Today was not a good day. Woke up with my Nexus 5 stuck on the ‘Google’ boot screen. I had been seeing some stability issues lately (apps freezing, occasional reboot) but was planning on re-installing in order to go to 5.0.1 anyway when disaster struck.

Troubleshooting

After a great deal of rebooting and playing I got to the loading screen (spinning coloured dots). And there it stayed. Concluding that something had gone seriously wrong I decided to do an re-install of the factory image.

flashboot flash boot boot.img
sending 'bootloader' (2579 KB)...
OKAY [  0.294s]
writing 'bootloader'...
FAILED (remote: flash write failure)

Somewhat concerned at this point I tried different machines, cables, etc. but it seemed that flashboot was unable to write anything to any of the partitions:

Colin:hammerhead-lrx22c colinmacgiollaeain$ sudo fastboot flash bootloader bootloader-hammerhead-hhz12d.img
target reported max download size of 1073741824 bytes
sending 'bootloader' (2579 KB)...
OKAY [  0.296s]
writing 'bootloader'...
FAILED (remote: flash write failure)
finished. total time: 0.476s
Colin:hammerhead-lrx22c colinmacgiollaeain$ fastboot erase boot
erasing 'boot'...
FAILED (remote: failed to erase partition)
finished. total time: 0.218s
Colin:hammerhead-lrx22c colinmacgiollaeain$ fastboot erase cache
******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?
erasing 'cache'...
FAILED (remote: failed to erase partition)
finished. total time: 0.217s
Colin:hammerhead-lrx22c colinmacgiollaeain$ fastboot erase recovery
erasing 'recovery'...
FAILED (remote: failed to erase partition)
finished. total time: 0.215s
Colin:hammerhead-lrx22c colinmacgiollaeain$ fastboot erase system
******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?
erasing 'system'...
FAILED (remote: failed to erase partition)
finished. total time: 0.212s
...
target reported max download size of 1073741824 bytes
archive does not contain 'boot.sig'
archive does not contain 'recovery.sig'
archive does not contain 'system.sig'
archive does not contain 'vendor.img'
Creating filesystem with parameters:
Size: 29236371456
Block size: 4096
Blocks per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 8192
Inode size: 256
Journal blocks: 32768
Label:
Blocks: 7137786
Block groups: 218
Reserved block group size: 1024
Created filesystem with 11/1785856 inodes and 156120/7137786 block
Cannot read image.

At this point I was going with the working assumption that the NAND was dead or at least not writable any more. To confirm I did an OEM lock (it was unlocked) and rebooted. The little padlock icon remained unlocked.

Google Support

At this point I dug out my receipts and was relieved to see that the device (purchased through Google Play) was under 1 year old, so a warranty replacement is still an option. Going to the appropriate place in Play Support raised a second issue – I have no other phone, and they want a call back number. Something of a gap there I think…

Eventually I found a list of actual phone numbers for Google Play Support, that let you talk to an actual human being! There I hit problem #2.

For Ireland there is a 1800 freephone number (and no other number listed). This is a big problem as all office phones are routed through the US and Skype doesn’t support Irish freephone numbers. Why can’t I dial freephone numbers internationally e.g. +353 1800 ### ###? Because of an idiotic decision, the freephone numbers start with ‘1’, as does Dublin when dialing internationally (01-### #### -> +353 1 ### ###) and the B-number analysis will attempt to connect you to a random number in Dublin.

Fortunately, Skype does allow you to dial freephone numbers in the UK, so that’s what I did. Note: you will need either the IMEI (printed on a sticker on the back of the phone) or the original order number (very long number) for support to find your phone. The serial number won’t work. After describing my issue (and I’m sure blowing the support script out of the water) it was agreed that my issue sounded like a hardware fault, and so an advanced replacement would be in order.

The advanced replacement works like this:

• You receive a time limited (24 hours) link to the Google Play store
• On clicking the link, it is like buying a device – you fill in the credit card information (just an authorisation), shipping information, etc. and the order is processed
• Once you receive the refurbished (no new phones anymore, you get a refurbished “like-new” device) you have 7 days to return the defective phone (free shipping).
• When it reaches the depot the authorisation on the credit card will be removed (assuming the phone actually had a hardware fault)