Help help! my sensation keeps shutting down randomly

[TGA3DX Tim]

If you open up the back cover of the Sensation and you look at the battery, you'll notice that the bottom side of the battery is slightly angled. This causes the battery to not be in full contact with the four pins that are attached to the Sensations case. If you pull the right top side of the battery a little down, you'll notice that the battery will make a better connection with the four pins. So for me the problem was solved by putting something in between the top right of the battery and the casing. I've used a business card (I knew saving those would pay of at one time) and tore of the rest that was sticking out. It's been fine ever since.

Just signed up to thank Marcel. My HTC Sensation has been randomly restarting since a few days ago, everything tried, nothing seemed to trigger it. Just random. Made my phone completely useless.

Cut off a bit of credit card, inserted the battery with the credit card bit in the top right hand corner of the battery compartment (vertically) and the phone works. It works beautifully, no more crashes, whether it's in my pocket or not, wireless or not, gaming or not. THANK YOU!!!!

 

[parahandy]

Hey folks having same problem so will try the battery trick!

 

[grovesy1975]

I truelly hope someone from HTC has viewed this thread and is totally embaressed that people that have purchased it in good faith are having to stick pieces of credit card into their handset or purchase alternative branded batteries to get the thing to work properly. It's outragous.

 

[bluefear]

+1

A piece of paper to force the battery against the pins worked for me as well.

Cheers, Jp

As of now putting a piece of paper has solved this problem for me as well. TMobile's website also talks about loose battery connections causing reset problems. So I put a small piece of card and it is working fine as of now.

 

[topcorner]

I've had this problem several times when my phone was running on the stock rom. Since I've changed it to stock ICS, I haven't had this problem. My phone has been on for over a month (never rebooted) It could just be coincidence however though.

Anyone on stock ICS and haven't experienced this problem before?

 

[TGA3DX Tim]

Fix didn't last long, I've got exactly the same problems. Piece of credit card is still in there. I'm going to contact HTC and ask for a new battery. Piece of rubbish phone.

 

[StuartTheFish]

Pull the ground pin out a bit.

 

[Pepe Lebuntu]

So I've had this recurring reboot problem now for about a week. I just chucked the piece of card in, and it immediately bumped the battery from 35% to 45%. But it's just rebooted again, so doesn't bode well.

Edit: Nothing's changed. Still just rebooting over and over.

 

[Pepe Lebuntu]

Update: I ended up doing the scratching the battery points thing, and I think that's fixed it. I could see that the points had SOMETHING on them at the (rather tiny) points where they were touching the battery. I lightly scraped those points with the end of some scissors, and since then haven't had any problems.

I will also say that I recently went overseas on a trip, and got into the habit of leaving my phone charging overnight. Perhaps having it continue to charge for 4+ hours after it was full, well, maybe that contributed to the problem.

The logic seems to be this: the battery points oxidise, and this effects power supply, making it intermittent. The phone suddenly notices that it's not getting as much power as it would like, so it assumes it's being shut down. Halfway through shutting down, the power is restored enough for it to think it should just restart.

Since I did that, I haven't had any problems, and that was about 18hours ago. Since I was getting restarts every three minutes or so, that's a significant change. I will let you know if it starts again, but yeah, I think it's fixed.

 

[Savilleh]

I had this problem shutting down 5-6 times a day always at the most inconvenient times, calls etc, googled the problem and came to this forum; had a good read of this thread tried scratching the points and the bit of card solution and it has worked not shut down once in 3 days, charge lasts longer and reception has even improved. Plus a seperate problem snapshot taking when pressing the home button has disappeared although I think that maybe a co-incidence.
Obviously early days but it is encouraging and hopefully will work from now on.

 

[janyavulah]

Mr marceldiepstra

Thank you so much for your answer.

thanks,
Hemanth

 

[StoneDeCroze]

I'm not sure if I'm losing my marbles but I appear to have tracked down another possible cause. If my phone is in my pocket, screen facing my leather wallet, at some unknown point it powers off/crashes. I'll take it out of my pocket to use it, and it's powered off.

