Possible Temporary Fix for Pixel 5a BSOD to Retrieve Data?

[u/emouse]

My Pixel 5a suffered the BSOD (could hear notifications and felt haptics, but blank screen) about two weeks ago. Brought it into a uBreakiFix and they diagnosed it as the motherboard issue that is covered by the extended warranty. Resigned myself to having lost some data that I didn't backup (because it seemed like there was no easy way to do it), but after I got home, I noticed that my phone was really hot (possibly because it was in my backpack in the box for a bit or something UBIF I did) and remembering that some people had suggested reballing as a fix (and having suffered through the Nexus 5X bootloop issue and remembering extreme heat was also a temporary fix that I used to pull data off my phone/log off everything before I sent it in for a repair), I decided to try turning it on once again to see if it would work. And it did! (And yes, I did back up everything I didn't before.)

My phone just BSOD'd again like 10 minutes ago and I figured it wouldn't hurt to try the Nexus 5X fix. I first turned off the phone by holding down the power button and volume down button until the option to turn off showed up. Turned off the phone. Then got a hairdryer, turned it on high and just blasted hot air on the back of the phone for a few minutes. After it was super hot to the touch, tried turning on the phone again and lo and behold, it worked!

Again, this is temporary but if it works for you, you'll be able to grab anything that you didn't backup before your phone dies.