Have had reboot issues for a while now and they were just getting worse. Nubia said to send in for out of warranty support, but thankfully that process is severely broken as all of the repair contacts they forwarded were either out of service or foreign language (Czechoslovakian!?).
In any case, I figured the phone was done so decided to take it apart and lo and behold, it seemed to last a bit longer between reboots when the back was off. Assuming it was a heat issue, I tried replacing the thermal paste where I could with varying results, but ultimately I ended up taking it completely apart to access the face of the SD 888+ chip and replaced the blob of pink goo covered with copper tape with a 1.5mm copper shim along with MX-4 paste. 1.5mm seemed to be the right spacing and the 15mm by 15mm shim I had only needed a few edges reshaped to fit within the housing.
So yesterday I put it all back together and no hint of issues yet. Longest time it's run without a reboot for at least a month.
I suspect I may have accelerated the breakdown of the cooling since I often put my phone into a bicycle mount which I think puts some pressure on the back of the phone, likely squashing the paste a little flatter each time till it was no longer making contact.
Anyway, if you do start seeing random reboots, this might be the issue.
Though it feels like I'm talking to myself on this forum. Are XDA forums not what they used to be or are Redmagic phones just not as popular as my Google feed is leading me to believe?
If you're using it in direct sunlight you aren't doing it any favors. You can fry a phone like that rather quickly. The thermal shutdown may not react fast enough to prevent hardware damage...
Limit SOT in direct sunlight to seconds not minutes especially in high ambient temperatures.
Monitor battery and CPU core temps.
If the phone feels hot, it is hot!
Related
50.000 plus km of motorcycle navigating (using Navigon) - so of that in hard rain with the BA "slightly" unprotected ....
So it doesn't like rain or vibration ...
Besides losing the two screws visible on the left and right top edges of the phone, another problem cropped up.
On a recent 6 hour ride, the main connector suddenly became intermittent. I have always hated that connector and I believe it's one of the weaker points on an otherwise less than quality device -but I digress.
I know how quickly the battery will empty using BT and the backlight all the time so I tried to jiggle the cable to get it to work while I was driving. It was not possible, and to add insult to injury, the intermittent connection kept interrupting the MP3s playing and would sometimes cause the SD card to crash, requiring a hard reset. Ugh.
In the hotel I was able to rig the connector so that the device would charge and the next day while at work I figured the device was toast anyway so I took a look inside.
4 screws out from under the battery compartment, and another three screws to get the mainboard loose enough so I could see the connection.
I found the connector so loose that with the slightest touch it fell out in my hands.
Apparently, all of the solder joints had been loosened by the rainwater.
I think this should be a caveat here for all devices left in the rain. I understand that rain water or distilled water is very "agressive". You may be able to get your device to work again. For a while.
I don't think toilet water or moisture from tap water is as bad.
- but again I digress.
Before I went any further, I went out and got an O² XDA-III. HAving safely restored my ability to communicate, I proceeded with the fiddeling.
I was actually able to get the connector resoldered onto the board using a 25+ (pre SMD) year old soldering iron. I actually don't believe it myself but it still works.
I was also able to correct an annoying rattle the phone had almost since I bought it.
The telephone antenna is a raised plastic piece on the back of the board. That raised piece forms a box in which one of the screws for the board onto the frame was "stored". Don't know how it got there but I guess the production people at HTC should listen up.
Well I thought it was fun. anyway.
My Touch Pro 2 is currently sitting in a bowl of rice while I gather the courage to install the battery and test my methods of drying it out.
Yesterday, my sister walked into the swimming pool with the phone in her back pocket. It only took her a second to realize her error and thankfully I was right there. I popped the battery out without turning on the screen and layed the seperate parts out in the sun for a few hours. When I got home, I dumped the phone into a bowl and filled it with rice in the hopes that the rice would absorb any excess moisture.
This morning, I broke out my tools and broke the phone down, looking for water damage. I found some residual water under the screen, but with so many layers of plastic, I would rather not take it completely apart. To help with this little bit, I placed the phone screen up on the dash of my car for 1 hour. Since sunlight is deadly to a phone, I didn't dare leave it longer.
We have a central heating and air unit outside, so I placed the phone atop the unit outside (it blows warm air from the top) for another hour.
I checked the screen for moisture and can't see any now, but with all of the various layers, it is hard to say for certain.
