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HTC Thunderbolt Stopped Working

Last night the battery ran down to near empty after a day of normal use. I got the low battery notice around midnight last night and shutdown. I attached the wall charger to the phone and the little amber light indicated it was charging. I went to bed. This morning around 9:00 I retrieved my phone, and attempted to turn it on... no response. I tried again... nothing. I tried pulling the battery out, putting it back in, hoping a hard reset might do something... no effect. I tried reconnecting the wall charger for power; it doesn't indicate it's getting power from it, tried multiple outlets in different rooms to be sure it's not a house power issue. Nothing has worked.

I've really enjoyed my TB, I bought it on 17 MAR, the first day it was available in my area. I enjoyed the blazing 4G on a trip to Vegas that weekend. I enjoy my solid 4G while at work in Silver Spring, MD and the greater Washington, DC area. But I can't enjoy all that now. Now all I have is a $250 brick.

Needless to say, I'll be making a trip to the Verizon store this morning...

Has anyone else experienced this?

Comments

IwannaSeeMore

I know it might be something you are already doing, but you did hold button down for at least 10 seconds right?

dannigrl24

I have the thunderbolt for an hr before it stopped working! i live in a 3g coverage area only and my connection stopped working an hour after i bought it. I travelled to a 4g area about 40 min away and had no trouble accessing the internet there. I've called verizon 5-6 times now with no updates and no help. I've done everything from battery pulls to changing settings and getting a new sim card. the sim card wouldn't initialize because my phone couldnt connect to 3g network. So i couldn't make calls or anything until i took a lovely 40 min drive to the closest 4g area. now that i can make calls again i'm back to harassing verizon support. they won't exchange my phone for a new device until my "critical ticket" has a resolution. which i've been told should happen ASAP since it's a "critical issue".

this is really unfortunate that they can't figure this out. they should have spent more time testing this product before going to market with it. I used to see verizon as the only choice for wireless coverage, but now it seems like they are trying to keep their head above water by going to market with products with such terrible bugs.

Anyone have any suggestions for me to get my tbolt up and running again??

Baseballdude

I had the same problem 2 hours after activation at the Verizon store, no 3G. I called in to tech support and they couldn't get it going either but offered to send out a new phone. I opted to go back to the store and they reactivated it and it's been fine ever since. The guy at the store said it occasionally happens when the phones are activated.

DrDroidDre

I had the same issue. It reminded me of the time where I could not activate my phone because I was in a roaming area. I too had to drive to a populated area to activate it. With this device being a 4g device, maybe they have to be near a 4g area to get the sim card to activate. O wonder if you try to activate it without the sim card n it, maybe you'd at least get 3g and go from there. I hope someone reads this suggestion and if we can use the device without the sim card will WT also get the option of all 3g and comparable battery life to the Droid x......

Hmmm just a thought. If its a bad idea than I'm sorry..

PJNC284

DrDroidDre wrote:
I had the same issue. It reminded me of the time where I could not activate my phone because I was in a roaming area. I too had to drive to a populated area to activate it. With this device being a 4g device, maybe they have to be near a 4g area to get the sim card to activate. O wonder if you try to activate it without the sim card n it, maybe you'd at least get 3g and go from there. I hope someone reads this suggestion and if we can use the device without the sim card will WT also get the option of all 3g and comparable battery life to the Droid x......

Hmmm just a thought. If its a bad idea than I'm sorry..

You need the sim card even on 3G. And I'm about 170miles from the closest LTE area and it took about 25min to process but that's due to their switches being slow in processing.

Morkai

this is a common problem right now and several posts list the fix.

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/thunderbolt-tech-support/136484-problems-3g-data-dont-hard-reset-read-first.html

Ill past it here

As I am sure many of you have noticed 3G data is down on your Thunderbolts. As I have discovered from some talks with Verizon techs the reason for this is that Verizon's eHPRD 3G network is down right now. This is the specialized 3G network used only on the Thunderbolt and supports voice and data at the same time and faster 3G/4G switching. Until this is fixed you can manually fix this by dialing ##778# and hitting send in your dialer. Password is 000000. This will take you to your programming screen. Go to modem settings and then Rev A, change it to enabled and then hit the menu button on your phone and commit the changes. It will tell you to reboot and the problem will be fixed as you will now use the standard Rev A 3G networked used on all other Verizon 3G devices and of course if you have 4G it will use that if its available.

There is no need to do a hard reset. Basically when you first set up the phone it automatically provisions this setting based on whether or not eHPRD is available in your area which is why when you hard reset it fixes the problem for people as the phone will then automatically change this setting to Rev A enabled since eHPRD is down.

Obviously once Verizon fixes this issue you will want to change this setting back unless of course Verizon is able to push this change out to all of the phones when the problem is fixed.

fparnon

I love my Thunderbolt. But it just died on day 13 after I bought it. Details below...

Like the first poster here, I bought my thunderbolt on March 17, the first day it was offered. Today, March 30, it died. I mean totally died.

My unit was working fine in the morning. In the afternoon, after a short car trip, I pulled the unit out of my holster, to check email, and the phone was dead. No display on the screen. No nothing. I plugged it back in to my charger. Nothing again. Dead as a brick. I held the on/off switch down for 10+ seconds. Still nothing -- no sign of life at all.

There is a 14 day exchange/return policy from my local Verizon Wireless store, where I bought my Thunderbolt. You can bet I'll be back there tomorrow morning, first thing (on day 14 after my purchase) to exchange my (defective) Thunderbolt for a new one.

Fingers crossed that my next Thunderbolt lasts longer than my first one did....

DrDroidDre

Quick idea... Have you attempted to plug it into a laptop and attempt a charge. My buddy told me today that his EVO, yeah I know I'm working on him, anywayshe told me he did not have a charger for his device bc it burnt up. Not a fire burn but a short. He told me that this is common with these devices to not take a charge from the actual plug itself.go plug it into a computer,ps3,xbox ,etc . Do it now and post quickly because this may save VZW alot of money and time.

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