Hello everyone,

My grapheneOS pixel 7a (daily driver for 2 years now) has completely died out of nowhere. No water damage or drop or anything. Out of nowhere, I tried turning my phone on, and nothing.

  • I have tried calling the device, and it looks like it is completely dead.
  • I have tried charging it, no effect.
  • I tried Long Press of Power button, no effect.
  • I tried Long Press of Power button + Volume Down button for more than 30 seconds, no effect.
  • I tired plugging the device on my computer (adb devices and fastboot devices return nothing), no effect.

The devices does not give ANY response, no buzzing, no green/red light indicating that it needs to be charged, screen is completely off, etc.

The only thing that changed is that I installed this open source to-do widget for obsidian one day ago, but I don't think that is the actual problem:

If all else fails I might try actually opening the device to see if there is anything that sticks out, but I have close to 0 knowledge of hardware stuff.

I have no clue why this could have happened and I feel like there is nothing else I can do to fix my device. It would be really nice if you could suggest any other actions.

Thank you in advance everyone :)

  • de0u replied to this.

    Could be that your usb cable is broken and the phone is flat dead. Or you got heavy dust or debris in your phone usb port. If it's flat dead and nothing happen with a cable you know works, you might want to try to plug and unplug a few times within a few minutes and then let it charge. But that would be quite abnormal. Another possibility is that the charger or outlet or usb port you use is broken.

    I have tested with multiple charge ports, and I have verified with a deifferent phone that the cable is actually charging the phone.

    Heavy dust/ Debris could be the case in the USB port because I took it with me when bouldering, so chalk could have gotten in there, but the phone was around 75% charged when it completely died. Would it still explain the device dying?

    Quick update, I took the phone to a repair shop and they said that the "motherboard" is cooked. I have taken the back of my phone off and I will probably try to poke around a bit to see what's going to happen. Any suggestions of what to look for are welcome :)

      AceSineX not gonna be easy. You will need:

      • a stereo microscope
      • a good multimeter
      • an infrared-camera (optional, but very helpful in finding shorts)
      • schematics, but these are pretty much impossible to find, so you will need the next best thing: a working motherboard from the same phone model.

      From there it's pretty tedious work, if you don't know what to look for. First thing would be inspecting the connectors for any burn marks. If those are fine, connecting the motherboard to a power source and looking for shorts with the infrared camera. Shorts usually cause some heat buildup if the shorted component is a capacitor or an IC. If that doesn't turn up anything, you will have to measure pretty much each component and compare the values to the working board. That pretty much sums up the process.