Cingular 8125 Battery Woes
June 19th, 2006 - 259 CommentsI have to say, this whole Cingular 8125 battery deal is starting to piss me off a bit. For the second time, my 8125 will not charge. It is really nice to have a phone that not only smokes a battery, as far as “talk time” goes, but also ends up killing the battery after about 3 weeks. It is a really nice feature. All things considered, at this point I would probably switch to Verizon where I can get a PDA or PDA type phone and some kick ass data bandwidth. Cingular does not offer their super fast data on a phone and only on their data cards right now. So, I am pretty stoked on my current setup.
UPDATE:
Iif your battery level falls too low and the wall charger will not charge, use the “Jeff Schaffer Method” found below:
Take a USB cable cut off one end and expose the red and black wire. Touch the black to the negative pole of the battery and the red to +, directly. I held it there for about three minutes. Put the battery back in the phone and now boot it up. When it starts up, IMMEDIATELY plug it into the USB PC cable or wall charger to charge completely.
Apparently, Li-ion batteries will not charge without a software solution to charge and this will not happen if the phone is not running.
Thanks to Jeff for posting this.
Awesome, I must thank you, your curiosity and braveness so much Jeff. I tried touching the black and red tips of an older usb cable for only about 10 seconds and it worked!!!! woo hoo!!!
I tried Jeff’s method, instead of PC USB cable, I used a 9V alkaline battery (the type with both connectors at the top) and it worked. Alkaline battery warmed up in the process. Charging my dead battery for anything less than 3min did nothing.
Thanks again Jeff.
I find the whole, “Lithium Ion can’t charge while the phone is off.” thing to be a tad ridiculous… I’m in the habit of doing that from owning a razr which seems to keep some part of the phone on even after you shut it down so they can charge while “off”. At any rate, twice now my phone had died overnight while on the razr wall charger (I don’t have the original HTC charger.) and for some reason, with enough time, the phone will allow charging via PC USB. Mine was dead in my pocket all day today during school and I came home and it kicked on immediately after I plugged it into my computer. The weird thing is when I was charging overnight with the razr charger, it would show the orange light, but the next morning it would be 100% dead. :/ My guess is because the phone is off, the razr charger just bleeds all the power away…?
Lithium ion batteries are different than older style batteries. Every lithium ion battery pack has an internal charging circuit that is designed to protect the batteries during charging. The charging circuit is activated by the phone. If the phone battery goes completely bone dead, the phone will not activate the charging circuit (even though the charging light may come on). The reason that Jeff’s trick works is that it bypasses the protection circuit and charges the battery enough to get things going. Most of the problems mentioned here are a combination of the old ROM and this characteristic of the lithium batteries. Ordinarily, if the phone powers off, there is usually enough power left to start it if is plugged into the charger when it is turned back on, but if you try to restart it more than one time, without it being connected to the charger, it will probably not work thereafter.
SO: Don’t let the battery go completely dead.
If the phone powers down from a low battery, plug it into the charger before you try to power it back up.
If it goes completely dead, use Jeff Schaffer’s trick from above. It works. Any USB cable will work, just plug the other end of it into your computer (after you get the wires cut and separated)
Once you get it back up and running, make sure you have the ROM update.
The wiring in cables is the same on Motorola chargers (USB is a standard format) as on the OEM charger, but they do not produce as much charging power as the OEM charger. Same for computer USB connections. Some are capable of more power output than others.
The trouble shooters at Cingular (and most other places for that matter) don’t have a clue. Most are just average Joe’s, paid minimum wage and are just running you through a set of canned solutions.
[...] Después de echarme un clavado en Google di con una solución medio extraña pero efectiva. [...]
Used the Jeff Method on my wife’s 8125. Worked great! Didn’t have to keep the wires touching the battery for long. Maybe 15 seconds.
The USB cable I used was shielded, so I had to do a lot of digging to separate the red and black wires, but of course, it’s so worth it!
My MacBook popped up a message about drawing too much power from the USB port so it was shutting down the hub or something like that, but it worked anyway.
Like everyone else, I’d like to thank Jeff, but don’t forget Jason! Without his blog we might never have found this info! Thanks guys!
I just had the same problem with my battery. I used Jeff’s method and I am now charging. Thank you Jeff!!!
THANKS JEFFF !!!!!!
