New phone not connecting to network

[Lonewolf]

I've had two phones die on me in the last ten days... same brand, same model, same issue. Battery is charged, battery charging pins are receiving power (confirmed via Multimeter), but the phone will not power on, and neither the charging light, or the battery indicator (which should display while phone is charging) comes on. As far as I can tell, both phones were on, and at some point, died. And yes, I tried different cables and outlets.

I'm thinking it's a bad batch of phones, but maybe came up with something else, and that's where you guys come in.

The phone's manual indicates you can insert a Micro SD card, up to 32Gb in size. I didn't have one of that size, but was using a 64Gb card, without issue, or so I thought.

So here's the $64,000 question... would using an SD card larger than specified in the phone's instructions have any bearing on the phone dying and/or not being able to power on?

P.S. - In the middle of typing this, I looked in my GoPro, and sure enough, there's a 32Gb card there, so I can swap cards when I get a new phone back from the supplier. Besides, the 64Gb card will serve my GoPro better.

P.P.S. - No physical damage was done to either phone (though I have briefly considered running over it). I used to sell phones about 20 years ago, so I know my way around them... it's just that I've never seen this issue before.

Thanks in advance...

[SynchroDub]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

The phone's manual indicates you can insert a Micro SD card, up to 32Gb in size. I didn't have one of that size, but was using a 64Gb card, without issue, or so I thought.

So here's the $64,000 question... would using an SD card larger than specified in the phone's instructions have any bearing on the phone dying and/or not being able to power on?

No, it wasn't the SD card.
Even my old rusty Galaxy Note 3 was "designed" to work with only SD cards up to 64GB, but I have one of 128GB and it works just fine.
Never had any problems.
So it's definitely not the SD card the cause of the problem.

If the SD card wasn't compatible with the phone, you wouldn't have definitely seen any data. But sounds like this is not the case.

Yours definitely sounds like an overheat/bad battery problem.
I had the same issue happening with an iPad Mini, and I returned it to Amazon after only 14 days. Never bothered to get another one, as the issue was very common among other Apple users.

Ever since manufacturers started selling laptops and phones with everything soldered, from batteries, to RAM, to SDDs, etcetera, I have read and seen many bad stuff happening to these devices. So much that I become very "selective" in purchasing new electronic devices, these days.

So, yeah.
You probably just got a bad batch of phones.

Hope that helps.

[Shylock]

Sounds like moisture damage to a circuit or board inside the phone. Moisture damage can result from bad phone seals or an issue in the manufacturing or storage of a circuit or board.

[SynchroDub]

Originally Posted by Shylock

Sounds like moisture damage to a circuit or board inside the phone. Moisture damage can result from bad phone seals or an issue in the manufacturing or storage of a circuit or board.

Or a dislodged battery (badly soldered in the board, or that overheated and broke the circuit where it was soldered).

[Lonewolf]

Yeah, I Googled the issue last night. Only a couple posts indicated anything along the lines of an SD card damaging a phone. In fact, most pointed out that if you use a 64Gb in a phone that accommodates a 32Gb card, it'll only allow 32Gb of storage; that it won't recognize the full capacity of the card.

Just hard to believe two phones would die like that... same brand, same model.

[SynchroDub]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

Yeah, I Googled the issue last night. Only a couple posts indicated anything along the lines of an SD card damaging a phone. In fact, most pointed out that if you use a 64Gb in a phone that accommodates a 32Gb card, it'll only allow 32Gb of storage; that it won't recognize the full capacity of the card.

Just hard to believe two phones would die like that... same brand, same model.

Indeed.
SD cards are no RAM or a GPU in a computer, where if the Mobo doesn't support them the computer won't turn on.
They're just that......storage devices.
Hardly any SD card will cause any damage to a PC or phone.

If a phone or a computer doesn't support them, they simply just won't show up or become inaccessible.

More than likely the phones you had probably born already "dead" from the factory (with some faults in them).
It's not uncommon to get a phone, or a PC, these days, that doesn't have a problem of some sort, either due to bad manufacturing or a bad design that won't allow it to function properly.

With China cutting down on personnel due to the pandemic and delaying shipments and quality control (most electronics arrive from Shenzhen......the Silicon Valley of China), and brands cutting down on the costs of components, it's hard not to get a "faulty" device.

Not saying that ANYTHING is faulty. But, compared to the times before the pandemic, manufacturing and quality control of electronics has definitely suffered a lot. Just like Cars production in America or Europe.

