Nexus 5 stability problems

[mikeymikec]

I checked my phone this morning, nothing unusual, then as I put it back in my pocket the default notification sound went off, so I pulled my phone back out and went to switch the screen on. It came on for a few seconds then went completely off. Attempting to power cycle the phone was just met with a blank screen. As I had a computer nearby I thought I'd use a charging cable I keep handy. When connected, the phone immediately showed the Google logo (rather than a charging symbol), but then the logo kept going off and on again. There's no chance on the planet that the phone had run out of battery on this occasion (it was at about 50%).

I googled for the problem on the PC and found a suggestion to bring up the boot screen (power + volume down). I then told the phone to start. Voila, back up and running. One extra odd symptom was that the date and time had gone back to last November at about 5pm.

I drove home, backed up my stuff, then left the house again after lunch. While I was with another customer the phone did the same thing again (more or less - occasionally the phone would show a charging screen logo when off but it mostly stuck to the previous routine. Also while on battery it would show the Google logo for a moment then go back off when attempting to switch it on).

I'm home again now and I've decided to charge the phone completely. I'm wondering whether the battery has died in some weird and wonderful way, and that maybe when it reaches a certain charge level it becomes unstable, but the evidence doesn't lean fully in favour of that. The only other reason I lean towards the battery is that a tablet that a customer gave to me a while back acted really squirrely until it had been through a few charge cycles, and that this phone recently completely ran out of battery (probably for the first time), and I think this is still in the first phone charge cycle since that event.

One other symptom I've just noticed is that even when being charged, it's not keeping time... though just to spook me out completely when I switched the phone screen on a few moments later the time had gone back to the correct time rather than ten minutes earlier (when I last reset the phone time). - edit - I wonder whether I imagined this particular symptom now

My wife's Nexus 5 once acted squirrely but that was due to being out of disk space, whereas this phone has about 2GB storage still free.

 

[sweenish]

Part of it sounds like the power button issue. The permanent fix is a new power button soldered on, but it requires a really steady hand. The temp fix is to turn the phone off and just mash on the power button for about 30 seconds. Sounds a bit like the battery is finally giving up. Mine has got really bad just in the last couple weeks. It idles fine, but any kind of use just tanks it much faster than it used to.

But what you're describing doesn't all fall under the power button issue. When my power button acts up, the clock isn't affected. Custom ROM, root, pirated apps, or anything like that (Guessing not, based on language used in first post)? May need to clear up a bit more space, remove some apps you don't use, back up and delete photos, etc.

Eventually try a factory reset if things keep acting up.

I'm hoping my wife and I don't run into any major issues until the Pixel 2. I'm on a custom ROM and she's running stock.

 

[mikeymikec]

Before you responded I decided to go with a factory reset (I'm a bit 'reset happy' on my phone truth be told), which didn't help. I googled a bit and apparently N5 button issues aren't uncommon. I went with a suggestion I found to hold the power button in by pushing the side of the phone against a table which got the phone up and running again. I don't think it has played up since then.

I have two proverbial irons in the fire at the moment: Once my wife has finally finished migrating from her Nexus 5 onto a Samsung GS6 (coming up for a year now!), then I'm likely going to swap over to her phone. I also did a bit of googling to find a phone repair place that can handle the fine power button soldering work that apparently needs doing, but I'm going to keep searching to try and find a semi-local place that can do it. Otherwise I'm trying to go easy on the power button: No rebooting, no switching the screen off (let it time out), and hope for the best. Meanwhile my trusty Nokia dumbphone is with me everywhere I go for the time being.