The last thing I will try is to hook up a universal air pump used for blowing up air mattresses and such to the bowl of rice. With a cover on top and a few vents on the side, I am hoping to blow dry air in and the last remaining moisture out.
If anyone has any other tips or tricks to add, I would be happy to give 'em a shot. I am in no hurry and a few days is worth the wait if it means the chances of the phone recovering are greater with other methods.
If you can create a vacuum (use duct-tape creatively to form a seal between the container* and the universal blower, and have the suction end of the blower making the connection) that would probably be best. Water between button contacts and on the circut board, in my past experience, has been the most lingering after-water problems.
When my blackjack ii took a dive in the doggy dish, it was about a week before it was completely dry, as evidenced by the lack of odd behaviour from the power button. I considered myself pretty lucky in that one. Good luck.
*The best you can probably do for a vacuum container would be to use a good-quality plastic baggy. Cut the zip-lock part off, insert the phone and a folded piece of cardboard to keep the bag from completely colapsing/getting-sucked-up, and duct tape it to the suction end of the universal blower, or even better, the suction end of a cleaned electric leaf blower. -Just a thought.
Update
After allowing the phone to spend yet another night in the bowl of rice (I decided against introducing forced air out of laziness), I plugged the battery back in and tried to boot it up.
The phone did not respond, at all.
I plugged the phone in via the official charger and noticed a momentary blip of the orange LED near the speaker. This seemed familiar, so I pulled the battery out and tried plugging the charger in again: Sure enough, I got the exact same response. The battery was either dead or the phone wasn't recognizing it.
The replacement phone came in Tuesday, but with some medical emergencies in the family, I didn't attempt anything until this evening. I removed the new, charged battery from the replacement phone and put it in the one I have been working on.
Voila! The phone booted straight up with the new battery!
I noticed some residual damage to the dispersal plastic behind the screen as the phone booted with a white background, but once the phone booted completely up, I couldn't see any difference from before the accident.
While I haven't been able to completely test every aspect of the phone, I plan to update this thread once the new battery (buy dot com, ftw!) comes in on Monday.
I am very pleased with the results and it was definitely worth the time and effort I put into the drying process.
If anyone stumbles upon this tiny thread, please keep in mind a few things:
The phone was only briefly immersed in water for about 30 seconds, inside a pocket
After removing the phone from the water, I pulled the battery before turning on the screen
I allowed the phone to dry over the course of five days
I consider the fact that the phone is now working to be a freak coincidence, results are not typical
a friend of mine had his immersed in water for about 3 min before he realized he had it in his pocket....since we are airplane mechanics, we deal with A/C alot, therefore we have a vacuum pump handy for evacuating A/C systems. He put his phone (dunno what kind, it was touch screen though) in to a vacuum chamber ( a glass jar with a hole tapped in the cap to allow for vacuum to be pulled) and pulled a vacuum on it for a day...it is still working and it was 2 months ago. So just an idea, i realize the equipment is not available to everyone, but it worked for him.
planedoc said:
a friend of mine had his immersed in water for about 3 min before he realized he had it in his pocket....since we are airplane mechanics, we deal with A/C alot, therefore we have a vacuum pump handy for evacuating A/C systems. He put his phone (dunno what kind, it was touch screen though) in to a vacuum chamber ( a glass jar with a hole tapped in the cap to allow for vacuum to be pulled) and pulled a vacuum on it for a day...it is still working and it was 2 months ago. So just an idea, i realize the equipment is not available to everyone, but it worked for him.
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Click to collapse
This is interesting!
Chemistry suggests that reducing the air pressure to a near vacuum would reduce the temperature needed for the water to evaporate, allowing it to do so at a highly increased rate... but keeping the phone inside an air-tight (and thus water-tight) container would actually prevent the water from escaping.
What am I missing here?
Snarksneeze said:
This is interesting!
Chemistry suggests that reducing the air pressure to a near vacuum would reduce the temperature needed for the water to evaporate, allowing it to do so at a highly increased rate... but keeping the phone inside an air-tight (and thus water-tight) container would actually prevent the water from escaping.
