Develop Bugs

Nexus 5X reboot problems

If you're having reboot problems please post here - if there are problem apps or bad devices out there it would be good to know!
Got a new Nexus 5X yesterday for my partner. Plugged it in and charged all day (oh what patience). 10pm started setup and added account to it. Phone immediately did an update which succeeded. Then it started to install the saved apps from the Google account, about 50 in all. After all the apps were installed I handed it over to her to play and log into all those apps with logins. Tedious.
Within about 30 minutes she tried to take a photo and it rebooted. Then a bit later she was using it and it rebooted again. Before going to be it rebooted a few more times. Then again this morning. There wasn't one particular app or other that was in use when these crashes happened. During the day she saw a message about "Google needs to restart". Also the camera often comes up with an all black screen and can't be used.
I called Google tech support and they wanted to do a factory reset and maybe a cache partition wipe. They would also like to investigate if a rogue app is causing the crashes by using it without any apps installed. Because reinstalling apps is so tedious I decided to have her do a cache partition reset I'm awaiting news. I'm hoping we don't have to do the other... I can't imagine how a bad app could be causing such repeated crashes (well I can, but it just shouldn't happen). That's lame...
It would really help if it was easy to get a crash log and find out the cause - unfortunately unless you're rooted this doesn't seem to be easy, and may well be impossible.

I've been having a lot of similar-sounding issues with my 5X. It's never rebooted while I was using it, but once or twice a day I'll pull it out of my pocket and it will be off, awaiting the unlock pattern to boot up.
The camera has been atrocious as well. I've seen the black screen you describe, tons of rotation lag, hanging, etc. Not just in Camera, but in other apps using the camera (such as when attaching a photo to a Hangout). Hoping this is something software-related and not a hardware problem.

I've had mine spontaneously reboot twice so far, both times I've pulled it out of my pocket and it required the PIN to unlock, then it booted up. I'm a bit concerned, as I have no idea when this happened, and, since it's encrypted a reboot essentially puts me offline until I notice it.

I just now had mine reboot during active use for the first time. I was long-pressing a wifi network in order to forget it (which is another 5x problem I keep having—wifi turns itself off or connects to the wrong networks).

My 5x was working fine and the crashing started happening yesterday...
they only app that i recently installed before the crashes started was firefox... are you guys using firefox by any chance???

Mine is still working fine, I do not have Firefox.

Same problem for me when using Firefox. The phone seems to crash and reboot when loading news websites containing photos and videos.
Not seen the issue when not using Firefox.

I've had my nexus 5x since mid/late November 2015. I've had the problem described below happen prior to today, and more than once.
Today, I cant turn my phone off - it seems to be in the middle of a reboot... the four coloured circles (google logo?) with colours going round and round. I powered it off cos it had started going slow... thought a reboot might fix the problem... but now its not starting and I cant even turn it off or do anything with it.. I've tried pressing the power button, I've tried holding the power button down, and I've tried different combinations... nothing seems to make a difference... (has been in that state of un-useablity for at least 30 mins now)
Anyone else also having wi-fi issues where facebook has an error and "cant connect" ?

I had the same thing happen and returned the phone, it's the only solution I found. I factory reset multiple times, called up Google and they told me to safe boot. Right.. I was completely stock and it rebooted multiple times / day and I know what I'm doing too, for the most part anyway. Got a replacement device and it has not once rebooted no matter what I do. Camera, Chrome random apps caused a reboot, it's not that. It's a defective device and you need to get it replaced period.

I have the same thing and can't sent it back to google because I live outside the US.
I believe it is a manufacture defect as I tried everything with no success really annoying.
Stuck with a brick...
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

I used my phone completely stock for weeks and had zero issues, whereas I have a friend who ordered and received the phone at the exact same time (likely same mfg batch) and had issues. Difference between us two is that I'm a minimalist and only have about 50 apps installed, and he has a ton that he rarely uses and restores them every time.
I know it seems ridiculous, but having an android phone gives you more customization and your apps more power of the phone, so it's completely feasible for ONE rogue app to destroy performance and/or battery.
You guys might all want to try uninstalling apps one by one and figuring out which apps are killing performance. In particular, check out the running services (developer options -> running services) and see which apps are constantly running, since those are more likely to be the ones causing issues.
For example, I've used firefox (for adblocked browsing) for weeks recently, and can definitely say it's a pretty slow app, so if you're having issues on it, you may want to just use chrome or lightning browser.

