Pixel 3 XL bricked - Pixel Stand to blame?

[briischamp]

Before I went to bed Sunday, my Pixel 3 XL was functioning perfectly fine. Rested it on my Pixel Stand for the night and woke up the next morning to a bricked phone.

I did see it mentioned on some other sites, but not in these forums, that Pixel 3's have been bricked and the culprit was possibly wireless chargers. Some blamed it on trying to use third party chargers (Samsung and others), but others like me had used the Pixel Stand.

Trouble shot it with Google, cleared the charging port, tried a wired charger, tried hard reset, etc., no luck. Verizon sent replacement via overnight due to manufacturer defect. Wondering if anybody has confirmed the Pixel Stand was to blame? I'm nervous about using it with my replacement device now.

 

[HyperM3]

Ive been using the pixel stand since day one, every night, and I have no issues to report.

 

[GSDer]

I'm nervous about using it with my replacement device now.

As long as they're going to replace it with a new device under warranty you may as well keep at it - someone has to test these things!

On a serious note, I haven't seen that mentioned in the forums here or in places like XDA, but I'll see if Reddit has anything, or perhaps the Google user forums.

 

[Rukbat]

Funny thing I learned when my Pixel 2 "bricked". If you look at Deuces Bootloop-Recovery & Flashing Script you might get an idea of how to "unbrick" a Pixel (if the Verizon bootloader can be unlocked on the 3 - you should always keep it unlocked, just for situations like this).

 

[mustang7757]

Funny thing I learned when my Pixel 2 "bricked". If you look at Deuces Bootloop-Recovery & Flashing Script you might get an idea of how to "unbrick" a Pixel (if the Verizon bootloader can be unlocked on the 3 - you should always keep it unlocked, just for situations like this).

True ..

 

[Mike Dee]

Before I went to bed Sunday, my Pixel 3 XL was functioning perfectly fine. Rested it on my Pixel Stand for the night and woke up the next morning to a bricked phone.

I did see it mentioned on some other sites, but not in these forums, that Pixel 3's have been bricked and the culprit was possibly wireless chargers. Some blamed it on trying to use third party chargers (Samsung and others), but others like me had used the Pixel Stand.

Trouble shot it with Google, cleared the charging port, tried a wired charger, tried hard reset, etc., no luck. Verizon sent replacement via overnight due to manufacturer defect. Wondering if anybody has confirmed the Pixel Stand was to blame? I'm nervous about using it with my replacement device now.

It really could anything. This is the first brick I've heard of actually. I can't think of anything that technical that would cause a stand to brick a phone even though there is other connectivity going on with Pixel. Of course anything is possible.

 

[briischamp]

Thanks for feedback all. Since it doesn't seem to be very widespread, I'm going to chalk it up to random device defect. I'll throw it on the same Stand tonight and that's our constant. If this replacement turns to a paperweight we'll know why. : )

EDIT: here's where I saw others possibly having the same issue, just haven't run across anything definitive: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/9rbzha/pixel_3xl_bricked/

 

[Mike Dee]

Thanks for feedback all. Since it doesn't seem to be very widespread, I'm going to chalk it up to random device defect. I'll throw it on the same Stand tonight and that's our constant. If this replacement turns to a paperweight we'll know why. : )

EDIT: here's where I saw others possibly having the same issue, just haven't run across anything definitive: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/9rbzha/pixel_3xl_bricked/

Based on those posts the common denominator seems to be wireless charging not specific to Google. Could still be a coincidence because a lot of Pixel users use wireless charging. If we could find Pixels that are bricking while not using wireless charging then we could almost rule it out the wireless connection. Myself and lots of others who pre-ordered are not experiencing this issue...I hope it isn't widespread. How long have you owned it?

 

[mustang7757]

another thing to know if it was soft bricked all you need to do is boot up in recovery clear cache and reboot, now if it was hard bricked you need to sideload the OS again to put back partitions files . just heads up

 

[briischamp]

Based on those posts the common denominator seems to be wireless charging not specific to Google. Could still be a coincidence because a lot of Pixel users use wireless charging. If we could find Pixels that are bricking while not using wireless charging then we could almost rule it out the wireless connection. Myself and lots of others who pre-ordered are not experiencing this issue...I hope it isn't widespread. How long have you owned it?

I did not pre-order, but purchased maybe 3 weeks - 1 month after release.

 

[GSDer]

another thing to know if it was soft bricked all you need to do is boot up in recovery clear cache and reboot

Please stop perpetuating this myth - there is no cache to clear on devices with the A/B partition scheme!

 

[mustang7757]

Please stop perpetuating this myth - there is no cache to clear on devices with the A/B partition scheme!

Yeah forgot about pie you cant do this anymore, it's not a MYTH I've done it before on soft brick phone before they stopped the clearing cache.
Thanks for reminding

 

[GSDer]

Yeah forgot about pie you cant do this anymore

This actually goes all the way back to Android 7 (Nougat); Google devices like the original Pixel which shipped with Nougat supported seamless updates; it was optional so other manufacturers often didn't bother.
And Google devices that upgraded from an earlier OS, like the Nexus 6P, were out of luck - they use the older partition scheme which still has a system cache partition.

 

[mustang7757]

This actually goes all the way back to Android 7 (Nougat); Google devices like the original Pixel which shipped with Nougat supported seamless updates; it was optional so other manufacturers often didn't bother.
And Google devices that upgraded from an earlier OS, like the Nexus 6P, were out of luck - they use the older partition scheme which still has a system cache partition.

I think we getting off the topic here a little.
I'm talking about clearing cache in recovery and your talking about seamless updates which is for software updates and cant help anyone when phone gets bricked.
Since we can't clear cache in recovery anymore only option would be factory reset to see if you can fix the soft brick otherwise would have to reload OS if it's hard bricked.

 

[Lilybell2]

Just to clarify, it's not that "we can't clear cache in recovery anymore," it's that Pixel phones do not have and have never had a cache partition, ergo, you cannot clear/wipe something that does not exist. The same would be true of any Android phone using the A/B system.

 

[mustang7757]

https://www.techjunkie.com/how-to-clear-cache-on-google-pixel-and-pixel-xl/

 

[Lilybell2]

https://www.techjunkie.com/how-to-clear-cache-on-google-pixel-and-pixel-xl/

https://source.android.com/devices/tech/ota/ab/ab_implement#partitions

A/B devices do not need a recovery partition or cache partition because Android no longer uses these partitions. The data partition is now used for the downloaded OTA package, and the recovery image code is on the boot partition. All partitions that are A/B-ed should be named as follows (slots are always named a, b, etc.): boot_a, boot_b, system_a, system_b, vendor_a, vendor_b.

 

[mustang7757]

Just to clarify, it's not that "we can't clear cache in recovery anymore," it's that Pixel phones do not have and have never had a cache partition, ergo, you cannot clear/wipe something that does not exist. The same would be true of any Android phone using the A/B system.

I stand corrected if this is true , might be thinking about my other andriod phones

 

[Golfdriver97]

I'm tempted to say they didn't. I don't recall seeing it in the Pixel 1 when I first got it.

Saying that pixel phones never had clear cache systems in recovery is false .

 

[mustang7757]

I'm tempted to say they didn't. I don't recall seeing it in the Pixel 1 when I first got it.

You dont recall?
If I'm wrong I stand corrected as i could be mixing this up with my other andriod devices