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My LG P500, with FroYo, doesn't seem to be working. I let my battery completely die and now, even while plugged in, it won't turn on. Is this normal and should I just wait the battery to be charged out of the critical zone? Or is there something wrong?

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I have the same issue. What I do is charge the phone for around 20 minutes, then I remove the battery and insert it again. After that it will turn on normally. – user15133 May 16 '12 at 13:35

migrated from superuser.com May 16 '12 at 1:33

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As Avio's answer says this is normal, but I assume you're wondering why. It's because the battery doesn't have enough charge to keep the voltage level up. The hardware will only work within a certain voltage range, just like PC hardware for example. Most (all?) phones don't have the redundant circuitry and so on to allow them to be powered directly from the USB port while the battery charges, so you have to wait till the battery charges to the minmum required level.

As an aside, Android normally shuts down with about 5% of battery left, avoiding this problem. Unless you turned it back on after this point, it might be that your version doesn't do this or that the battery stats are messed up and need to be wiped.

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You're right, the device can't work properly if the voltage provided by the battery is under a given threshold. However I have a Samsung Galaxy S with ZDBox and the device works properly in the full range [0, 100] of battery charge. I also know of bump charging etc. so I suspect that hardware-to-software interactions are becoming more and more complex even for what concerns display/recharge of phone batteries. – Avio May 17 '12 at 9:06
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@Avio That's the thing, when it displays 0 it's not really 0 ;) – Matthew Read♦ May 17 '12 at 15:48
Ahah you're again right, but only from a hardware point of view! :) What ZDBox displays, is a "software zero" that is not a "hardware zero" because at the "hardware zero" the li-ion battery would already have been damaged! – Avio May 17 '12 at 17:17
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If the discharge hasn't been too deep, this should be normal. I use my iPod rarely and often I have to wait half an hour to have it boot up again.

Conversely, if the discharge has been too deep, it may be a problem. Quoting Wikipedia:

Deep discharge may short-circuit the cell, in which case recharging would be unsafe.

and

Overdischarge supersaturates lithium cobalt oxide, leading to the production of lithium oxide, [36] possibly by the following irreversible reaction [...]

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