you really expect? And if you're curious about the specs on this little guy, it is using qi wireless charging technologies with an output of 5v/1a. This is obviously lower than the stock wired charging rates and of course speed but again, if you’re like me, always at your desk or at home, this isn’t too big of a deal. YMMV.
Now for my personal look and opinion on it. I think it’s cool and coming from a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and even more recently, the best worst phone ever, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 (R.I.P.), wireless charging was definitely missed when switching to the LG V20 and now again with the Google Pixel XL. I definitely like having this as an option and thank Choetech for giving me one to review. Personally, I do not use it quite often as I am a freak about having my phone as thin as possible (thin case fans, where you at!?) but if I weren’t into thin cases, this would stay on my device all the time.
To sum this baby up, it’s great. It gets the job done and does what it came to do, add wireless charging to your incapable device. LOL
8/10 (Wish wireless charging speeds were better but it isn’t a killer for me.)
Link to purchase coming soon.

Looks cool. I really miss having wireless charging since I just plop my phone down on my desk or when it's bed time and I don't have to worry about the port wearing out. This is my first USB C device, so I'm curious to see how well it holds up.
Does your wireless charging pad have much heat when it's charging, both in a case, or if you had direct contact between the receiver and charging pad?

mrich137 said:
Looks cool. I really miss having wireless charging since I just plop my phone down on my desk or when it's bed time and I don't have to worry about the port wearing out. This is my first USB C device, so I'm curious to see how well it holds up.
Does your wireless charging pad have much heat when it's charging, both in a case, or if you had direct contact between the receiver and charging pad?
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Nope, actually stays about the same temperature wise which is nice. 😁
Sent from my Pixel XL

That sounds pretty cool. The reviews I have read on other ones was that the charge speed was much slower. Don't need rapid charge but standard speed would be more than good enough for me. A few reviews I read said that putting one on a wireless charge dead at night it wouldn't even be fully charged over night. I will probably buy one of these as soon as the link goes up Couldn't find it yet on Amazon.

Retrofit wireless qi charger receiver

Hi,
I want to retrofit wireless charging capability with one of those thin receivers you can put between your phone and the case and then plug into the usb port. The only thing that worries me is a coil or antenna or something which is sitting on top of the battery. I can be seen in this disassembly video: https://youtu.be/kNzDbb-lJzs?t=42 This would probably be covered by the added receiver. What is this? Would covering this up be a problem?

HilmarG said:
Hi,
I want to retrofit wireless charging capability with one of those thin receivers you can put between your phone and the case and then plug into the usb port. The only thing that worries me is a coil or antenna or something which is sitting on top of the battery. I can be seen in this disassembly video: https://youtu.be/kNzDbb-lJzs?t=42 This would probably be covered by the added receiver. What is this? Would covering this up be a problem?
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NFC.
It doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Mhm, ok. If I don't want to use NFC anyway would this be a problem? I mean, the phone should be able to handle beeing placed on a qi charging station (if someone is ignorant that it does not have this function) without induction of any harmful currents into that antenna, right? So I would just loose the NFC functionality if I shield it with the receiver patch.

HilmarG said:
Mhm, ok. If I don't want to use NFC anyway would this be a problem? I mean, the phone should be able to handle beeing placed on a qi charging station (if someone is ignorant that it does not have this function) without induction of any harmful currents into that antenna, right? So I would just loose the NFC functionality if I shield it with the receiver patch.
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My reaction was not about NFC, it is even possible that it will continue to work, maybe it will be less sensitive. I just expressed my opinion that I personally dislike your intention, because I don't think wireless charging is a killer feature for the ZF6 that we have to regret not having. Moreover, our battery size and space in which it is located and cooled, and so on is not at all adapted for continuous wireless charging and higher charging temperature.
After all, we don't charge so often with our big battery, and when you charging by cable, you charge more environmentally and faster than with the best wireless charger. That is to be remembered, and that is what I meant and what was my point.
For me NFC and big battery are killer features, but wireless charging isn't.

