Aloha,
one of the Pixels here (Pixel8) that also had "the freeze one second after" when it expects the sim pin:
The phone got 250805.005/2025100901 installed. Due to the user of the phone the battery got around 35%. Then the user went to bed, found the device in turned of the morning after.
Due to your input, I started into rescue mode and checked the logs, nothing special here, but one partition seems to be not mounted. Used the mount system option.
Then a light screen appears with two, lets say bubbles inside. They belong to a process bar with "installing update" or s.th like this. I am not sure if this process appeared by itself/background process just after mounting the sys partition, or when I accidentely selected the graphics test.
Anyway: Device than started regular, no freeze. No adb update or wipe required: Everything was fine afterwards.
I then found the device with optimizing apps, which may include the fact the device tried to apply and update before and must be somehow interrupted.
Maybe due to a low battery overnight.
But one thing was strange here:
However: Device installs update only when the battery is above critical, also found auto reboots switched off.
Maybe this means the user started the update with a bad battery state?
Battery got 180rounds, health capacitity 100%.