GGN7
Today is the second day of the new year. Usually this period is associated with luck; not for me this year, as over the long weekend I brought myself to an unfortunate conclusion regarding my loved Nexus 7.
It's more or less dead.
The dead process was rather simple: my touchscreen became unresponsive, I did a hard reboot and it never went pass the Google logo. Nothing major was stored inside (documents on Drive, music on Spotify and photos on Google Photos) so it was safe to wipe all data and flash the latest factory image, but the process failed halfway through. It was way back in January, but I had little time to try other fixes (damn you events), until this long weekend.
I was really happy to see that I was not alone; the specific failure is fairly well-documented online and people have been suggesting extreme (and weird) fixes - like tapping/ knocking on the back a few times while the Google logo is on (1, 2, 3). Did not work for me.
Then people were suggesting something even more extreme - opening up the back and redoing the connectors. Sounds right in my domain, so I got myself a trusted guide to tear down a Nexus 7, assembled my tools...
... and dig right in. True to its 7/10 repairability score, it wasn't much of an effort.
There are 4 immediately workable connectors - both ends of the silver cable, the motherboard end of the orange cable and the power connector. The latter two are critical; disconnecting them turned off the screen. Power connector is a definite; the orange cable seems to be related to display controls. Anyway it didn't work out after a few tries.
The only workable part of this approach is that I found an effective kill switch, in case I got too frustrated with future fixes I would like to try.
Talking about future fixes, this guy did an R&D on the issue and I thought it's a pretty good starting point to investigate further. Voided my warranty on the first day doing "fastboot oem unlock", so I'm not even afraid of extremes.
For now, rest in place my friend.
18/11/2014 - ?
It's more or less dead.
The dead process was rather simple: my touchscreen became unresponsive, I did a hard reboot and it never went pass the Google logo. Nothing major was stored inside (documents on Drive, music on Spotify and photos on Google Photos) so it was safe to wipe all data and flash the latest factory image, but the process failed halfway through. It was way back in January, but I had little time to try other fixes (damn you events), until this long weekend.
I was really happy to see that I was not alone; the specific failure is fairly well-documented online and people have been suggesting extreme (and weird) fixes - like tapping/ knocking on the back a few times while the Google logo is on (1, 2, 3). Did not work for me.
Then people were suggesting something even more extreme - opening up the back and redoing the connectors. Sounds right in my domain, so I got myself a trusted guide to tear down a Nexus 7, assembled my tools...
 |
| The last time I put this to good use was close to 2 years ago!!! |
There are 4 immediately workable connectors - both ends of the silver cable, the motherboard end of the orange cable and the power connector. The latter two are critical; disconnecting them turned off the screen. Power connector is a definite; the orange cable seems to be related to display controls. Anyway it didn't work out after a few tries.
The only workable part of this approach is that I found an effective kill switch, in case I got too frustrated with future fixes I would like to try.
 |
| 10/10 for this |
For now, rest in place my friend.
18/11/2014 - ?
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