Will an over-discharged "dead" battery be woken up by NFC wireless charging?

When lithium-ion batteries are deeply discharged, even down to 0 V, many charging solutions have an undervoltage startup threshold. A battery over-discharged to 0 V can no longer be recharged with those solutions.

However, the NFC-WLC protocol supports trickle pre-charging. Even when the battery voltage is below the system startup threshold, the harvested RF energy can supply a tiny current to safely recover the battery.

Important note: Pre-charging parameters must be strictly tuned to prevent battery damage.

This is done by the TP4056 chip, and all lithium-ion battery chargers do this. Initial charging takes place at a current of 50 mA or 100 mA until a voltage of 2.5 V is reached. Once this is reached, further charging continues at the rated current. The pre-charge current depends on the capacity of the battery (secondary cell) being charged.

A deeply discharged Li-ion battery becomes dangerous once recharged. Internal short circuits and fires may occur. This is why charging circuits shut down; it is not because of any technical difficulty in starting the circuit when the voltage is too low. The fact that some users have managed to charge a battery from 0V does not mean that any equipment manufacturer will accept the risk of subsequent failures.

Exactly – a battery like that has high internal resistance and a much lower capacity than usual. The longer it has been left completely discharged, the less likely it is that some of its capacity can be restored.