[HTC Vox] zarn:
Power Issues

Hi all,

The vox has a few power issues.

1) If you find the clock is resetting, the internal backup battery has gone faulty, All htc phones suffer from this after a while, especially if at sometime they have been left for a long time with no main battery in. I have taken delivery of new phones with dead backup batteries...

Its not a problem and no data will be lost, you just have to reset the time if the battery is removed, they are a cow to replace so unless your good at working with surface mount components I would give it a miss.

2) Dirty Batteries. The recess around the battery contacts tends to gather muck, take a rolled up tissue or cotton bud (q-tip) and clean all the gold pads well on the battery and battery contacts of the phone.

3) bent battery contacts/third party battery issues.

I have seen many with a problem with the far right hand battery contact.

if it looks bent carefully straighten it so it goes into the battery recess.

If you use a third party battery you may have to bend the contact to accommodate the poor molding....

Slowly insert the battery watching all four contacts, if the right hand one starts moving first (they should move together) it usually means its a flaky mold and you need to bend the contact carefully to the right a little. This problem usually shows its self by the phone switching off when the keyboard is being closed (quickly/firmly) or the phone is banged/shocked.

4) Sim door, this is rare but if the sim door is damaged or loose as it has a switch on it it may cause problems, but on the whole if it fits well isn't damaged and jiggling it doesn't caused the phone to die its ok.

General Battery stuff.

Lithium's are a bit odd, they don't like being fully charged and they REALLY don't like being flat, always try and recharge at between 10-30% and if possible stop at 90% you will get more charge-discharge cycles that way. Simply letting a battery go flat and not recharging soon can kill them. Taking the battery to shutdown and a full charge every few months should be enough to keep the battery gauge calibrated on a good battery.

When they get to end of life they can give very misleading battery levels, either going from full to say 50% very quickly then seem to be ok or being ok to start with then dropping quickly.

Basically if the battery is behaving erratically as far as life is concerned if the contacts are clean 98% of problems will be solved by replacing it.

But sudden death syndrome is a bit different (though if its happening when wifi is switched on or a call made it may well be the battery) and can be caused by almost anything, the previous mention of ribbon cable is quite a good one, but in that case it will almost always die (when its going to) when you open or close the keyboard (not to be confused with the shock of snapping the keyboard shut above - it will die even if you close the keyboard with care)

If its passing the keyboard opening/closing test, the battery is good, and the contacts clean my last suggestion before relegating the phone to a service center or replacement is to reformat the internal flash, The easiest way to do this is flash back to a provider or htc rom then re-flash. Another tip when flashing is once you have flashed and rebooted do a hard reset straight away.. I don't know why but it often helps.

As for surfboardcm's problem I'm not clear as to if the phone is crashing or the screen is just going black, If just going black and the phone stays running (screen returns without restarting) the most likely issues are the ribbon cable as mentioned or faulty display, though as with sudden death it could be a poor contact on any of the boards which really unfortunately writes these phones off now being as a second hand phone can be bought on fleabay for £30

Best of luck