So, there I was, sitting on the veranda of the latest digs, resting after a day’s drive with a beer and my phone, looking up something on maps.
Screen went blank.
Powered back up, and after the “Google” sting, black again. Couple of times. Went for the recovery-mode start-up and that went straight back to google and blackness. Tried percussive maintenance. That changed things: now it won’t even get to “Google” or the recovery mode. Dead as a post. Googling suggests that this is a known failure mode of Nexus 5x and several other phones. Apparently heat cycling stresses the flip-chip used in the main SoC, eventually breaks a connection or two. Unfixable.
So, my phone’s dead. I wasn’t making or receiving many phone calls anyway. But I was using it as a GPS navigator, and all of the usual internet things. Photos. Photos with GPS tags that I hope to use to locate most of my other photos.
As near as I can tell, I haven’t lost any data. Even the last photos that I’d taken had already been uploaded to the cloud. Cath’s phone is here, and works. We’ll be able to use that in the mean time. Not keen to buy a new phone overseas, even if it were possible to convince Telstra to let it into the fold.
Bother.
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