Hello everyone.
I have a Paperwhite 2nd generation that is fully working software wise. Unfortunately, the USB port has stopped functioning.
No amount of 24h charging/reboots/factory resets have brought it (the port) to work again.
When testing with a continuity tester, the connector doesn't present any faults.
Does anyone have suggestions about how I could follow the USB path and troubleshoot this?
Full story in spoiler.
Thanks for any help and sorry for the language errors.
Spoiler:
This Paperwhite has been left to charge one night, using a "chinese Apple" charger (not mine by the way, Kindle was donated to me afterwards). In the morning, the charging led on the Kindle was off, and the charger had a burnt smell.
The charger was obviously discarded, and the Kindle wouldn't turn on anymore. The screen was showing the "low battery" warning and was stuck at it. I tried to charge it with a cell phone charger, rated for 5v but providing less than 1 amp. After 1 full day plugged in, I tried to boot it again and got it to work.
Unfortunately, after that charge depleted, I couldn't charge it again. I tried leaving it connected for longer periods, but it didn't work.
I can charge the battery using external devices, and plug it back into the Kindle, which will make it work normally until the charge runs out.
Having it plugged, no matter how full is the battery charge, will give me the orange LED and will present the charging icon in the top bar, but the battery will continue losing charge until it goes into the low battery screen.
Connecting it into a PC will present me with nothing. I am a Linux user, and am using dmesg to monitor the connections to the system, no signal of USB activity at all. Tried to reboot/factory format while connected, also no USB activity.
I have read about the serial connection, but my problem *seems* to be more hardware related. I would like as many opinions as possible before investing my time into connecting via serial to diagnose this.
The continuity test in the connector was done plugging a micro USB cable and testing the unplugged side of it against the connection points in the board. Very superficial test, but I don't know how to proceed with testing points from here.