A couple of hours ago I made a catastrophic mistake of reversing the polarity of a USB charger I was making for my Nexus 4 and it blew the charging circuity out. It would have the ominous red light flashing every second, and I couldn’t even get the computer to recognize the phone. I took it apart, did some poking around, and now it’s in the bin.
I just missed the OnePlus pre-order by a day so now it’s back to the invites-only system. If anyone had additional codes they could spare, that would be pretty awesome.
The battery to phone interface is blown out — the phone would only blink when a USB cable was plugged in and nothing otherwise.
The Nexus 4 uses a Qualcomm PM8821 Power Management curcuit, which is pretty hard to obtain, desolder, or resolder. My only option was getting a board replacement but that was at least $120.
This is what happens when you assume your phone has reverse polarity protection, haha.
I couldn’t sell it for parts either because I couldn’t find a way to wipe it.
Ouch, sorry about the Nexus 4. I have one and love it but the battery doesn’t last long enough for me so I currently use a Moto G which barely gets me a full day with light use.
Something you might want to consider is the Motorola Droid Turbo (depending on your carrier)? It has similar specs to the OnePlus One.
The specs are up there with the best and it has a 3900mAh battery that should last 2 days.
Not sure on the price difference between the 2 of them though.
Thanks ezarc. Unfortunately the Droid Turbo is $600 unlocked compared to the One’s $350 so I think the One gives more bang for the buck.
That’s a good point, I forgot about wireless charging. Unfortunately I don’t think it will work either because the battery is fully charged… it’s just that it’s not connected to the phone anymore and I’m not sure where the fault is. (Probably the Qualcomm PM8821 chip is fried.)
I was using a micro-USB cable from a charger and hooked up ground and 5V lines to a power supply the other way. The current draw was 5A+ until I realized what was going on. :~
It was a pretty stupid mistake — I sure have learned my lesson though.
I keep an old sacrificial flash drive to do the final test of any computer that I’m building. It used to be 2 sacrificial flash drives before one did its duty. I think no matter how careful you are, it’s impossible to be perfect. I try to think like a pilot and do a pre-flight checklist, but short of that, I try to mitigate my mistakes with something expendable.
Also, I try to test other USB thingies like battery packs before using them, but the other day I forgot and plugged my phone into one out of the box, which just happened to work fine. The one before that was defective and when I plugged my $30 tablet in, smoke came out of the power pack. At that point I realized that I didn’t consider the cheap tablet expendable. Luckily it survived, though the power pack sure didn’t. I think from now on, anything USB gets tested with the USB doctor widget that measures voltage and current. It only cost $6. Because a flash drive won’t tell me if a power pack is bad.
Haven’t received any shareable codes yet, but I’ll let you know if/when it happens.
If you’re in a hurry, you might want to hit up the oneplus forums. Lots of people are running all kinds of silly invitation contests. It only took a couple hours and two contests to snag my original invite.
@ djozz. Yes it would. I once wired in 4 trustfire flames in parallel to a Nokia 3210 (I think it was) and it charged them fine. Once fully charged I'd not recharge for at least a fortnight :-)
I’m sorry to say this, but I’d definitely think twice about having a oneplus one without a backup handy.
One of the guys in my office has one, and he’s had constant problems for the last couple months. They originally pegged it as a software problem, but it’s looking like it’s subtle hardware issue. He’s been waiting to hear back from customer service for close to two weeks now about warranty repair/replacement, but it’s kind of a black hole right now.
As to the software… I’ve had my phone since middle of October and have already flashed 2 updates (33r~~38r~~>44s), so it’s not the most stable platform.
What you do get for the price is a drop dead gorgeous phone with great battery life.
I bought a used Nexus 5 for 205$ I think it was a good deal. I wish that it would have a bigger battery, but it’s hard to find a well performing phone with high capacity battery.
. My Nokia 3310 would last months on that battery!
I think it was a good deal. I wish that it would have a bigger battery, but it’s hard to find a well performing phone with high capacity battery.