LED fast flashing red

Hardware Librem 5
6

Is it still flashing after putting the battery in?

Yes, try that.

7

He said it wasn’t even opened, so never used.

I don’t have a charged battery.

Twice red, once green with vibration, twice red, once green with vibration, and so on.
I have put the USB-C meter, it says 0.3A is flowing to the device, with or without battery.

With the volume up pressed first, it is flashing red not extremely fast, with the battery added afterwards, it is flashing red very fast. After a while, there is very light heat on the device, no heat on the battery and no heat on the charger.

8

0.3A may be enough. I meant to use an actual multimeter to check the voltage on the battery.

9

This is the important part. Seems like something is wrong either with the battery or the charging controller.

Do you have some another USB-C power supply, or a USB-A to C cable? If yes, does it behave the same way (blinking fast after putting the battery in) when using them?

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10

This may explain why it was never used.

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11

I connected an ipad charger (similar characterics). Without pressing any button, I have the LED flashing red twice, green once and a vibration, the password decryption screen appears, then the LED is flashing red very fast again.

If I try with the volume up button without battery, the LED is flashing red, when I put the battery it is flashing red very fast, like with the purism charger.

I have the invoice, the date is June 15 2022, it was ordered in 2018.

12

I’m afraid something is definitely wrong either with the battery or phone’s charging circuit. Trying another battery would be the best thing to do now I guess.

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13

Is there a faster way than ordering a battery from purism?
I guess I should contact purism for support.

Anyway, thanks for the advice.

14

If you live in USA, I would warmly recommend to you to order brand new Librem 5 battery (actually just repeating what @dos already wrote above: “the best thing to do now”, the best thing to start with, and quickest) as your description (red LED light “flashing very fast”) points toward conclusion of mine that your current battery isn’t useful at all (and not recoverable nor reparable). Good/great point would be that your Librem 5 boots without inserted battery by using the original Librem 5 power supply which means a lot … at least to me.

15

As OP said that …

…they need to be aware that Purism can’t ship loose batteries overseas*, so the only option may be to check on eBay for a 3rd party seller. (Unfortunately.)

(*) due to shipping regulations

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18

I checked the battery with a multimeter, there is 2.75V. I don’t know what a normal value should be.

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19

I’m no expert but :wink: … I would expect more like 3.8V. That’s what it says on the back of the battery (right?) and I just measured my spare battery with a multimeter and that’s what the multimeter said (give or take a few hundredths of a Volt).

Maybe @dos can comment on that.

Review also: Bought broken batteries for Librem 5

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20

This particular battery is definitively over-discharged (also I’m not sure and therefore guess, as never tested, that at 0% inside of Librem 5 cutout voltage would be at 3.20V) but main and actual problem over there might easily be that this battery does not have any measurable internal resistance (very fast red LED light flashing when this battery inserted there) and therefore not recoverable, IMO:

21

Thanks for the link. So the battery is probably defective.

Purism did not reply to my email (sent last Saturday) yet.

The only option I can think of would be to send the phone back to Purism (so they send it me again with another battery) or find someone in US who can bring a new battery to me.

22

Or buy from ebay: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=librem5+battery&_sacat=0

(Provenance/authenticity unknown.)

Or from other vendors, possibly: https://batteryclerk.com/products/purism-librem-5-replacement-battery

23

Not necessarily. It might be defective and hence not charging and not able to be charged. Or it might be something with the charging process within the phone. You might be able to fault isolate that by using an external charger (as you can see @Quarnero is doing in the photo above).

It bugs me that you haven’t been able to boot the phone with the battery completely removed. I guess if you end up sending the phone to Purism in order to get a replacement battery, they could look at that as well.

Twice red, once green with vibration, twice red, once green with vibration, and so on.

Maybe Purism support can tell you what that means (before you contemplate sending the phone to Purism).

24

You missed this:

And therefore please explain to @oseo on how to proceed from this very welcomed entry point … you’ll find your way :+1:. Thanks!

P.S. I wish that we know in which country OP lives (Europe is relatively big, have many regulated borders), as someone can/should send (within the same country because of related transport regulations) replacement battery to him/her (even if the same battery needs to be returned the very next day we will be much closer to solve this belonging “headache”)? Let us help there, please!

25

Not necessarily. :wink:

Where that particular text appears it was not clear whether the battery was in or out.

Well anyway the default disk encryption password should be 123456 and if the seller has changed that password then I think the phone will need to be reflashed.

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26

Related post is here: LED fast flashing red. And, perhaps I’m missing some clarity too (but do not want to admit this :grin:).

Explanation: I cannot imagine that someone can get, on Librem 5, decryption screen with completely drained battery (and while very fast flashing red LED light isn’t sign of charging inserted battery, and while I consider that this fast flashing of red LED as pointing toward “broken” battery, while still having one of those and have had terrible time with it).

27

I just received the phone back from repair. Now it is starting fine, I already did a software update and I am waiting until it is fully charged to do more, like phone calls.

It took a bit of time to get it back but I was informed from the begining that people in charge had holidays planned. During the repair I also had nice holidays, so I am in very good mood :slight_smile:

I did not send it for repair immediately, I first received a spare battery but it wasn’t helping, only then was it concluded that the phone needed repair.

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