What am I missing here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The vacuum pump has a way of letting the vapor out of it in the process of pulling the vacuum...you can see the vapor as it escapes from the vacuum pump and by the time you reach 29.92 or close, you usually never get a perfect vacuum, but close....moisture is mostly gone....let it set, with a set of guages of course (forgot to mention that) monitor the vacuum, anytime it goes below 28-29 or so, turn the pump on again to remove the moisture....untill it holds for several hours making sure its all gone...a little overkill never hurts with these expensive devices.
just curious can note 7 avoid this catastrophe if the battery was removeable ,what are your views ?
Since we don't know what the cause was, my opinion is I don't know (well, I read something I haven't seen anywhere on the boards or any other news source but one but I won't state it because I have been accused of reading the news, it is in a language most won't understand anyway). But I am confident they should be able to fix the issue. I would largely prefer them to keep the IP68 rating.
You asked for some views so here are mine, much to the chagrin of many I'm sure but that's ok, that's just fine, really.
Based on currently available information which includes how Li-Ion batteries actually work, I personally would say the actual reason(s) that the Note 7 devices are considered to be defective is not because of the battery itself. So, while having a removable battery is a great thing - and I prefer devices that have removable batteries personally and only buy such devices with my own cash (I got my GS7A as a trade for a laptop so it didn't cost me any cash out of pocket).
Try this hypothetical situation for just a moment, if you will.
Without naming name brands or particular models, say you have a smartphone that has a removable back cover and a removable battery inside. To get to that battery and remove it you must handle the device well enough to be able to get at the back cover, probably find the tiny little gap that most have so you can insert a fingernail into it or perhaps a nail file, a butter knife, anything at all that can fit in that little gap so you can then start to lift the back cover off the device, unsnapping the retainer clips as you do so.
Follow me so far?
After the back cover is fully removed from the device you then have to remove the actual battery itself. Most removable batteries have a spot where you can "hook" a fingernail into and then pull gently to pry the battery up and out of the frame of the phone itself. If necessary you can probably turn the smartphone display side up and then smack the phone into your palm and the battery would probably drop out into hand, but generally most people just use their fingernail or perhaps a spudger to pry the battery loose from the device.
Voila, you've removed the battery entirely, congratulations.
Now here's where it gets interesting:
Say this smartphone has a defect that is occurring at random times on some devices - some of them will exhibit the defect (as cause and effect) and some devices may never exhibit it because of the random nature of how it presents itself. Considering this random nature of the defect presenting itself, say that at some point either while you are actually using your smartphone in your hand, or it's in your pocket, or it's mounted to your dash in your car with a holder, or it's sitting on a desk or table, or anywhere at all really and...
It starts smoking.
I mean it literally starts smoking and the smoke is quiet visible and you can see it easily. You can even smell it as it's happening. If the phone is in your hand when it starts smoking your most common reaction will be to drop the device right then and there, especially if in addition to the smoke you feel some heat buildup, like it was somewhat cool a few seconds ago but now it's smoking and it's getting damned hot, fast.
Again, most people in that situation are going to drop the device immediately.
But your device has a removable battery under the removable back cover, right? So...
If you dropped the device because it was smoking and getting hot there's a chance, a small chance but a chance nonetheless, that in the act of dropping your device when it hits the ground or it lands on a desktop or table top it might just cause the back cover to pop off and the battery might just pop out of the device entirely. That's a possible thing, right, you can actually imagine that dropping a smartphone with a removable back cover and removable battery might just make the back cover pop off and the battery pop out.
Still following me? Good but here's my point.
If you have a smartphone and it starts smoking, anywhere - be it in your hand, pocket, dash holder, tripod holder for pictures, on a flat surface, in a pool, under water, in a toilet, desktop, table, gravel, dirt, sand, on a road, it doesn't matter - the primary way to get the battery out of that device means you have to remove the back cover and then remove the battery and that requires you to hold it but since it's smoking and getting hotter by the second that's not really an option anymore.
So what then? Does that mean having a removable battery is a bad thing? Well, no, not really, but in a situation where the device fails in some manner and causes - that's the important thing here, the cause - the battery to fail as well and burn itself up it means you could potentially suffer some injury yourself because you have to manually remove the back cover then the battery.
tl;dr Yes it's a good thing to have a removable battery, but if a device with a removable battery fails and you want to remove the battery during the failure hoping to save the device itself from further damage, you might be injured yourself because you have to handle the device to some degree to get that failing battery out before it does damage the device or in the most extreme situation explode which destroys the device and also might release the gases from the battery which are incredibly toxic to humans.