I just ordered a replacement as well. Mine would reboot about 1 to 2 times a week right after the fingerprint unlock. Annoying as hell today because I was in the middle of a conf call.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Bluetooth won't stay enabled

Starting last night, my phone's BT won't stay enabled. If I turn it on, it turns itself back off a second or two later. Restarting the phone fixed it for a few hours, but the problem soon returned and now restarting does not even temporarily relieve it.
I've seen some reports that factory-reset has solved this problem on other phones, so I'll try that later. I'm inclined to suspect a hardware problem, though. The phone has worked great since I got it last year, and I sideloaded BPE6 as soon as it was available in May, with no difficulties until yesterday. I don't use any power-optimizing apps.
UPDATE: Before resorting to factory-reset, I used the Application Manager to clear cache and data for Bluetooth Share and Bluetooth Test. That seems to have fixed it, at least for now.

Further update: the above fix was only temporary. Bluetooth stopped working again a few hours later. Clearing recovery cache doesn't help. However, the problem does not seem to occur in Safe Mode. So maybe some third-party app keeps turning BT off somehow.

Sounds like factory reset time!
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using XDA-Developers mobile app

whmgreen said:
Sounds like factory reset time!
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Yup. I resorted to that last night. Back to normal so far.

Anyone experiencing often random restarts

Me and my wife are experiencing random restarts quite often. It began with buying smart band and smart watch - but it may be unconnected.
The screen suddenly becomes bright, the phone vibrates and restarts so we have enter the pin again.

potworny said:
Me and my wife are experiencing random restarts quite often. It began with buying smart band and smart watch - but it may be unconnected.
The screen suddenly becomes bright, the phone vibrates and restarts so we have enter the pin again.
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Hasn't happened to me once since November 2017.
A little more information wouldn't hurt: Are you rooted, do you use a custom Kernel or custom ROM?
I use the January security patch, stock Kernel, rooted with Magisk, modified the build.prop so the phone shows up as Pixel 3 XL and have Substratum running with Swift Black.
If you are unrooted, you can try a factory reset. Don't install any apps to make sure that there isn't a rogue app causing the problem. If the phone works, install your apps one by one to check what makes trouble.

potworny said:
Me and my wife are experiencing random restarts quite often. It began with buying smart band and smart watch - but it may be unconnected.
The screen suddenly becomes bright, the phone vibrates and restarts so we have enter the pin again.
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Click to collapse
Did you by any chance activated private DNS on both of your phone (for exemple CloudFlare secure DNS or Adguard) ?

That happened to me a lot this whole month ago, Pixel 2XL stock. It "fast rebooted" several times a day until I stopped using the Adguard private DNS.

My phone is not rooted and not running any special ROM. Bootloader locked.
For about the last month I have been/was having this problem as well, but I couldn't tie it to anything. Sometimes happened a lot, sometimes not so much, but everyday at least once. It was not a total reboot where you get the white screen with the Google "G". I would notice the clock/screen go dark, and then within a couple seconds, back to the lock screen. Try to unlock with fingerprint, and I would get the message that I would have to input my PIN after a reboot. I frequently use Android Auto, and I noticed that while using Android Auto or while listening to the Sirius app it would not reboot, so for some reason the only time I would get a reboot was when the phone was idle.
Eventually called Google support, who suggested I put the phone into safe mode and see if it continued. It did, but not as frequent. So then I bit the bullet and did a factory reset/flash-all to factory, but the problem continued. So Google agreed to a warranty replacement, and I got my new phone 3 days ago.
First thing I did was a flash-all to the latest factory ROM. And.....within the first hour.....reboots. So then I was going on the theory that the reboots were being caused by a wonky app......but I really don't have any obscure apps or non-Play Store apps installed. I checked reviews for some of the more suspect apps, but found nothing about reboots.
Then I saw this thread, and especially the reference to using AdGuard for the DNS. Well, I was using AdGuard (which actually made a big difference in the amount of data I am using on my 6GB plan). So this morning after reading this I set the DNS to "automatic" (BTW, can someone tell me if the default "Private DNS" setting is "Off" or "Automatic"?), and I have not had any reboots since then. But it's only been about 6 hours now. I will report back after a couple more days. But you may be on to something about AdGuard's DNS.
Shame. Google will likely not fix this because AdGuard interferes with their business model, but it is an OS flaw that should be fixed.

