•[POSSIBLE]•[HARDWARE]•Noob fix for the Vodafone Ultra 6 bootloop / stuck at "powered by android" message / hard brick / not powering on

[Guest random_user]

As many unfortunate users of the MADE-IN-CHINA Vodafone Smart Ultra 6, i had the cursed boot loop with the "powered by android" message. And with a NEW, non-rooted, stock recovery - untouched phone with Android 6.0.1, and in the first days of LIGHT use.

The first times, after many tries (30 sec. power button press/reboot from recovery/connecting charger etc), the phone eventually powered on but in short amounts of time it keeps shutting down and the boot loop appeared again.

After two days of ZTE-anger, the phone won`t turn on at all with any tricks learn from the web.

The only thing that I could do with this s*** quality chinese phone was the following: I connect it to the charger and the phone was just bootlooping non-stop with the "powered by android" message.As soon as I was disconnecting the charger, the phone shutted down and nothing could convince the brick to powering on, any combination of buttons was futile.

In short terms, I could not power on the phone at all with just the battery (100% charged) and the stock recovery was not accesibile.The phone was 100% dead and only the charger could induce the continuous bootloop.

My personal conclusion was that if the phone was software-untouched/non-rooted/non modified in any way, the problem must be hardware.

 

And now, the possible answer - I dissasembled the phone with help from macbreakweeklyfan video (thanks, the phone is indeed very easy to open):

And I thought...what would be if i removed the battery?I proceeded to remove the 3 screws that are holding that metal Half-Life style crowbar that held the battery connector and atfer I disconnected the battery.

Then, I connected the phone with the charger, with the battery disconnected and surprise, the phone started up and it keeped to show fullscreen colors (red, blue, yellow etc) as in display-test softwares.It seems like a service test...something?

I disconnected the phone and connected the battery back, but without that metal-thingy and....the phone not only powered on from the first try but now, atfer 6 hours of use, seems rock-solid, without restarts and bootloopings.

The recovery works, powering on works, rebooting from menu works.

 

It seems that the problem is somehow, the battery connector and [probably] that piece of metal that pressed down directly on the wires of the battery connector. Maybe creating a short circuit/imperfect contact by the Hulk smashed wires?

I`m not saying that this is the definitive answer for all the problems with this Lo-Q, vaporware phone, but for me....it works (for now).

Thank you for reading this short story and sorry for the [many] mistakes, i`m not a native engrish speaker/writer.

 

Edited March 30, 2017 by random_user

[Guest PixelFlops]

Good job. I think this situation is pretty rare to see unless it experienced a massive physical trauma like being dropped from 100 feet. I'm glad you had the initiative to open it up and fix it :D

[Guest random_user]

Not so rare,I think.

I forgot to mention that my phone was never dropped and from the first day it was protected by a thick flip case.

Maybe it's a factory defect.

[Guest PixelFlops]

Not so rare,I think.

I forgot to mention that my phone was never dropped and from the first day it was protected by a thick flip case.

Maybe it's a factory defect.

 

Seems about right. Good old China made phones :)