I may have the most broken phone ever

It's very possible that the "fall" has cracked a circuit run or a chip inside the phone... and it would require such extensive work to fix that may be beyond economical repair. If you can't get into download mode to flash it back to stock, and you can't get into recovery to flash any ROMs, then I'm leaning toward "paperweight" status. I can think of ONE THING to try, and one thing only:

Put your Gnex in the freezer overnight without the battery in it. Charge the battery (power off) and remove the battery. Freeze the phone overnight. Take it out of the freezer, insert the charged battery and, while it's still cold, try one last desperate attempt to get into Recovery or Download mode and restore it to functionality. Hey, don't laugh: stranger things have happened!

If that fails, donate it at your nearest Verizon store. Technicians will fix the phone (or harvest the good parts) and donate it to victims of domestic abuse so they can call for help. You'll be no worse off for having tried, and do a good deed at the same time. Hope this helps.

Wow. With your background, I'm surprised that you didn't recommend putting the phone into a freezer bag with as much air sucked out as possible and sealed tight before putting into the freezer to prevent formation of ice crystals that have been known to short out cell phones as soon as power is applied.

Have you tried to put it into the bootloader by turning off, and powering on holding down all three buttons?

And then just unlocking if necessary, installing a custom recovery just using fastboot?

Usb debugging simply turns on the adb daemon while running - doesn't matter to fastboot commands or an adb rom sideload from TWRP.

http://androidforums.com/threads/adb-guide-updated-2014-11-11.443072/#post-5389081

http://teamw.in/project/twrp2/89

^ For Verizon Galaxy Nexus only, follow menus there for other versions.

http://wiki.rootzwiki.com/Samsung_Galaxy_Nexus_(toro)

^ For an overview of what you're going to do, note, it's an old guide.

Get a rom from here -

http://androidforums.com/forums/samsung-galaxy-nexus.1086/

Look for the All Things Root subforums either above or below the thread list depending on your forum preferences.

Choose one, my goal is to get you running, you can change and refine later.

I also assume that with the toolkits you have you're well past needing to redo adb drivers.

Put phone into fastboot mode as described in the old guide I linked and connect to pc - do NOT use a USB 3 port.

Copy the TWRP img (you want the IMG file) and the rom zip to the \sdk-tools folder.

Open a command window to the \sdk-tools folder. If unsure how, open a command window and say -

cd \sdk-tools

(mind the space after cd)

Unlock the bootloader if necessary -

fastboot oem unlock

Install TWRP -

fastboot flash recovery name-of-twrp-file.zip img

Do not reboot, go to recovery, you should see the main TWRP screen.

Choose advanced, adb sideload, and slide to activate.

In command window -

adb sideload name-of-rom-file.zip

Wait. Follow on-screen prompts if any.

When complete, TWRP, wipe - choose either factory data reset or if unavailable in your version, wipe cache, Dalvik and data. Nothing else.

Attempt to boot system from TWRP.

If the digitizer is truly broken, offer up for adoption as The Chief said - if the recovery was successful then it's not completely shot, just the digitizer most likely.

OK, you didn't listen to what I said, so I don't know how to help you.

You've got your mind made up on what you need to do.

I wish you best luck.

Sorry I couldn't have done more.

Reeeed said:

I tried to listen, I just didn't fully understand (this is my first time working with this kind of material). I took it as I needed to download a rom from one of the links, connect to my computer, and flash it on the phone. Were you saying something else or did I miss something? I looked at the all things root page, I just don't get how I connect to my computer to root/flash something. Do I not have to do that or am I missing something from the previous post? Also, is the cd \tools thing to be put in a command prompt or a toolkit?

Click to expand...

Instructions on how to attempt it are in my post.

Maybe someone can explain it better?

Correct. Macs do not need usb drivers for anything.

You get a command window by going to Finder, Applications, Utilities (folder), Terminal.

You can move to the folder you need in the Terminal by opening a Terminal AND a Finder window.

In the Terminal say:

cd(space)

Then drag the folder from the Finder to the Terminal, then hit enter/return.

EDIT - run the sdk.sh script by following the instructions in the Mini-SDK post:

cd to your sdk-tools folder, and say:

bash sdk.sh

Close that Terminal, open a new one.