Pinephone charging issues after fully depleting battery.

[wibble]

I also have a dead battery and wonder how can troubleshoot this.  I can plug the usb-c to a windows machine and it registers that something has connected but that's all.  I've tried measuring the voltage at the phone battery pins without success.  Makes me wonder if the pins have to be pressed in, e.g. battery in place, to see.  Is there anywhere I can check voltage from the usb-c?  I see 6 pins up near the serial jack.  I had tried earphones in the serial jack.  I'm wondering if the usb-c cord is bad and have no other usb-c cord or device.  Thanks.

soy

If you have a basic phone charger or power bank that supports Battery Charging (NOT the more advanced Power Delivery) you should be able to remove the battery then boot the phone by connecting the charging cable. The 6 pins are documented in the Pogo Pins wiki page section whcih notes that the pin names are a little misleading. You should see 5V from the USB cable between DCIN and GND when it's powered.

If it won't boot and you don't see the 5V it could be a bad USB cable as you say. Also check whether the connectors on either end of the ribbon cable that connects the main board and the USB board are seated properly - some people have found them only partially inserted. Mine was only partially inserted at one end, but everything was working, which explains how these could get through testing at the factory. A small movement in transit would then be enough to stop it working. There are a couple of videos in the wiki showing the disassembly process for replacing the main board, which should explain how to get to the connectors.

The battery has a low voltage protection cutout which disconnects it when the voltage gets too low, and only reconnects it when it gets charged.