Worried My S3 Mini is broken

[Adam McKay]

I have a Samsung S3 Mini that I've owned for nearly 2 years. Recently the battery died, but only after I used it until it absolutely wouldn't work anymore. By the end the battery was bloated and could only barely fit in the phone anymore, and it had to be physically stuffed in.

When it finally died, my phone froze and nothing would do anything to fix it, including holding the power button until it would normally reset itself. The other day I finally got a replacement battery, but when I put it in, the phone wouldn't start, even after I left it charging for an hour. Optimistically, I think the battery was a dud. One of those budget ones that didn't even have the sticker stuck on properly.

I got a second battery today but that one doesn't work either. Is there anything I can do to fix it?

As far as I can tell I might have damaged the inner workings by shoving a battery in there so hard that the outer casing cracked from the effort of trying to shut it inside the phone. Aside from that I've noticed that there MIGHT be a panel that fell out at some point? (I have no idea, I rarely open the back of my phone). The panel I'm talking about is on the bottom left with the gold ring in it. The attached photo shows the back of my phone.

There doesn't seem to be any damage to the blue area - at least, I can't see anything. My charger port is a bit crooked so maybe that's a problem? But it's been like that for a while so I don't know why it'd act up right now.

Please let me know as soon as possible, I went off the grid sort of abruptly and I need to let people know I haven't spontaneously combusted or something. I can try and provide any extra info you need.

Thanks in advance!

UPDATE: I took the phone in to get serviced, and there was nothing the technician could do. I'll need to replace it. Sorry I couldn't offer a solution for anyone with the same problem.

MOD NOTE: Strange links to DF.net removed to avoid confusion.

 

[TisMyDroid]

Welcome to DroidForums, Adam McKay! Unfortunately, it may not be your battery but your phone. Your phone has to have some residual battery in order to boot up. Unfortunately, it sounds as though your phone may have gotten so dead that it lost any residual battery it could have had in order to be able to boot up. It is highly recommended to charge your phone at 15% or to turn it off till it can be charged to make sure you don't deplete what you need for the phone to boot up.

The one thing you can try is to charge your new battery with your phone off for at least 24 hours.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

 

[Adam McKay]

Thanks for the advice. I've got it on the charger right now. Unfortunately it might just be broken. I got a reply on another site that said that a bloated battery can squash the chips etc. So I'll charge the phone for a while. If that doesn't work I'll take it in to a shop. If that doesn't work I'll see if I can replace it. Luckily I have an upgrade due. I was hoping to use it to replace my laptop but what can you do?

 

[TisMyDroid]

Best of luck, Adam! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

 

[cr6]

Welcome to the forum! Unfortunately It does look like you're missing a part of the inside of your phone, or panel as you put it. There shouldn't be that much open space to put your battery. I no longer have my S3, but even with yours being the "'mini" version, there dues seem to be something missing there. As mentioned, forcing a bloated battery into your device is never good, but there's nothing we can do about that now. (Just keep in mind for future reference) u think if you can find the missing piece, at least we can eliminate that before going forward. Do you happen to still have the old battery? Perhaps the missing piece is stuck to the bottom of it.

S5 tap'n