If I put it in my pocket with the screen facing the outside of the pocket, or leave it out of my pocket on the desk, or wherever, it's stable. Bizarre, odd, doesn't sound right, but I've been careful all week how I put it in my pocket, making sure it's locked before I put it in my pocket and the only time it seems to have happened is when I forget and it ends up the wrong way round, as it were.

Oh, and I don't have a screen protector.

 

[Pepe Lebuntu]

I'm just coming on quickly to say that my phone is still working totally fine since I did the scraping on the points. It seems like it's the fix that works long term.

 

[Savilleh]

Just logging in to say update on my situ, since July 1st when I posted last re this I've not had one random shut off so the bit of card worked.

One other thing, I did notice after a week or so the battery life did start to deteriate again so I replaced it with an anker battery which have had for about 2 weeks now and now I'm getting a min of 40% increased battery life for amount I use the phone daily compared to the stock battery.

More good news with the anker battery you dont need the bit of card it seems to fit perfectly suggesting its not the phone itself but the shape of stock battery, anyway result is I'm very happy its like having a new phone..

 

[StoneDeCroze]

I'm not sure if I'm losing my marbles but I appear to have tracked down another possible cause. If my phone is in my pocket, screen facing my leather wallet, at some unknown point it powers off/crashes. I'll take it out of my pocket to use it, and it's powered off.

If I put it in my pocket with the screen facing the outside of the pocket, or leave it out of my pocket on the desk, or wherever, it's stable. Bizarre, odd, doesn't sound right, but I've been careful all week how I put it in my pocket, making sure it's locked before I put it in my pocket and the only time it seems to have happened is when I forget and it ends up the wrong way round, as it were.

Oh, and I don't have a screen protector.

It turns out I wasn't going bonkers, but, the actual cause seems to have been the contacts issue. After a lot of experimenting, I found that if I applied gentle pressure to the screen, like my wallet pressing against it, it would power off. Repeating the process with the cover off, showed the battery moving slightly as the chassis of the phone flexed a tiny amount.

I've cleaned the contacts with a rubber/eraser (not the prophylactic!) and then butchered a business card to act as a wedge. Three days now and no shutdowns. I've just ordered an Anker battery, maybe it will fit more snugly than the OEM part.

 

[StoneDeCroze]

I ran for a week with the business card wedge and the stock battery with no problems at all, and then several days with the Anker battery with no problems. I put the stock battery back yesterday, with no wedge, and the phone was off when I checked it after about an hour in my pocket.

The Anker battery seems to be a tiny fraction larger, as I can't get a business card in as a wedge, like I could with the stock battery. Maybe 1/2MM difference? Maybe the spec on the physical dimensions of the chassis and battery mean that you could get a "small" battery and a "large" battery compartment paired up, and that's enough wiggle room to cause a problem.

 

[rctempire]

Just made my own bodge for the battery too. Cleaned contacts and business card in. Seems to have resolved the major fault

 

[Ledio1]

Hi. Have the exact same problem with my htc sensation. phone turns off randomly. mostly it seems when the battery falls to below 50% or so. and the battery life of this phone is dismal. i spoke to people at t mobile and the was told unhelpfully that i should not download any apps. and reboot phone to factory settings. foolishly i did and lost all my contacts. problem persists even as i have no apps installed. the only time the phone wont turn off is when constantly charged. oddly at time the phone will turn off and despite many attempts to turn it on again, it only makes it to the welcome screen and turns off again. I have had the urge to throw it against the wall many times when this happens.

I wonder whether getting big with T mobile and ask for a new phone will help if most sensations have this problem? they said they would be happy to give me a used phone! i will try the battery trick but it seems strange that i would have been better off with my old nokia than this 'smart' phone.

thanks for all the helpful suggestions.

 

[dave archer]

This thread over at XDA Developers has a similar suggestion to put piece of card in to force battery to make better contact, and also has suggestion to clean battery contacts and to bend earth pin out to make better contact with back of case (to left of battery compartment, silver pin).