I'm just speculating here.
My answer is: Maybe.
If I read is correct and the fault lies with the design flaw more than a battery defect, having removable battery would mean losing water resistance and the curve design, and maybe not apply too much pressure on to the physical battery itself.
What I do know is, if we had removable battery, Samsung would have avoided a full on major recall and just exchange the battery. If size is a problem, maybe a smaller capacity in exchange for safety. And maybe a small refund or a token of gesture to make up for the smaller capacity.
Oh well. What a waste.
Aimara said:
just curious can note 7 avoid this catastrophe if the battery was removeable ,what are your views ?
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Click to collapse
IF the battery is-was the problem then your question has an obvious answer. WE don't know yet what the problem is so no one can yet say.
Its yet more of these threads with yet more speculation over a done and dusted deal.
Ryland
I do agree with broadband. Even with removable batteries, if the batteries were damage, I wont be fast enough to remove it to prevent total loss.
But yah, it will drastically affect the recall process. Recall batteries are still better than the whole phone. And there will be plentybof after market alternatives to tide over temporarily
One of the reason is also easy troubleshooting , but a faulty set is needed to test the theory, example a faulty note 7 came with a removable battery, reports states that it will get extremely hot before smoking up, sure many of you who own Samsung older version of phones, changing battery is quite fast if the techniques is right, ok just a example, if the first one is a sdi battery as claimed, went faulty, threw it off before smoking up.
Went to claim from Samsung, which is ampere battery(forgot the name), if it didn't does a thermal? What's the deduction then?
If the second battery did smoke up, high chance its the phone issue? Of course this is just a theory, with all the reported note 7 smoking up and burned like crisp, it's quite hard to csi it.
Based on my observations, it seems like the replacement units are more prone to blowing up than the original. Even with the ATL batteries.
Hi, I just bought mine Nexus 5x few weeks ago, and 1 day after I started hear about the hardware bootloop problem. It made me scared.
I started searching about the problem and, until now, the conclusion about the problem is the phone gets heat and melt the solders of processor. That's a "comum" problem in LG phones, LG G4 have the same problem.
"-Ok, but, what causes that?"
My opinion, as lay, it is caused by cheap USB-C Cables and/or wall adapter. Fast charger adapters can also be a big problem. (Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/buy-usb-c-cable-wont-destroy-devices/ and https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/in-response-to-the-type-c-cable-discussions.412344/ ) USB-C transfer a lot of power through it, accelerating the process of charging and, consequently, making phone hot. The poor solder who LG's did on the phone start to get melted with the time.
Prevention you can take:
You can make this test in first of all:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-5x/help/diagnosing-soon-to-bootlooped-phones-t3543830
1- Use only the original cable and wall adapter who comes with the phone
2- Buy only well constructed USB-C cables (maybe it means expensive one, but you will expend more money buying a new phone than a good cable)
3- Keep control of phone's temperature with some app ( I use Cpu Monitor) and never let it exceed 45°C/50°C. If the phone reach this temperature, turne it off immediately (more recommended) or enable battery saver mode.
If the phone suddenly get heat and turn off:
1- DON'T TRY TO TURN ON! Wait until it gets more cold and than try to boot. If it boot, try to make a backup of you important things.
1.1- If the phone is in warranty, send it back and they will send you a new one.
1.2- If not, go to step 2
2- You can try to fix at home. Here are some links:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-5x/help/rld-fix-red-led-death-t3541536
https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=i6eu7OK_4t8
3- If it don't work, you can take the phone to someone who works with this and ask for him to make new solder for the CPU.
If anyone know more tips or even solutions, please, contribute to the thread.
**sorry for eventually grammatical mistakes**
Bad quality soldering is really a common problems. Most of my mobile devices - especially notebooks - died because of this. I guess everybody had the problem once where a laptop get bluescreens more often with time until he finally refuses to boot up. Usually, damaged solder connections from chips to the mainboard are the cause for such problems. The solder connection degrades due to thermal and mechanical stress. With time, more and more micro-cracks are emerging with the result that the electrical resistance is increasing. Thus, signal transmission is distorted and bluescreens or crashes occur more regularly until the device dies.