THE USB TRCI REALLYS WORK I WAS ABOUT OT JUST TRWOW THE PHONE AWAY AND I JUST TRYED IT ANT IT WORK THANKS JEFF
WOW! Thanks Jeff. It Worked. I’m so thrilled
I’ve not had the dead battery problem but when my phone gets near 20% capacity it will start rebooting continuously when I hand up or press some other keys, rescently even at 70% on hangup. My phone is about 18 months old so I think the battery can’t deliver enough power anymore. I think deep discharges can cause this. Even after plugging the pone in to the charger it will not stop reboot cycling. It appears to reboot just after attempting to log into a cell tower. The only way I’ve been able to recover is to pull the SIM card, replace the batter and then start charging. I guess this prevents the phone from turning on the transmitter which keeps the power drain on the battery low. A new battery is on the way.
Tried the usb cut cord trick and i guess im doing something wrong cause it didnt work.i there is 6 spaces on the battery i guess 3 for neg 3 for pos i have a red but not a black so i used blue which diagram for usb cords say blue is the ground red is power other 2 are data held it on for 3 mins put the battery back in the phone plug up another usb cord and guess what NOTHING HAPPENED!!!! im so pissed this phone is so many head aches and what do you know cingular says oh no we cant insure that phone
Hola, gracias por la solución al problema de la batería. Vivo en Córdoba (Argentina) y acá no hay servicio técnico de Cingular. GRACIAS TOTALES!!!
did this usb trick and it worked!
my 8125 is pretty old i got as my first phone after my bro used for quite a few years …. i connected it to the pc to charge it (it was 10%) then sudden it goes off and doesnt turn on .. its two days since it happened
I used Jeff Schaffer’s technique and it worked. I held the red/black wires for about 4 minutes and put the battery back to 8125. Then I connected the charger to 8125. Nothing happened. I step I was missing was to boot up 8125. I did that and viola!
Thanks to Jeff Schaffer! I tried his Jump-Start of the battery and it worked. I used a standard A-B USB connector (like for a printer) and snipped off the non-computer end. I held it to the battery for about 2 minutes, and it worked. I tried plugging it into my MacBook Pro for the jumpstart, but the laptop freaked out about too much current on the USB port. So I plugged it into a Dell desktop, and no problems. I really think it is lame that you cannot charge the phone when the battery is dead.
my uncle left his 8125 laying around so i decided to see if all the batterie failure comments were true , so i had the phone working for 4 days and before you know it the batterie went dead . Im about to buy a new batterie cuz the phone is awesome for how old it is
Jeff- you are a god amongst mere mortals, thanks for USB fix. my 8125 was bricked for months until I found this blog – thanks Jason for the blog.
Cutting up a usb cable and holding the red and black wires to the opposite surfaces on the battery worked very well. Like Jamie I had left my 8125 sitting for over a year. Now to hunt ebay for “broken” 8125’s!
“The Jeff Schaffer Method” is genius! Thank you, you saved me tons of money..Where did you find this out?
I keep a spare battery in my charging cradle, so I am really getting a kick out of these replies….
That did not help however when the phone went stone dead while camping last week and the battery went into lockdown mode.
Do not use a wall charger people. That is just asking to get killed.
Use a USB cable. There is hardly any voltage coming out of the USB cable to hurt anyone.
But if you touch those cable ends on a wall socket, prepare to either get shocked real well, or worse, die.
USB all the way. Low voltage = less risk.
Has anyone had a problem where you plug in an 8125 to a wall charger and instead of it charging, it does a rapid battery drain like a reverse charge?
I have 2 of these worthless phones and am constantly using the Jeff Schaffer Method on all of my batteries when they die completely but with one of my worthless phones, when I plug it in to the wall charger regardless of where it is on the % to full, it does a rapid draining of the battery. Therefore i have to use one phone for charging, and switch out the batteries between the two phones a couple of times per day.
AT&T phones are worthless.
Thanks a million Jeff & Jason for this quick, easy fix – and for this awesome site! U guys saved another poor battery’s lost soul. Those of you who say it doesn’t work, try several times and longer than a few seconds. I tried like 4 times before it worked for me!
Jeff you’re da man!
I was a BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again) day at work, and I figured I could push my remaining battery life to zero. Then, simply plug that baby in, and be on my way again.
Well, I quickly learned that’s probably not a good idea, and I was like WTF could go wrong now.
After digging through useless info regarding battery life or whether my 8125 was a POS or not. Then, the gates of wisdom shined upon me, which lead me to your battery savior site.
