Charged 2 days ago in power-off state until LED extinguished, then disconnected it.
Confirmed it was powered down by briefly pressing power button to make sure screen didn’t illuminate.
Left it without usage for 2 days.
Today it wouldn’t power on with either the usual power button press, or with a long-long power button hold.
Connected charging cable and plugged into electric outlet, but no automatic power-on (which is what usually happens when I plug it in), and no charging LED (which I usually don’t get until I power down after plugging it in).
Disconnected phone, removed battery, replugged to outlet: no sign of life.
Disconnected phone, disabled functionalities by engaging the killswitches, removed battery, held volume-up button, plugged to outlet, reinserted battery, released volume button: no sign of life.
Left it connected to electric power for over an hour with no apparent effect: no sign of charging (no LED and no apparent heat generation).
Tried a different cable, plugged into electric outlet (no effect), into laptop (no effect).
Connected to electric outlet again, with original charging cable, waiting to see if it eventually comes back to life.
Seriously: Apparently-dead L5 seems to suggest that you need charged battery. I have similar experience, but I’m not sure if it was same, and in that case managed to boot using my spare battery (and got life from other after using separate battery charger). Why a charged battery worked and not the cable, I have no idea. That would be one more thing to try, if you have one of those type of chargers that have been shown here too?
I basically shelved mine for I don’t even know how long, probably a year or two shortly after it shipped. The battery was done when I went back to it, of course. But I was able to charge it without any external charger stuff at the time (I don’t even own an external battery charger).
I had the same thing happen. Here is how I got everything working again.
1.) Take the battery out of the phone.
2.) Plug the power cable in to the phone and boot the phone with no battery in it.
3.) With the phone on and booted up, push the battery in to the phone.
4.) Keep the phone on and the battery in, until the battery is finished charging. This might take a few days.
My problem was that the battery was so dead that it provided a load, not a source of power. It sucks so much power from the wall charger that the phone gets little to no power, not enough to power on. The phone appears to be an intelligent charging manager. But it can’t do anything if it can’t turn on. The battery seems to rely on the phone to manage its charging, otherwise it won’t charge. So which comes first, the chicken or the egg. So try getting the phone to work without the battery in first. I feared that as soon as the battery was pushed in to its cavity, that the phone would die. But in my case, that didn’t happen. That temporary dead state left no lasting damage. It’s been a year now and my L5 still works normally.
Why hold the volume button up or mess with the kill switches. Just remove the battery, plug in the phone to the power brick, and then turn the phone on the usual way using the power-up button. If that gives you a working phone, then force the battery in to its cavity.
When I had a similar problem, I had turned off the phone using a shutdown command in a terminal window and then let the phone sit unused for a few weeks. That method leaves some things still powered up.
At any rate, if the phone won’t power up, you need either a new power supply, or your phone is broken. The link below goes to a power supply that works well for my Librem 5. Using a known good power supply seems like the next troubleshooting step.
Thanks. I suppose it could also be a problem with the charging internals.
BTW, since the battery did charge for hours on the last “good” day, I would think the power supply is not likely to be the problem, given that the battery has, or had, enough juice to power on the phone. (But didn’t.)
Did you load test the battery charger and the battery (both) to assure that the both are delivering an appropriate amount of current (Amps or mili-amps) in both cases? You need to find out the manufacturers specifications for current requirements in both cases to know if things aren’t working correctly. A voltage test alone can’t tell you much unless the voltage drops to near zero under a reasonable load, which may not happen, even if either the wall power supply or the battery is bad.
You could do a lot of electrical testing (load and voltage drop testing, looking up specifications). But that big charger has been so convenient for me that I bought several of them and gave them out to family members as gifts. They charge anything quickly. No more finding the right charger for the given device and no more long waiting for things to charge.
