My P6P updated to latest release on 11/27 night and I rebooted it on 11/28 morning. It worked perfectly fine until this (11/29) morning.
When I woke up this morning, (and phone at 100% charge), I opened an app (WIX) to complete a task, the screen froze on the app. I tried locking the phone by pressing the power button, instead phone shutdown and started to reboot.
Upon reboot, it stuck at Google logo, and wouldn't move forward. I tried to power cycle by pressing power+volume up button, nothing happened.
I browsed the forums and saw some posts suggest to enter recovery mode by pressing power button for 60 seconds and when rebooting press power + volume down button. Now the phone is in a cycle to reboot and stuck at Google logo for a few seconds, and then reboot again. It drained the battery completely, and when I connected it to power source it does the same thing.

Can someone please help me recover my phone and data? I have 200+GB data of my life (photos/videos, contacts, text messages, apps/app data) on the phone. I have NO backup of anything. BIG MISTAKE.
This was a brand new unlocked phone purchased in 2022, and installed GrapheneOS and I kept it upto date on all the patches and OS updates.

I really, really appreciate any help in this regard.

  • de0u replied to this.

    indusvo Unfortunately, the description is consistent with a hardware failure. You might want to take the device to a repair shop to see if it looks that way to an expert.

    Meanwhile, it should be possible to get the device to turn off. If you apply power, it should display a screen with a yellow alert indicating it is about to boot a non-Google OS. On that screen, tapping the power button should pause the boot process. If so, let it charge for at least several hours.

    Once it's charged, holding the power button down for a long time (up to a minute) should turn the device off.

    Can you try those two steps and report back? Probably the next step would be a safe-mode boot, but first let's make sure you can get the device charged and off.

        de0u Thanks for your reply.
        When you say hardware failure, does it include faulty battery or motherboard or something else?

        The phone doesn't even charge now; its plugged in for about two hours and still shows charging, and when I pulled out the cord it says low battery. When I long press the power button, it does nothing but shows a battery sign with charging symbol.

            indusvo that sounds like an issue with the UFS storage. Considering you had over 200GB of data on that phone, I can imagine that you were running out of space already and thus the cells got damaged over time.
            There might be a chance that it's something else, but the fact it froze during R/W operations is a strong indicator of storage failure.

                DeletedUser87 Its a 256 GB phone. And I remember deleting a lot of data last week to reduce the size.

                I will have someone check it tomorrow.

                  indusvo When you say hardware failure, does it include faulty battery or motherboard or something else?

                  It's hard to say. But I'm afraid I agree with DeletedUser87 that the flash storage may have gone bad.

                  indusvo The phone doesn't even charge now; its plugged in for about two hours and still shows charging, and when I pulled out the cord it says low battery. When I long press the power button, it does nothing but shows a battery sign with charging symbol.

                  Let it charge overnight. Maybe if you're lucky the repair shop will replace the battery and it'll be ok. But be careful! Some repair shops wipe every device they receive as a matter of policy. So this is something you will want to discuss up front.

                          de0u If its storage failure, can anyone recover the data? Or all the data is lost?

                          • de0u replied to this.

                              de0u
                              I have WhatsApp installed on the phone and I am able to use WhatsApp Web with no issue and also able to access old messages/contacts (I use Contact Scopes for WhatsApp) on the WhatsApp Web. That's my light ray of hope :(

                                indusvo If its storage failure, can anyone recover the data? Or all the data is lost?

                                That is beyond my area of expertise. If there is a storage failure it is possible that a forensic data recovery company might be able to recover some information.

                                  de0u
                                  Hello, I was able to turn off the devise as you explained here. How do I do a safe mode reboot?

                                  • de0u replied to this.

                                      indusvo How do I do a safe mode reboot?

                                      It's a little tricky. The official documentation is here: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2852139

                                      The issue is that if the volume-down button is pressed too early you might end up in Recovery. So you want to clear the bootloader, but then you want to very promptly press and then hold the volume-down button. If you get it right you will see a "Safe Mode" notice.

                                      Check to see, when you boot, whether you get a yellow "different OS" notice versus a red "corrupt" notice. Yellow would be more auspicious in terms of getting more data back.

                                          de0u I got Red notice and I chose to shut off the devise.
                                          After that device tried to reboot with the same behavior as before (stuck on Google logo).

                                          I will go see a repairman in the morning and I will update the status here. Is it worthwhile trying recovery services like https://www.tenorshare.net/ads/ultdata-for-android.html?gad_source=1 before I go to the repairman just so I have an extra backup (if the phone is detected on the computer and this software able to retrieve any data)

                                          • de0u replied to this.

                                              indusvo I know nothing about Tenorshare, positive or negative. But I believe nothing you can download is as good as a professional forensic recovery service. Also keep in mind that using the device while it's not working right may further degrade it.

                                              If your primary focus is on data recovery, I would recommend you consider sending the device to a recovery service. They aren't cheap, but that is the way to maximize recovery probability.

                                                  de0u Update: I sent my phone to SalvageData for recovery. I will give another update after they have a chance to look at it.

                                                      indusvo I sent my phone to SalvageData for recovery.

                                                      I hope it goes well! And I expect that a report on your experience would be of interest to many.

                                                          13 days later

                                                          de0u Update from the evaluation:

                                                          Evaluation Report Notes:
                                                          The Mobile Phone has been determined to have the following issues, listed below:
                                                          malfunction of the internal firmware components, which govern the behavior,
                                                          factory settings, and identity of the drive
                                                          The data recovery process would consist of manually repairing damaged components
                                                          and modules of the firmware, sector-by-sector imaging of the original media using
                                                          multiple-paths algorithms. Retrieval of data, filtering out damaged files. Validate file and
                                                          folder structure. Verify file integrity. Generate readable web-accessible file list for review.
                                                          Transfer data to the secure download server or to new transfer media.

                                                          Price: TBD I am meeting with them later today to discuss the pricing.

                                                          • de0u replied to this.

                                                              indusvo Thanks for the update! I am curious as to whether they believe they can recover data despite Android's encryption and in particular the hardware keystore. But I guess if they have your password/PIN that should help a lot. Please report back when you know more!

                                                                2 months later

                                                                UPDATE: They couldn't get any data out of the phone so I had to buy a new phone and start allover again!!!

                                                                Moral of the story: Please backup your phone regularly :)

                                                                  indusvo I'm sorry to hear that they weren't able to get anything. But it is very much appreciated that you reported back. It would be useful if over time this forum could accumulate information about which services have had how much luck with restoring data.