Guys, I don't believe this is a launcher issue. Some years ago I had the system launcher disabled and my third party launcher stopped working, but I could still boot up just fine and access Settings from the quick settings menu (while not having a home screen or navigation bar). So I don't think a crashing launcher will soft brick a device.
From my testing and the crDroid issue I conclude the system cannot start any new activity after activating one of the pseudolocales, because it changes more than just user-facing strings:
The issue is - all strings are converted to this language
e.g.
06-24 12:51:19.436 1487 3426 W ActivityManager: Unable to start service Intent { act=android.service.smartspace.SmartspaceService cmp=[çöḿ.ĝööĝļé.åñðŕöîð.åš/çöḿ.ĝööĝļé.åñðŕöîð.åþþš.ḿîþĥöñé.åîåî.åþþ.ÅîÅîŠḿåŕţšþåçéŠéŕVîçé one two three four five six seven eight nine] } U=0: not found
The 2019 issue on the Google issue tracker is quite clear:
If a user shuts down their device while using the English XA Pseudolocale language, they will be unable to successfully boot up their Android device after shutting down. The only successful course of action is to factory reset the data on the phone and wipe it clean.
This has been 100% reproducible on a Pixel 3 running Android 9.
This for me precisely describes the issue, and I don't agree with other8026 that “this could very well be a different thing entirely”. Although of course the cause could be different, but how likely is that...
Of course the issue may only present itself under certain circumstances and not be something a lot of people run into, which would be why there's not much talk about it online.
For example, in your cases and the crDroid issue, your phone immediately became unusable and/or rebooted itself, whereas I was able to switch back to my regular language, thereby preventing a soft brick (I only rebooted with the pseudo locale active for testing).
Maybe having multiple profiles set up or some specific thing like that causes the phone to hang/reboot immediately after activating the pseudo language. Something GrapheneOS users often have. That would mean to encounter the bug and care about it enough to report it, you'd have to:
- be a developer
- have a specific device setup
- activate a pseudo language
- on a device you are using as a daily driver
- and (optionally) don't make backups of (which would REALLY motivate you to report it)
Which brings us to the other, more pressing issue at hand here, which is one reported quite often: people losing their data because they don't make backups. This issue has always had a fix, but you, the end user, have to implement it yourself. Please do so, smartphones are fragile devices that we carry everywhere, with screens that easily break and non removable batteries prone to failure. It's not unlikely the data stored on them becomes inaccessible at some point, even without obscure bugs in Android soft bricking your device.