In fact, a thermal treatment can help! The idea is to melt the solder to gain a reflow of the solder which repairs the micro cracks. Although there are semi-professional reflow ovens available on the market, you wouldn't buy one just to repair one device. But you can try do this by using your oven in the kitchen, a hot hairdryer or (if available) hot air gun. The best procedure (independing of the used heat source) is to disassemble the device, detach the battery (!) and if possible remove plastic parts. If these parts can not be disassembled, you can protect them by wrapping them with aluminium foil (it will reflect heat radiation and thus prevent fast heating of these parts). The best case would if you just have the small mainboard with the soldered chips on it. The start the thermal treatment: turn your oven to max. temperature possible, wait until its pre-heated and put the device into it for around 2-3 min. This time should be sufficient to remelt the solder connection (and repair them) and short enough to overheat the plastic parts. If it didn't work, try again with about 30 s longer duration. If you use a hot air gun try to apply the hot air stream only the soldered regions. Usually you can see if the solder gets hot enough. If its working with a usual hair dryer? I dont't know..
I used the kitchen-oven procedure many times and sucessfully revived many notebooks...
My 6S Pro has been kicking into reboot cycles a couple times a day and it looks like "Nubia Country Code" is usually the culprit. I have a case open with Nubia and they've said I'll need to send it in even though it's not hardware:
"Kindly let you know that there is a high probability that it is not a hardware problem, but that you cannot complete some software maintenance by yourself, and require professional tools."
So what "software" can be fixed with their "professional tools"? Perhaps just a clean boot.img? I've done more than a few full wipes and tried the last few roms, but eventually it starts rebooting again, more than a couple times when connecting to a new bluetooth device, but otherwise fairly random.
Got tired of waiting for Nubia so took a chance and disabled cn.nubia.countrycode and phone seems to work fine now. No idea what it was used for, but I don't notice any change other than the phone works now without going into rebooting fits a couple times a day.
I see a few other cn.nubia apps which I don't really trust now so I've asked Nubia support what they're used for and if they're safe to disable to see what they say.
Just an update that it turned out it wasn't that app. I think it was just the most sensitive as now it's rebooting again. I'm noticing that when it starts rebooting, it feels quite hot so I think I'm seeing what others were reporting in the thread about the release of the 3.18 rom. Something kicks in, starts draining the battery and heating up, but in my case, I think I do have bad hardware that starts rebooting as a result.
I've confirmed by running CPU stress testers and the phone will reboot as soon as it gets fairly hot. I'll be sending it in to Nubia, but I think there still is the issue of some broken process(es) that start running wild and heat up the phone every once in a while. Restarts don't stop whatever is draining the battery so that's why I'd get multiple reboots, likely until the process finally finished and the phone could cool down.
I've tried every ROM including 4.20 but I still see that effect sometimes once in the day, but other times it'll kick in multiple times. I suspect it may be widespread with the 6S Pro, but I only notice it more since the heat causes my phone to reboot.
Anyone else still noticing CPU use spiking randomly?
Yes am having the same exact problem but with redmagic 6 pro and says Nubia country code
Yeyo710379 said:
Yes am having the same exact problem but with redmagic 6 pro and says Nubia country code
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Click to collapse
I did finally resolve the issue which I described in my other post, Heatsink/cooling system failure.
It is very likely a heat buildup issue. It took me a while to focus on heat since the issues didn't always correspond to the temp sensor readings. However, adding that copper shim onto the main chip with Arctic thermal paste fixed it and it's been running solid since.
The spot where I put the shim can be seen at 3:10 of this teardown video,
As you see in the video, the chip is just covered by a big blob of pink paste which is held in there with copper foil. I scooped out all that paste, cleaned with alcohol, and put in a 1.5mm copper shim with silver thermal paste on both sides.
The other side of the mainboard had a similar blob covered with foil which I also cleaned and replaced, but there I just used a generic, non-conductive, adhesive thermal pad since there were a number of traces exposed there. I did that side first, but it made only minimal difference. Once I put in the copper shim on the other side, I haven't had one reboot.
I should have made a video, but I honestly thought the phone was finished and I was more just experimenting for fun.
In case you're thinking of trying the same thing, here is the shim kit I purchaed https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07XW9FBDN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The 15mm by 15mm by 1.5 mm thick one only needed a couple notches filed away to make it fit perfectly within the metal housing around the chip. That housing keeps the shim in place so once the mainboard is screwed back down, the shim can't move anywhere.