Power button fails to work consistently on Motorola Droid. Workarounds?

Question

When I press the power button on my Motorola Droid, nothing happens (usually). Just to get my phone to turn on after being shutdown, I have to plug it in to the charger cable. Once booted, however, I still have no convenient way to turn the screen on and off, or to shutdown the phone gracefully. Is there anything I can do to make the phone usable?

Note that a similar question has already been asked, however that question is specifically for non-rooted Droids, whereas my phone is rooted.

Answer 1

As long as your phone is rooted, you can use the excellent Button Remapper app by appelflap as a convenient workaround. What the app will let you do is remap the camera button to work as the power button.

After installing the app, find the entry for "(Camera)" and set its Action to "Power" and its State to "WAKE_DROPPED". (WAKE tells the key to register even when the screen is off; WAKE_DROPPED does the same but drops the key before it is sent to the running application.) Optionally, remap the "(Power)" button to something innocuous like "Home" and set its state to "NONE" — that way, in case the real power button becomes active in a jammed state, the button input shouldn't mess up anything you are trying to do on the phone. After you are satisfied with your changes, click "Apply" to reboot the phone for the changes to take effect. In case you messed up, there will be a notification from Button Remapper in the status bar, which will let you reset any changes you have made.

Note that even when using Button Remapper to remap the hardware buttons, the remapping will not take effect when the phone is off (or you are booted into recovery mode). If your power button doesn't work, you will still have to use a workaround like plugging your phone into a charger in order to get the phone to power on from a shutdown state.

Seeing as how the power button design on the Motorola Droid appears to be partially defective (I know of at least a handful of Droid owners who have had the power button fail), on my replacement Droid I made the point of remapping the Camera button pre-emptively, in an attempt to minimize wear and tear on the power button. It's something to consider.

Answer 2

To do it when the phone is turned off:

Plug it in to power while holding down the 'x' key until a warning sign shows up on screen. Different versions seem to differ here, but:

• It might boot straight away.
• You might have to hold down the volume up and camera keys, then select 'reboot phone'.
• You might have to press the search button, then select 'reboot phone'.