[zenthark]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

Yeah, I Googled the issue last night. Only a couple posts indicated anything along the lines of an SD card damaging a phone. In fact, most pointed out that if you use a 64Gb in a phone that accommodates a 32Gb card, it'll only allow 32Gb of storage; that it won't recognize the full capacity of the card.

Right now, there are four different SD card standards:

(the original) SD standard: supports cards up to 2GB
SDHC standard: supports cards up to 32GB
SDXC standard: supports cards up to 2TB
SDUC standard: supports cards up to 128TB

Usually when a manufacturer says it supports cards up to 32GB, that usually means you have an SDHC compatible device. While an SDXC device must be backwards compatible with SDHC and SD cards, there is no obligation for an SDHC device to support SDXC cards. An SDXC card will work on older generation SDHC readers if these devices can read the exFAT filesystem. exFAT is a Microsoft proprietary filesystem and is mandated in the SDXC specification. Normally with laptops, tablets and smartphones, it's just a matter of software (drivers/firmware/OS) support. Some devices, especially old digital cameras, cannot read exFAT, so when you insert an SDXC card, they will format it to FAT32 and maybe partition the card to only 32GB.

[zenthark]

Originally Posted by SynchroDub

No, it wasn't the SD card.
Even my old rusty Galaxy Note 3 was "designed" to work with only SD cards up to 64GB, but I have one of 128GB and it works just fine.
Never had any problems.
So it's definitely not the SD card the cause of the problem.

If the phone supports 64GB, that means it is compatible with SDXC cards; therefore, it is supposed to read cards up to 2TB. So, why did Samsung say it was compatible with only 64GB cards? Well, we can only speculate but, searching on Google and Wikipedia, I found that Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 3 in September 2013, while the world's first 128GB microSD card was only announced by Sandisk the year after. So, when the Note 3 was unveiled, 64GB was the maximum you could get from a microSD card. Maybe it was better from a marketing perspective to just say it supported 64GB cards. It could also be the case that Samsung hadn't tested their hardware with larger cards (as they didn't exist at that point), so they couldn't certify how the phone would perform with larger cards and decided not to make any promises.

[SynchroDub]

Originally Posted by zenthark

If the phone supports 64GB, that means it is compatible with SDXC cards; therefore, it is supposed to read cards up to 2TB. So, why did Samsung say it was compatible with only 64GB cards? Well, we can only speculate but, searching on Google and Wikipedia, I found that Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 3 in September 2013, while the world's first 128GB microSD card was only announced by Sandisk the year after. So, when the Note 3 was unveiled, 64GB was the maximum you could get from a microSD card. Maybe it was better from a marketing perspective to just say it supported 64GB cards. It could also be the case that Samsung hadn't tested their hardware with larger cards (as they didn't exist at that point), so they couldn't certify how the phone would perform with larger cards and decided not to make any promises.

Actually it was Android KitKat that allowed the Note 3 to read SD cards up to 128 GB.
At the time the Note 3 was released, Android 4.something could only read 64GB SD cards. Then KitKat came out, and so 128 GB SD cards and compatibility only then started to see the light of the day.
So Samsung said ONLY 64GB cards were compatible based on Android specs/features at the time.

Most manufacturers tend to do that, even Sony with the PS3/4/5 did the same thing with Blu-Ray compatibility, back when they were released.
Then updates come up, and some features are either removed or added.

Right now i'm running Android 11 (LineageOS) on my Note 3, and it does the job just fine.
I was considering getting a new phone (nothing fancy, just a normal $90 Android phone to use with my bank and government ID Apps), but the prices are just insane ($200 for a basic RedMi/Xiaomi phone, gotta be kidding me).

I saw some Chinese "clones" (or whatever they're called) on AliExpress and Amazon and, even though they have good specs and good prices, I read that they tend to crap out pretty fast, sadly. And they tend to have a bunch of crapware installed by default, as well. So, definitely not worth spending $100 for a phone that might get broken after 2 months.
Not to mention that China is still on lockdown. So I would probably get the phone on Christmas, if i'm lucky.
Not worth it.

So i'm keeping what I have, for now, and when I have some spare cash, I will probably buy a new phone, Samsung or whatever that is.

[dznutz]

does your phone have a reset button? some older devices has a pinhole where you stick in a needle and hold it in for a few seconds to reboot. what brand and models are these phones?