power for red light but not enough to turn on?

Richard Smart · Sep 23, 2017

Does anyone know what processes and 'fucntions' the nexus 5X continues to run when it doesn't have enough power to turn on when you press the power button. I notice when I try to turn it on the red led gets lit which shows there is some power left but obviously no idea how much - and whether there are multiple power sources in the device - one for muggins the user and another for Google to do what they want to continue to do. I presume its not considered sufficient to light the screen (which admittedly is a non-negligible draw on power) but does anyone know if OS processes are still running and whether it is still interacting with the network(s) or logging anything?

codesplice · Sep 25, 2017

Hi Richard,

The red LED actually indicates that the battery is completely drained; all that the phone has enough power to do is to light up that little LED to let you know that the battery is dead. Android is completely shut down at that point; nothing is running except for the low-level function responsible for blinking at you.

If you haven't already, try to charge the devices for a few hours using an AC power adapter. If that doesn't get things running again (and the red light continues) then that would suggest that your battery is actually failed rather than just depleted. In that case you would need to have the battery replaced.

Richard Smart · Sep 25, 2017

yes thanks - my battery is fine and I was aware that its was indicating that the battery needed recharging, I was just suspicious that it did still have power available (ie to light the led) so made me wonder at what point the phone decides that it wants to stop using available power for the services I want and to reserve what is has left for the things it/google wants. I notice that in this phone you cannot open it to remove the battery - makes me wonder whether that was a related design decision too. In the same way that the phone has a power saving mode to run on reduced processes when your battery levels are depleted, I was wondering if Google have their own power saving mode so they can continue their own use of my phone and cut me off when they get even lower. I know screen for example is a big power draw and its basically fairly useless to me when I cannot see anything on the screen - but it can still be useful to Google or certain apps/os processes...?

codesplice · Sep 25, 2017

No, if all you're getting is the red light, that's all that it will do. It does not have sufficient power to run any Android- (or Google-, or phone-)related processes at that point.

mikedt · Sep 25, 2017

Richard Smart said:
yes thanks - my battery is fine and I was aware that its was indicating that the battery needed recharging, I was just suspicious that it did still have power available (ie to light the led) so made me wonder at what point the phone decides that it wants to stop using available power for the services I want and to reserve what is has left for the things it/google wants. I notice that in this phone you cannot open it to remove the battery - makes me wonder whether that was a related design decision too. In the same way that the phone has a power saving mode to run on reduced processes when your battery levels are depleted, I was wondering if Google have their own power saving mode so they can continue their own use of my phone and cut me off when they get even lower. I know screen for example is a big power draw and its basically fairly useless to me when I cannot see anything on the screen - but it can still be useful to Google or certain apps/os processes...?

Sorry to disappoint, but there's no secret Google spying in it, the thing is either ON or OFF, i.e. the battery either has enough power to run it or it doesn't, that's it!

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power for red light but not enough to turn on?

Richard Smart

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Richard Smart

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mikedt

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