Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
Friday, January 04, 2008
Dead Battery
My cell phone died again. It died back in October when I misplaced the charger for a couple of days and the battery discharged completely. Even after hooking it back up to the charger, I couldn't turn it on and had to take it in to the ATT repair shop. At the time, they diagnosed it as a bad battery and sent me a new one overnight - problem solved right? Wrong.
This time, I left the AC charger at home over Xmas and haven't been driving around town enough since then to recharge it with the car charger (and you sure can't leave a cell phone in your car in my neighborhood) and the battery discharged again and the phone went dead.
Back to the ATT store to complain. THIS time, she said "Oh, yeah, that's a problem with this model (Cingular 8125). You can't let the battery die, or it's dead forever." WTF? I thought most cell phone lithium ion batteries are supposed to be completely discharged every now and then to improve their longevity.
Whatever. They're sending me another battery, but it won't be here till Monday. I feel like I've been cut off from civilization or something.
AHA! God bless Google. A quick Google search of this predicament provides answers. Apparently, I may be able to jump start the old battery by following these instructions, and the phone's inability to recover from this state is caused by the battery dying while the phone is on. The phone "freezes" and the operating system gets hung up and can't restart on its own. So it's NOT a battery problem - it's an operating system problem. GRRRRRR.
The last time this happened, I assumed the old battery was bad and tossed it. Not so this time. I'm going to charge it up and keep it for backup.
