[Johnny555]

That's not always an option -- my last android phone died with a reboot loop. It was several years old so I opted to discard and replace it (after opening it up and snapping the main circuit board in half), but if it was newer and I wanted warranty service, I'd have no choice but to send it in for repair, unwiped. In theory, device encryption would protect my data unless the service center has some way around it.

[ghoward]

> That's not always an option -- my last android phone died with a reboot loop.

You're not wrong, but for future reference, there is a way to stop such a reboot loop; I did it just yesterday with my wife's phone. (Of course, it was a Pixel, so it might not be on every phone.) You do it by holding power and down volume until it says "Command not found", then you hold power and volume up until you get a menu. One of the items should be "Power off". Another one is "Factory reset" or something like it.

Once my wife's phone was off, I left it off for a couple of hours to let it cool. Then I booted it again, and all was well.

We're still getting her a new phone though.

[Johnny555]

I spent days going through every blog post I could find for tips on how to fix it, including booting to recovery mode -- it would reboot as I scrolled through the recovery menu and even when I got as far as trying to do the factory reset, it would reboot before it even started the reset. I let it reboot itself until it ran out of battery and waited a day after that to let it completely drain. Even tried putting it in the freezer.

[ghoward]

Apologies then. I agree you were out of options.

[Johnny555]

Even the IT guy at work was stymied, he was sure he'd be able to at least factory reset it and get it working again.... he gave up after a few hours.

[seoulmetro]

Same thing happened to me on a pretty brand new LG Pixel phone. Good money down the drain, absolutely horrible. Tried everything.