[avian]

> It happens sometimes in cheap devices in which the charging logic is managed in software, but it’s a terrible design decision.

In my experience, this is a pretty common practice, not limited to cheap devices. Many modern battery-driven devices I've looked at closely (for example: e-book readers, smartphones, ...) cannot bootstrap from a completely dead battery. They have to bring up the CPU, which then brings up the PMIC, before it can start charging the battery.

The difference between well-designed and less well-designed devices is mostly in how well they protect the battery from discharging beyond the point where this minimal bootstrap process stops working.