Here’s few notes for the newbies (like myself).
1. Cut a USB cord near the “male” end that plugs into your phone. This will ensure you have about 3 feet of “oh shit, I stripped the wires too much” and enough length to slice your fingers.
2. Then, strip the plastic insulation away from the 4 self-insulated wires inside your primary wire. Usually, there’s a red, black, green, and white smaller wires inside.
3. Then, strip the ends off the red and black wires leaving enough to make a clean contact with the postive and negative contacts on the battery.
4. Then, plug the USB cable in to your PC or laptop. In my case, I plugged it into my buddies desktop because his PC has “positive electrons” coming from it, and read a few incidents where people encountered negative ju-ju on their PC’s or laptops. So, when in doubt use a buddies desktop or laptop.
5. Then, hold the red wire to the red + contact on the battery, and the black wire to the black – contact on the battery. Wait for 3 minutes or until your finger catches on fire. Honestly, 3 minutes should be good.
6. Then, slap the battery into your phone, hit the juice button, and watch that baby come to life.
7. Finally, while the phone is booting, jam that AC cord into the female electron input receiver end, and let it charge for a few hours.
Hopefully, your battery will out live the useful life of the phone, and may the force be with you!
NO BS…IT WORKS!!!
Thanks Jeff!
Jeff you are the fockin man!… What a great fix… i was pissed because cingular… now at&t had a rep that was telling me that my phone was shot… tellin me all kinds of bs… like a new battery won’t help you… you fried the circuits… then proceeds to try to get me to upgrade my phone… freakin walks me to the new tilt… and was all in my grill trying to get me a new phone. I read some stuff on the internet saying that the battery did not have enough juice to run the OS enuff to where the charging system would kick in. I thought they would be helpful at the at&t store… but all he did was try to get me to spend money! JERKS!…
thank a million Jeff. May 8th 2008
hey i have a question i have a white screen on my phone when it is closed and you cant see the key board but when you slide it open the screen comes back on i was wanting to know if anyone could help me out that would be great. also when its slide out the screen has a slight flash to it where is tries to go white
Yay! It works! Jeff – You rock big time!
Hey it works!
Finally, after replacing battery (thought it was fried)
Thank you “Jeff Schaffer” for the quick fix! great thinking!
Jeff Schaffer you are the man !!!! It worked at the first try !!!!!!!! Wooooooow!!! Thanks man you saved me a few bucks!!
The ghettofying charing method with a USB cable was great. Now I am showing out on my block and everyone thinks im cool, But I have to of course thank the man him self Jeff Schaffer! Im changing my major to electrical engineering .
Jeff, thank you, thank you. I tried your system and it worked. Wish I would have found you about $100.00 ago. Folks just remember that the battery signs are not aligned with the + and – posts, but they are the first and last posts on the battery. Jeff For President!!!!!!!!!
I now have 5 working extra batteries!…thanks so much dude!
I am getting ready to start my phone with Jeff’s method, but I have a question…My phone wasn’t dead when I put it on the charger. I had purchased a blackberry and decided to go back to the 8125 I had been using, it hadn’t been used for about five months. I couldn’t find the original charger so I ordered a generic one off of amazon. It charged up and I began using it. It lasted about two days and then started dying really fast. Last night, with power left, I plugged it into the charger, and by the time I woke up this morning, it was completely dead, won’t charge–even with the blackberry charger, which fits, and won’t charge on the computer. Do I need to purchase an actual 8125 charger? New battery? What would cause this? Here’s hoping that I can get my contacts and agenda up and running today! Thanks for any help.
totally different problem. im on my 3rd 8125 and it wont charge i have three different chargers and 2 batteries. what do i do?
Thanks Jeff! That’s the only thing that ever worked besides the missing wall charger!
Try it everyone!
OK, my fone is having the same problem and i want to jump start it but how do i know what terminal on the battery is positive and which is negative?
ok ok ok everyone listen up the usb cable trick work and works instantly get a usb charger step 1 step 2 cut the end that plugs into ur phone step 3 read ur charger and find out which side is postive and negetive then split it dwn the middle step 4 strip the 2 seperate cords so the wires show step 5 hold the 2 neg and pos to where it says neg and pos on the battery for 3 mins then put the battery back in the phone and turn on and charge it immediately…. omg i so happy it saved me like 40 bucks 4 a new battery and i thought i had 2 dead bats but now i have 1 spare for trips and such…..thxs jeff
Thanks Jeff!! you are the man!! Also, thanks to David for breaking it down so that we all can follow along.
