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Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad this is still being maintained. It's a really great way to still run popular apps without having to go the entire F-Droid/OSS only route.

My current phone no longer charges and I've already replaced so much stuff on it (back, camera, etc.) that I'm deciding to go the KDE Plasma route, starting with a new old-stock Nexus 5X.

I hope the Purism 5 and Pinephone get released as well. I really want to go the Plasma route. If there is tooling I need that's missing, I hope it will force me to write and contribute apps that can help myself and others.

We need a real open source mobile operating system, not Google's cripple-ware.

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Watch out for the 5x, I've seen 3 in addition to mine die the same way. They start rebooting randomly then boot loop. It's an acknowledged problem with the chipset. You can sort of fix it if you are able to load an alternative kernel [0] on it that disabled the big cores and that bought me another few months before it totally died. If you're willing to risk it you can get a higher RAM version of the motherboard on aliexpress where they may have used better solder.

[0] https://www.xda-developers.com/nexus-5x-bootloop-fix-boot-ph...

I was planning on keeping my 5X for years and years, but it died on my this same way

It was a great phone otherwise but eventually the core patch started boot looping which a reflow fixed for a few weeks before it finally completely died. Ended up getting a OnePlus 6 and it's been fine but I wish I had the 5x as a travel / backup phone. Still rocking my old Galaxy Nexus for that purpose with a custom rom. [0]

[0] https://zeelogkang.blogspot.com/2017/05/lineageos-141-unoffi...

Same, still one of my favorite phones.

I must have got lucky because mine still works fine and I use it daily.

There are dozens of us!

The pixel 1 so worked great for me, but was a pain to unlock

The RattlesnakeOS instructions for unlocking my Pixel 1 were pretty straight-forward to me... except for figuring out that the "Zip: unable to allocate space for file to ...: No space left on device" error message from flash-all.sh/`fastboot flash` wasn't referring to anything on the phone, but to $TMPDIR on my laptop. I gave my $TMPDIR more space, and the whole process went smoothly.

Some people put it in an oven for a while but it seems like a little risky and sometimes it's only a temporary fix as well

I know people, who microwave their phones for a few secs to get them replaced by the carrier with a newer model, still not sure if you're joking or not.

They're not joking. They're essentially reflowing the PCB connections.

It _is_ only a temporary fix, though.

Solder melts at >180°C. This idea that putting electronics in an oven will reflow internal components is a commonly repeated meme[1].

In reality, putting electronics in an oven usually has the effect of heating up some chips which are heat-sensitive and might temporarily give them new life.

[1]: https://youtu.be/w57ObM3pYXw

Thankfully Google replaced mine for this issue a couple years ago.

My last 5X died that way with those exact symptoms. Did not realise this was a known issue.

oh so it's an electronics level failure ? interesting

Mine started to boot loop a couple years back and it was out of warranty by then. I sent LG a mobile device repair request and the rep sent a prepaid label. So I wiped it, removed the sim and mailed it to their US repair center.

I got it back about ~2 weeks later in working condition, at no cost. LG is repairing any Nexus 5X for the bootloop issue outside warranty. Apparently it's due to incomplete contact of the heatsink with the CPU.

https://www.theandroidsoul.com/lg-offering-free-repair-for-n...

https://lgmobilerepair.com/request_repair

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