My Nexus 5X bullhead is gone for good

TL;DR

The 13 months old Nexus 5X 32GB entered an infinite reboot loop, it has gone for good. LG != Life’s Good, it stands for Low (quality, standards) Goods really, avoid at any cost.

NOTE: My previous Nexus 5 became unusable after the power button issue. It turned off on its own randonly and powering it on can be very challenging - keep pressing the power button as fast as you can -_-z

Story

It was public holiday in Australia - Anzac Day, supposed to be a good day but the hammerhead ruined my afternoon and night.

It all started with a rebooted after sending some photos to family members. I saw the boot passphrase prompt (full disk encryption enabled), touch screen did not respond so I powered it off, it then entered the reboot loop. It was able enter bootloader but failed to boot into TWRP.

This is the first time I’ve seen such a bad reboot loop (there were reboot loops before but not as bad). I knew something was seriously wrong. A Google Search revealed that it was a common hardware defect for some LG devices. There is a class-action lawsuit targeting LG in California, Nexus 5X was just added a couple of weeks ago, sigh…

I don’t really care about refund or repair but the 2 weeks worth of photos that I failed to backup. It seems that the only possible way is to take the flash memory unit out and use a specialised device to connect to a Linux machine, hopefully Linux can deal with the full disk encryption based on dm-crypt/LUKS, mount the concerned filesystem and extract important data.

After I am done with the bullhead, I’ll give it a few hammers and smash it for good.

My next mobile? I’ve thought about it. No more Samsung or LG, Sony is not my type, Pixel is now as expensive as latest iPhone models, I really cannot justify spending A$1200+ on a Google Pixel (made by HTC, I’ve seen the build quality, no good). So the only option is an iPhone 7 Plus for now -_-z

Anyway, my current requirements for a mobile

  • Reliable hardware and high quality finish
  • Strong hardware based/accelerated encryption
  • Fingerprint recognition and authentication
  • Stable and Swift OS (greatly improved with APFS, regained faith in Apple)
  • Good camera - the best camera is the one with you
  • Long battery life (ideally support both fast charge and wireless charge)

NOTE: I don’t need root on a mobile device any more, it was mainly required to fix some legacy Android problems and to have full control of the device OS.

So I’ll probably go get one tomorrow.

Goodbye Google Nexus -> Nexus{S,4,5,5X}, most likely the same to Android.

I don’t have time to deal with Google’s problems.

IMPORTANT: Backup and look for your next phone if you are still using Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P.

UPDATE: 2017-04-26 I managed to boot into the system after 20+ attempts, lucky enough to backup all new photos. About 10 minutes later it rebooted again, it never booted since then. Now I see no command and a collapsed droid with a triagle warning sign with ! when booting into TWRP.