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David Says:
January 18th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Lithium ion batteries are different than older style batteries. Every lithium ion battery pack has an internal charging circuit that is designed to protect the batteries during charging. The charging circuit is activated by the phone. If the phone battery goes completely bone dead, the phone will not activate the charging circuit (even though the charging light may come on). The reason that Jeff’s trick works is that it bypasses the protection circuit and charges the battery enough to get things going. Most of the problems mentioned here are a combination of the old ROM and this characteristic of the lithium batteries. Ordinarily, if the phone powers off, there is usually enough power left to start it if is plugged into the charger when it is turned back on, but if you try to restart it more than one time, without it being connected to the charger, it will probably not work thereafter.
SO: Don’t let the battery go completely dead.
If the phone powers down from a low battery, plug it into the charger before you try to power it back up.
If it goes completely dead, use Jeff Schaffer’s trick from above. It works. Any USB cable will work, just plug the other end of it into your computer (after you get the wires cut and separated)
Once you get it back up and running, make sure you have the ROM update.
The wiring in cables is the same on Motorola chargers (USB is a standard format) as on the OEM charger, but they do not produce as much charging power as the OEM charger. Same for computer USB connections. Some are capable of more power output than others.
The trouble shooters at Cingular (and most other places for that matter) don’t have a clue. Most are just average Joe’s, paid minimum wage and are just running you through a set of canned solutions.
I picked phone up after letting it sit for 5 days on over the weekend and noticed it was off, turned it on as i was walking to a charger and it came on but acted real sluggish, put it on charger came back 2 hours later and nothing. no light would not start up, i tried car charger and 3 different usb type chargers and nothing. Found the original charger and it fixed issue.
Jeff’s fix worked for me, but after a couple of times letting my phone go dead, I got tired of the hassle of it. This: “Bargaincell- HTC Cingular 8125 PDA Smartphone Accessory Bundle – USB Twin Cradle Desktop with Spare Battery Charger Slot Dopod 838 + Standard Lithium” has an external battery charger dock + a new battery for about 30 bux on Amazon. The external charger will charge completely discharged batteries.
Thanks Jeff. Wish I had found this info before I purchased my 3rd battery….
Dang Jeff! The USB cord thingie worked!
I got a 8125 as a castoff from a friend who got an I-Phone and my kid broke 3 of 4 cell phones (the fourth was my fault–stupid gravity!)
The battery that came with the 8125 didn’t work. I tried everything I could thing of—punching it, yelling at it. Nothing.
I bought a new battery off bargincell.com via Amazon….way cheap by the way. This one worked great for about a week. I let it run down all the way one night and it stopped working too.
Soooooooooo—miffed beyond belief I did some checking on the InterWeb and found your solution. Cut the USB wire from my old MP3 player that I broke. Reading some of the caveats, I pressed the wires to the points on the original battery for about 20 seconds instead of three minutes.
The phone booted up again and is now recharging!
Thanks for the fix!
Don’t waste your time calling ATT or HTC. They deny even knowing about this problem and say the phone is an obsolete dinosaur and not even in their support system any more. My g/f and I each paid $800 for our 8125s plus another $200 for their dodads a couple of years ago, and hey pull this on us.
I am livid at ATT for passing the buck to HTC and had been planning on DUMPING ATT and going the the T-Mobile G-1 Google Phone, but found out it is made by HTC. There is NO WAY I will ever again use ATT or HTC for anything after the way they DENY obvious issues like this which are CLEARLY the result of POOR DESIGN and engineering, AND poor customer service.
Thank you Mr.Golod!!!
Your haggard way of recharging the batter worked perfectly for me! I only head the wires on the poles for a minute tops too.
To everyone losing batteries, cut a usb to mini-usb cable like suggested by the author. This should hopefully resurrect your dead battery!
Jason thank you very very much for the battery trick. Worked like a charm. To whom every is spending a ton a money on batteries, try the jump start. Can’t hurt and can save you lots of cash.
Good call on the dead battery rez there guy.
This does work….I have a small homemade Lithium charger that I used to bump the battery up…as soon as it has enough juice to boot the device, charging is smooth sailing. Thanks a bunch!!!
Great way of solving battery problem. It works effectively. Great method.
Million Thanks
mhmm :p yea my phone has been charging fine for the last five years :p until today ;p