Arielaviles "So I managed to sideload the ota update, I've rebooted and am at the GrapheneOS logo again, been about 5 min."
How long did you wait?
"fortunately/unfortunately am now setting phone up from scratch. What could have happened?"
Potentially a hardware error
raccoondad A hardware error can be fixed with factory resetting? That doesn't sound right but if so let me know because that would mean this can/will happen again and I should look for a new phone before then.
@Arielaviles Not clear but there's a very high chance the hardware is faulty and needs to be replaced.
Arielaviles "A hardware error can be fixed with factory resetting? That doesn't sound right", it can, yes
care to elaborate? Are you using hardware and firmware synonymously?
gk7ncklxlts99w1 "Are you using hardware and firmware synonymously?"
If your hardware is damaged or not functioning properly, behavior of the firmware/boot loader & GOS itself will have odd behavior, including failure to boot. Issues with the firmware could also cause issues.
For example, my Pixel 5 failed to boot due to a battery issue that bricked the bootloader
Arielaviles A hardware error can be fixed with factory resetting?
If the problem is that a specific part of the flash storage went bad, resetting the storage layout may result in the system using other parts of the flash for a while.
Has the flash storage on this device been heavily used? Has the storage been full a lot? Have there been lots of large downloads, such as videos for offline viewing, or a large offline music collection, or lots of videos recorded using a camera app? If there has been a large quantity of information stored that increases the likelihood that the flash storage is starting to wear.
I was wondering how a hardware problem can be resolved with a factory reset. That doesn't sound possible. Firmware maybe.
to my understanding, the flash storage configuration would be more logical layer than hardware (physical) layer.
gk7ncklxlts99w1 to my understanding, the flash storage configuration would be more logical layer than hardware (physical) layer.
If a specific part of the flash becomes unreadable (this happens), then Android may be unable to read the data -- for example, it might suddenly become impossible to read the owner profile's home directory, in which case Android would likely crash and fail to restart. Hopefully it is clear how this physical failure could result in operational issues similar to the reported symptoms.
If the device is factory reset, every block of the user data partition will be rewritten (some immediately, some over time). In general the flash translation layer will store every part of the new version of the user data partition in a different part of the flash than it was stored in before. Thus the owner profile's home directory is unlikely to be stored in the bad part of the flash that it had been stored in before. And it is very plausible that the FTL will store nothing in that part of the flash ever again, if the read failure had previously caused that part of the flash to be marked bad.
None of this is controversial. This pattern also applies to spinning-rust disks, which also do overprovisioning and bad-block replacement. In both cases an unreadable logical block can be "fixed" by rewriting it, causing a reallocation. "Formatting" a partition rewrites all of the blocks, thus reallocating all of the bad blocks.
It is absolutely plausible that a file system that is "broken" due to a physical failure can be "fixed" by resetting it at the filesystem layer.
de0u No a lot of storage usage, and the phone is just over a year old, but come to think of it, things had been acting up and I wonder if it is connected (google services in work profile randomly crashed, phone stopped being able to make seedvault backups or connect to webdav which is now fixed since reset, lockscreen wouldnt show time when locked even though it was set up to, just so many "glitches" I ignored because the phone "worked"). either way, I have my eyes on a new pixel 9 if this one goes, in the meantime I will make darn sure my seedvault backup is working so a factory reset isnt so dramatic like this time.
Thank you to everyone who commented and helped with the issue and clarifying how it could have happened. Luckily the phone is working again (for now).