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1622683

Currently trying all three myself... if my Sensation doesn't become fully reliable it is going to be sold and replaced with either HTC One X or Samsung Galaxy S3.
I've had many good HTC phones, but this issue is seriously making me question whether to buy another - a phone needs to work 100% of the time, finding it off in my pocket and missed important calls is just not on.

 

[jeremeas]

First of all I would like to thank all people that have replied to this specific topic, without all your help I would never come up with my solution to the problem. I won't explain how they have helped me, but at least I can tell you my phone kept shutting down about 4 or 5 times per day. I have implemented my solution a week ago and the phone hasn't shut down since.

If you open up the back cover of the Sensation and you look at the battery, you'll notice that the bottom side of the battery is slightly angled. This causes the battery to not be in full contact with the four pins that are attached to the Sensations case. If you pull the right top side of the battery a little down, you'll notice that the battery will make a better connection with the four pins. So for me the problem was solved by putting something in between the top right of the battery and the casing. I've used a business card (I knew saving those would pay of at one time) and tore of the rest that was sticking out. It's been fine ever since.

Now my explanation, although I'm far from being a electrician, is that the battery connection to the case is fine for low power situations. But as soon as more power is required by the phone, like in low connection situations, the phone will loose power and shut down. That's why ensuring that those situations do not happen or rarely happen gives some result.

Oh and two notes to HTC. One, please fire your support department, because they suck. And two, please ensure that the batteries are being held in place by your case next time you make a phone.

that's crazy guys, I've been experiencing the same problem since 8 months already, I tried everything, AntiVirus, software upgrade, changing battery levels etc, works for a while and then back to reality.. I really believe now the problem is battery related, and probably about the pins connections that also explains why it happens often when you keep the phone in your pocket...so far this quoted solution above seems working to me as well, I hope it will keep doing, just it's pretty ridiculous how a brand like HTC specialized in smart phone can make such a crazy design mistake, maybe that also explains how they cannot propose that simple but objectively lose-face solution....

 

[nitish04]

My HTC Sensation is shutting down randomly.... i can just pull it out of my pocket and it off and needs to be booted up. What can i do to resolve the problem i've only had it a month.

I also have the same problem. It switches off randomly. While playing any game, while calling and even when it is in my pocket it shuts down randomly. It also gets overheated from the bottom. I have sent it for repairing twice but still the issue is not resolved. What can I do now?

 

[peterc10]

Have you tried cleaning the battery contacts and putting a piece of card at the bottom of the battery to force a better contact? That is what has helped many people with this problem

 

[kgrinden]

I also have the same problem. Did try the battery thing and it seemed to work, BUT I also noticed a post in this thread about switching from GSM/WCDMA to only WCDMA, so I did that too. So the battery thing seemed to work so I turned it BACK to GSM/WCDMA because the signals dropped alot in many places with only WCDMA. Sometimes no nothing. And guess what?! The phone started to shut down again. Constantly.. Switched it back to WCDMA only: no problem. Back again to WCDMA/GSM: shuts down.
It can

 

[peterc10]

Yes that is the other thing that people say cures a problem with random shutting down. There seems to be two different problems with the same symptoms. But since the post I was replying to mentioned that changing the battery worked for them I did not think it was the GSM/WCDMA problem in that case.

I have not had any random shutdowns and I am using the GSM/WCDMA setting along with both stock and Anker batteries so I can't really help you.

Sorry about the first paragraph, which is wrong - I was referring to a post of mine on another thread.

 

[TGA3DX Tim]

Update :

I never received a new battery from HTC. I bought an Anker battery and initially there were no shutdowns anymore. But after a while same problem occured, random shutdowns.

So I send it back to HTC and got my phone back in 8 days. It didn't actually say what was repaired, but I got the same phone back (same S/N, but different IMEI) After calling up they said that the whole mainboard was replaced.

So obviously it was/is a hardware issue. Definitely not normal.

So all in all, the cardboard/plastic in battery tray fixed the problem for a little while, new battery resolved the problem for a little while, but problem did come back and was an hardware issue. I would suggest sending it back if it's still in warranty. Mine was just in warranty...thankfully.