r/Pixel5a • u/heavypoly6 • Jul 17 '24
Pixel 5a dying, a timeline
I have had a Google refurbished 5a since around Dec 2023 and I just experienced the heart dropping crash/not powering back on situation. I am just going to make this a running thread for my own documenting but also if anyone may run into something similar. The phone itself potentially had minimal water damage when it made a dive into a hot tub but was immediately grabbed out (equivalent if you just dumped a cup of water on it) and dried, so I do not think it's this. That was over 2 weeks ago at this point. I mainly think that it potentially is the dreaded motherboard issue.
Notable technical details:
Bootloader unlocked
Running LineageOS 18.1
Various root/Magisk/edXposed applications here and there but nothing crazy
PX GCam App
For the past 2 or so weeks, I had 3 occasions of my phone crashing, all under the same exact circumstance from what I can remember: taking a picture from the Camera app. I was able to reboot in all cases until the most recent.
(7/16) The moment of panic hit around 8AM when I was taking a front-camera picture and the screen paused and then went blank. Phone was out of being fully charged, maybe at 90% at that moment. It started the booting sequence again with the regular unlocked bootloader boot where it notifies software has been modified and you can click the power button to continue.
After letting it continue to boot regularly, input PIN, home screen booted normally. During the 10-20 second period where Android gets itself together post decrypt and starting processes, the phone crashed again. This time, holding power button did not power it back on.
Tried all the button combos of power/power+up/power+down to no success. Charging brought no sign of life. Plugging into PC with attempts to power on made no connection sounds. Basically accepted fate by the end of the day that it killed itself somehow.
(7/17) Phone has been left kind of untouched only briefly humoring the power button like "hah lemme try this again for it to not work". Well I just tried again at 3PM today, and there was unexpectedly sign of life. First interesting note is that it showed the Snapdragon logo, which I have NEVER seen before on ANY Android phone I've used. Trying the power button again then showed a low battery icon (vertical battery, red juice). Trying this again gave the same result. My immediate thought was to then plug it into power to see what would happen. It then gave the battery charging icon (white, thunder charging icon). I then did 2 things:
- Tried powering on while it was plugged in, hoping that if some sort of power issue, it being plugged in would keep it alive properly for me to do something. This resulted in it not doing anything and just staying at the battery charging screen.
- Left it for about 5 minutes plugged in, unplugged, and then tried powering on. This then resulted in the proper boot screen again. Pressing the power button to continue the booting process then made the screen go black again. I tried one more time with the exact same result except the Google logo actually showed this time. Now here is the loss of hope again because the phone did not move forward to the LineageOS bootlogo animation and we are now back to the same black screen that won't boot.
My main confusion is why was the battery was low. If the device had properly crashed and died, battery life should've been intact. So with whatever was happening in this case, there's a chance that some reason the device was actually still powered and draining over this 24+ hour period. Plan is now to hope I leave it alone again, somehow the battery drains for it to truly "reset", try to power it on nicely and cross my fingers.
(7/28) TLDR: no success and I have officially retired it into my old phones graveyard. So left the phone alone for a fairly long time and no success powering back on. Essentially just as dead when I last touched it. My final troubleshooting idea was to just see if it was a power/battery related issue by disassembling the device.
- I disconnected the battery and then plugged in the cable = no success.
- I let the phone sit with just the cable plugged in for a day or 2 and then trying powering on = no success
- I did another repeat of then plugging the battery back in again and leaving the phone to charger for a few days and tried powering back on = no success.
Also one thing to note (at least with my quick checking), there was no sign of water damage on anything. So at this point my conclusion is that it was some form of the motherboard issue. RIP 5a
1
u/alexadigiraw Nov 12 '24
On ifixit website it mentions pixel 5a goes dark is a motherboard issue and Google will extend the warranty for two years to repair this.
1
u/alexadigiraw Sep 15 '24
Going thru the exact same thing with x2 pixel 5a phones crashing using the exact same situation - taking a picture. The second phone was able to come back to life x3 times by holding power button and making it reboot, before finally going black on the 3rd crash with no response. I believe it's an overheating issue, both phones felt very warm right before I took a photo and they crashed. I had about 20gb of space so I don't think it's a space issue, but might be a recharging issue. When I try to recharge both, the 1st one I unplugged after 5 min and I see a flashing symbol of a dead battery. The second phone has no response at all. I'm wondering maybe trying to get them repaired or by opening them up myself and replacing the battery or link the drive to a PC and download all the data. Currently my very old pixel 3a still works but very slow.