_jis_ said:
...
For me NFC and big battery are killer features, but wireless charging isn't.
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OK, I am getting your point. I just bought this phone, and was not used to having a battery that can go two days easily. I have qi chargers scattered around everywhere (car, office, living room ...) to top up my battery whenever I lay my phone down somewhere. That is starting to seem a bit pointless. I just discovered the function to slowly (and therefore least damaging to the battery) charge and reach 100% at a specified time. Perfect for overnight charging.
Let's give it a few more days to see if I still feel the urge to retrofit wireless charging.
But from the purely technical standpoint, I had another thought. The qi charger only switches on the charging field when it detects a compatible device set down on it. So it would not do that if an untouched Zenfone 6 would be placed on the charger, and there would not be any danger of inducing currents into the NFC antenna and damaging something. Now, if I retrofit a charging pad the charger actually does produce a field when the phone is on it, thats the whole point. No idea how much current would actually be inducted in the NFC antenna, but I am very certain it is not zero. Does someone have the technical background to at least make a guess?

Will superfast wired charging kill wireless charging?

When I bought my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, I looked around for wireless chargers. The official Samsung store was out of stock, and so I settled for a 3rd party wireless charger which had good ratings on Amazon.
It charges my S22U fine. I see 'Fast wireless charging' show up on my phone and the phone charges as expected.
Then I bought an iPhone 13 Mini with the official MagSafe charger.
Here are my observations:
1. Wireless charging takes atleast twice the time that is taken by wired charging.
2. Wireless charging generates a lot more heat than wired charging. This is bad for the phone.
3. You can't use your phone for the most part when it is charging wirelessly. And you shouldn't too given the amount of heat that it generates.
While Samsung, Apple, Google do not allow more than 15W wireless charging, some brands allow upto 50W wireless charging. But that also means a lot of heat being generated, which is really bad.
So I made it a point to not keep my phone on the wireless charger for more than an hour to limit the heat generated. I would use wired charging in the morning to fully charge my phone while I'm busy with my morning chores, and then use the wireless charger for topping up the charge in the evening.
And with superfast charging offered by most Chinese brands today, the need for wireless charging diminishes even more. Fully charging a phone under 20 minutes will become the norm in a couple of years. This will also be more convenient than using a wireless charger that had only one thing to offer: convenience.
Do you think superfast wired charging will kill the inefficient, time consuming, heat generating (and component damaging) and less convenient wireless charging technology completely?

Wireless charging is just a convenient gimmick, in my opinion. Wired charging will always be superior to wireless charging for the main reason that direct contact is more efficient than inductive coupling. There is a reason why power transformers use ferrous cores instead of air gaps.
I don't think it will go away, though. People like the idea of placing their phone on a charging surface instead of fumbling for a cable. I personally would prefer the cable simply because I use my phone often, but not everyone uses their device the same way.

V0latyle said:
Wireless charging is just a convenient gimmick, in my opinion.
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That is actually true.
V0latyle said:
People like the idea of placing their phone on a charging surface instead of fumbling for a cable.
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I find myself fumbling more with placing the phone properly on the wireless charger. Wired charging is actually much simpler and no fumbles.
iPhones have the magnets in them to address this issue, but the circular magsafe rings I see on most cases that support magsafe charging makes them look so annoyingly ugly.

I only like wired charging, wired Ethernet, wired POTs, wired alarm system, wired operator switch board !

EdT586 said:
I only like wired charging, wired Ethernet, wired POTs, wired alarm system, wired operator switch board !
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Why so?
Wireless technology is improving and is definitely more convenient.
But wireless charging has still a long way to go because currently it is very inefficient, time consuming and potentially damaging to the phones.

TheMystic said:
Why so?
Wireless technology is improving and is definitely more convenient.
But wireless charging has still a long way to go because currently it is very inefficient, time consuming and potentially damaging to the phones.
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"Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler" - Albert Einstein
Because I am a purist !