Firmware Boot Loop - No fastboot, recovery, or rescue modes

frightfulremodeler

I have a GOS phone (Pixel 7 Pro) that has started a boot loop where it loops between the "Your device is loading a different operating system." screen and the Google letters. When unplugged, it dies instantly (which I can't tell if it's an empty battery or a symptom) and I can get to the boot selection screen by holding power down, but if I choose fastboot mode, recovery mode, or rescue mode, it just goes back to the loop. I can get it to show up under usb devices, but not in adb. (I don't usually work with Android, so I may need other packages I don't know about. I only installed the adb package on debian.) The phone belongs to an elderly lady, so I don't know if any settings were changed. I had it set on stable updates, but she could've accidentally or unwittingly changed that if this sounds like a known testing bug.

Is it bricked or is there something else I can do? Any help appreciated.

de0u

frightfulremodeler When unplugged, it dies instantly (which I can't tell if it's an empty battery or a symptom) and I can get to the boot selection screen by holding power down, but if I choose fastboot mode, recovery mode, or rescue mode, it just goes back to the loop.

The first part of that strongly suggests that the battery is completely empty. So the first thing to try is plugging it in and then tapping the power button to pause booting when offered that option, then let it charge for multiple hours.

frightfulremodeler

I tried charging, but even after hours there was no charge. I investigated further and have come to the conclusion that it's bricked. Thanks for the help!

userofgos

frightfulremodeler Don't loose hope yet. I have experienced this in the past, it took a bunch of attempts until I was able to get out of the boot loop long enough to get into Fastboot to do a factory reset via Recovery (which will erase all your data): https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4596836?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwith-your-phones-buttons-advanced.

Mystified3527

frightfulremodeler

Its also possible that this is a battery issue, I ran into a similar problem with a different android device (with an easily replaceable battery) and swapping out the battery solved the issue. I cannot be sure of this in your case though it is something to consider.

frightfulremodeler

userofgos
Thanks for the suggestion, but part of the problem is not being able to access recovery mode. I can access the fastboot menu, but selecting "Start", "Recovery mode", or "Rescue mode" just restarts the loop.

I did, however, discover that this device lists the boot slot as slot b. A couple XDA threads [1] [2] [3] suggest this means the partitons are corrupted, likely due to the battery dying during an update.

de0u

frightfulremodeler If you can get into Recovery, you can try sideloading an OTA image. If that fails, you can try wiping the entire user data partition (obviously this loses data) by doing a "factory reset" in Recovery.

Edit: If you can't even start Recovery... there is a fair chance of a bad failure in the flash storage.