Pixel (rooted) won't turn on or respond

alienjon

Member
Dec 6, 2016
18
2
0
I purchased my Google Pixel (first generation, regular (ie: not XL)) about a year and a half. It's been rooted for most of that time and I recently updated to Pie. When I woke up this morning I found that the phone had restarted on it's own. After a few minutes I noticed that it was running slowly and, eventually, to the point of non-responsive. I forced the phone off (held the power button until it turned off) and turned it back on. It seemed to load okay, but a few minutes later the phone was off again (which it did on it's own) and I cannot turn it back on. Holding the power button doesn't do anything and plugging it into be charged doesn't show any indications that the phone is charging. I haven't installed anything in at least a week and until this morning I didn't notice any problems with the phone. Any thoughts as to how to get the phone back on and what the problem might be?
 

sdnative1

Member
Jul 10, 2012
10
2
0
If it won't turn on even when plugged in, something might be fried. I know batteries can start acting weird and causing problems after a few years too, but I think this is something else.
I purchased my Google Pixel (first generation, regular (ie: not XL)) about a year and a half. It's been rooted for most of that time and I recently updated to Pie. When I woke up this morning I found that the phone had restarted on it's own. After a few minutes I noticed that it was running slowly and, eventually, to the point of non-responsive. I forced the phone off (held the power button until it turned off) and turned it back on. It seemed to load okay, but a few minutes later the phone was off again (which it did on it's own) and I cannot turn it back on. Holding the power button doesn't do anything and plugging it into be charged doesn't show any indications that the phone is charging. I haven't installed anything in at least a week and until this morning I didn't notice any problems with the phone. Any thoughts as to how to get the phone back on and what the problem might be?
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 

alienjon

Member
Dec 6, 2016
18
2
0
Maybe, but I got it brand new from Google a bit over a year ago (06/2017), making me generally hope it isn't something related to 'natural causes'. I think what bothers me the most about this is that I don't know what went wrong and can't think of anyway to check. Plugging it into a wall plug to charge doesn't do anything and when I plug it into the computer my computer doesn't see that anything is plugged in (as I have installed upgrades via my computer, it definitely has the right drivers and everything to see it...).

The slightly paranoid side of me recalls back a few days ago to an article I was reading about malicious apps using phones to mine cryptocurrency, sometimes leading to those phones wearing down enough that they could even brick. Logically I'm almost positive this isn't happening for two reasons. The first being that I haven't installed anything for about a week (and the phone was working fine until this morning) and secondly because I had an app that monitored my network traffic and there wasn't nearly the throughput I'd expect for that kind of processing. Still, I can't think of what else might have happened...

If it won't turn on even when plugged in, something might be fried. I know batteries can start acting weird and causing problems after a few years too, but I think this is something else.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 

post-mortem

Senior Member
Oct 4, 2012
2,137
763
0
You would have noticed massive battery drain if your phone was mining cryptocurrency. Try putting it into a freezer for a bit, then see if you can get any reaction when plugging in. If not, my guess is a catastrophic hardware failure, like a bad battery which leaked & fried the board, or something like that.

If you're in the US, contact uBreakiFix (Google contracts warranty repairs through them). I've read reports of them making repairs for free, even outside of warranty.
 

alienjon

Member
Dec 6, 2016
18
2
0
You would have noticed massive battery drain if your phone was mining cryptocurrency. Try putting it into a freezer for a bit, then see if you can get any reaction when plugging in. If not, my guess is a catastrophic hardware failure, like a bad battery which leaked & fried the board, or something like that.

If you're in the US, contact uBreakiFix (Google contracts warranty repairs through them). I've read reports of them making repairs for free, even outside of warranty.
Thanks for the freezer suggestion (I recall that trick for old hard drives, but never used it myself). How long you thinking for that to do anything? I tried about 10 minutes and didn't see any difference (not sure if I should be doing something closer to an hour or more?) I did Google support (online chat) and ubreakifix was one of two other options they suggested. It looks like they're a little bit of a drive for me, but I'll see if I can't stop by in the next couple of weeks. My old Galaxy S5 will have to do in the meantime (which is slow with poor reception at this point, but it functions as a phone, so I've got that going for me :p

I'll try to update if/when I get details from the repair guys.
 

post-mortem

Senior Member
Oct 4, 2012
2,137
763
0
If the freezer trick did anything, it would likely be temporary (possibly enough time to get data off of it). It would really just confirm a hardware failure, which at this point is my working hypothesis.
 

TENN3R

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2014
843
446
83
Trento
One day my pixel randomly shut down, unresponsive, holding power button did nothing, same when I tried to plug it to a pc or when plugged in.
It restarted when i pressed power + vol- (fastboot mode) for about 40secs - I know, it's a lot, never knew what happened.
Then it just worked normally
 
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