Nexus 4 Not Switching On

On one occasion, nothing happened when I tried to switch on my Nexus 4 phone and nothing continued to happen when I plugged in the power cable.  My first reaction was to stare in disbelief at the phone ... it was two days after the one year warranty expired.

I resisted the temptation to throw the phone across the room, searched and found a forum thread about Nexus 4 switch on problems.

The various posts offer several related suggestions to fix a Nexus 4 that won't switch on, won't turn on and won't start.  My experience was ...

• I did not take the cover off the phone.
• Pressing the power and volume down buttons and then inserting the power cable did not work for me.
• Pressing the power and volume down buttons, counting slowly to twenty and then inserting the power cable did work for me and the phone began to charge.

I allowed the phone to charge for about an hour and then I was able to switch the phone on in the usual way.

My suspicion is that I had a problem because I switched off the phone when it was low on battery, the shutdown process drained power from the battery and the phone did not have enough power to restart.

I do not know why the recovery process needs to be so complicated.