Moto G does not start, LED light turns on when charging

If you own a Moto G mobile phone, do not let its battery run down to zero. If you just did, try to charge it as usual. If the phone does not start up when you press and hold the Power button for a few seconds, don't worry. This is a known issue and can be fixed easily.

Use a more powerful charger to kickstart charging

The phone needs a higher Ampere current than the one provided by Moto G's charger. Find a charger that is rated 1.5A - for example, a charger that came with a tablet (or a bigger, more recent phone).

Charge the phone for 30 minutes and then press and hold the Power button till the phone turns on. If it doesn't, just leave the phone(battery) to cool for a day - yes, it needs that much time as I found out. Then, try again. Repeated attempts at charging without cooling the battery may damage it for good, so beware.

(I really hope you have a backup phone, a basic model that works with your SIM. Usually, access to your contacts is the main thing you need - which should be available on the internet if you sync/back up contacts. For example, Android phones might be synced to Google Contacts)

Once the phone starts up, you can go back to charging with Moto G's charger (the one with lower Ampere rating) since that's a better way to stretch your battery's life (on the other hand, if this didn't work, Motorola has advice for you - see https://forums.motorola.com/posts/3d5eadc25d).

How to charge your phone for a long battery life

In future, remember to charge your phone when it discharges to 40%. Stop charging when it reaches 100% or when it's in the 90s. Don't leave it charging after it reaches 100% since the charger discharges for a while after it reaches 100% and then charges it back to 100% - this repeats till you switch off the charger. For a more detailed explanation, see this page.

Find the time your phone requires to charge a single percentage point. For example, my Moto G charger needs 3 minutes for this. Depending on the charge left, estimate the time required for charging and only charge as long. Well, set a countdown timer if you would rather not remember!

Google drive: backup and share documents privately

Think of Google Drive as your hard disk/drive on the internet (your private space on Google's hard disk on their server). With a Google login, and the Google Drive software installed on your device, you can do the following:

• Save/backup files on the cloud and access from anywhere - 15GB drive space is free across Drive, Gmail and other Google products.
• Share the files with privacy/security.
• Files can even be edited simultaneously by yourself and and your collaborators.
• Files can be easily attached to mails if you use GMail.

Buy additional space when you need. Hardware keeps getting cheaper while the size of hard disks has been going up. So the cost of space you own keeps goes down.

Important features for sharing

• File could be shared by specifying the e-mail addresses of those with whom you wish to share (recipients)
• Specifying e-mail address is a better option than using links to share files. 
• Private sharing is possible only if the recipient is on Google+.
• Recipients can be permitted to just view files, or even edit files. 
• The feature to download a shared file can be disabled. 
• A shared file cannot be downloaded by those who can only view that file. 
• Those who are permitted to edit a file can also download it. Use the check box in the details section of the file to prevent download. 
• If you install Google Drive on your device, selected folders on it could be synchronized with the cloud drive (on Windows, right click on the Google drive icon in the notification area at the bottom right). An example usage scenario is when you would like to back up everything to Google Drive, but wouldn't want to retain all of these on the laptop as the space available is limited. 
• Upto 15GB is free. $2 upto 100GB. $10 upto 1TB - see this for how prices have declined over the years. 

Other options

• Apple iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive and Amazon's Cloud Drive are alternatives. 

Photos and video

• Photos and video shot with devices from Apple, Microsoft, Amazon can be stored for free in their respective cloud drives. For Android phones, storage for photos and video is virtually unlimited on Google Photos.
• Subscription to Amazon Prime gives you unlimited storage for photos. If you don't get Amazon Prime or an Amazon device, its cloud storage is expensive.

My readers and I would like to hear your experience in sharing documents, photos and video via the cloud.