For the last month or so I’ve had an issue with my Android Phone.
My old faithful Samsung Galaxy S7 was at the point where it had become unusable
Everytime I tried to switch on the phone it would boot loop. Normally stuck at the Samsung loading screen, or it would reboot during this point. At the times when I could get the phone to work it had become frustrating. I would randomly use the phone, and suddenly it would just freeze and then reboot itself trying to recover.
The only thing I noticed in a pattern was that the phone would get hotter and hotter, even when nothing was running and that eventually the reboots would get worse the hotter the phone got
The phone sometimes wouldn’t even charge, I would just got a battery cable plugged in icon, but no charging indicator. Eventually I had gotten sick of it, I managed to load up the phone temporarily and decided to backup all of my data from the phone should the worst come to the worst.
I carried out a wipe of the cache partition on the phone. Tried booting again, this fixed the issue temporarily and it would start again. I was then with no option, but a factory restore. I checked the error logs on the phone, and saw a lot of warnings (when I could get in), as sometimes I couldn’t get into this bit either. There was a lot of warnings about battery voltage, battery temp, and about 15 other pages of warnings. So thought it may have been the battery. I had decided to go through with the restore, as it would involve taking the phone apart which I was reluctant to do unless it was worst case scenario.
I carried out the restore AND….. it would crash during booting. Pretty much nothing else I could try. The phone got left aside. I rechecked the phone again about a week later when it was loading, and had a think. The only other thing I could think of was possibly the battery was faulty and would need replacement
I thought to myself, whatever. The phone is broke anyway, may aswell try it. As the phone itself is about 4 years old now. I ordered the replacement battery from eBay, took about 10 days to arrive. I think this is more down to shipping batteries via post as Royal Mail generally ban them now
I went through the process of removing the rear glass from the phone after shutting it down. A relatively simplistic process, albeit nerve-wracking. The potential for cracking tempered glass makes me uneasy on a £200 phone, but it was either try fixing it or live with a broken phone
Luckily I had a spare S7 phone with a cracked rear glass, so I thought I may aswell test it on this first. After using a heat gun, and my iSesamo pry tool. I eventually got into the phone and removed the rear glass on the S7 with broken glass.
I had a look at the insides and at how everything was laid out. So felt confident about doing it on my current phone. About 15 nerve-wracking minutes later, I managed to remove the glass from my current phone without breaking it
I switched my battery from my current phone, to my old broken one and managed to get the phone to boot up. HOWEVER, the same problems occured on my “old” S7 which had broken rear glass. This was both annoying, but great news at the same time, because it confirmed my theory that the battery was faulty.
Whilst waiting for my battery to arrive. I decided to modify the rear glass of my Galaxy S7. I removed all the plastic backing from the glass bezel so it was see through, and cleaned it up. This look doesn’t appeal to some, but personally I love it.
About a week later my battery arrived. I refitted it, with a new replacement adhensive cover. Once fitted, powered up the phone, charged and tested.
Low and behold, it’s now working. Dead battery all along
Once I replaced the battery, the phone charged up, and has become completely usable again. I’ve been using the phone constantly for best part of 4 days now, it’s been hot when I’ve been gaming, but other than that nothing. It’s never rebooted once.
So, if you’ve ever come across your phone with the following symptoms
- Phone Rebooting
- Random Crashes
- Phone Heating Up and rebooting as it gets hotter
- Phone won’t charge, or doesn’t hold charge
- Battery cable connected, but shows a grey icon with no “fill indicator”
Then you should consider buying an OEM Replacement Battery and repair your phone