Google is apparently already aware of this and says it is fixed. No ETA of rollout.
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/122141885

I did activate the private dns!

Guys. Thanks for the advise. I think this is it.

You guys should use Blokada (not the one on play store, but the one on the web) for your ads blocking solution.
It won't reduce battery life (it will most likely increase if because no ads) and its free

Question Random reboots

Well, I had the 6 Pro for about 36 hours. It kept rebooting randomly, even after a factory reset, so it's going back for an exchange.
Has anyone else had this issue?

skyman631 said:
Well, I had the 6 Pro for about 36 hours. It kept rebooting randomly, even after a factory reset, so it's going back for an exchange.
Has anyone else had this issue?
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No definately not, here the worst I have experienced is some app crashes, they probably aint android 12 ready, and some pretty big lag moments

I don't have any issues. Do you have the November update yet?

For some strange reason, I noticed exactly this aswell (one time, this morning). I was working out and my phone laid on the table, when I saw it lit up because it restarted for no reason.
I guess it's a software bug.
And no, there was no automatic system update - I checked, I'm still running the old version.

copong said:
I don't have any issues. Do you have the November update yet?
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Is there a bugfix list of any sort about the most recent sytsem update?
I tried to find one, but as of now I have been unsuccessful.

No, nothing at all either. Mine also installed silently at some point. I recall a notification asked for a reboot yesterday morning.

No, not had one random reboot since I got it on Tuesday.

Nothing here either. Good luck!

copong said:
I don't have any issues. Do you have the November update yet?
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Click to collapse
I had the November update and all apps had been updated as well. It would freeze and then reboot.
I did a factory reset and did not restore any of my apps, just ran it with the factory apps, and it still did it. Since no one else is having the issue, I'm feeling confident it was a bad unit. I had the 128 gb version.
It's back to the pixel 5 for another week or so. I had to exchange that after I got it too because of a bad proximity sensor. Either I just have really bad luck or Google needs to tweak their quality control department.

Weird unexplainable OS crashes like that are usually due to faulty hardware, potentially RAM

If you're having issues, do yourself a favor and keep an itemized list (on your device, word doc on pc, somewhere) and notate the following for each occurrence:
-date / time
-the fault (self reboot, major lag, over heated, fast battery discharge, etc.)
-what you had to do to clear it (rebooted, closed app, powered off/on, etc.)
When talking with Google about a replacement, having THIS information ready to read off will make it extremely hard from them to give you any grief about you needing a warranty replacement.
An itemized list of faults is MUCH better evidence that you need a replacement than "well, it rebooted a few times last month"

copong said:
Weird unexplainable OS crashes like that are usually due to faulty hardware, potentially RAM
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I am inclined to agree here, but my years of working with Windows and Android incl. rooting and using custom roms and kernels want to disagree here. There can be half a gazillion software based reasons for an OS crash, especially with a buggy release like Android 12. Not sure if you participated the beta, but it reminded me of Windows 11. There was a buggy beta build with about 100 bugs, they fixed 20, called it a day and released it. Now we new P6 owners can play beta testers Volume 2 for Google.
One very important thing here is also: Did you guys set up your phone "clean" or did you copy over your old phone by cable or did you use backup?
Any of these things can cause issues.
I, for example, used a cable to transfer all file and apps from my P4 XL to my P6 Pro. It's possible that this is the rootcause for some issues, or maybe it's not. Maybe there are even problems that occur only if you transfer your files from specific phone models to this one, you never know.

Morgrain said:
I am inclined to agree here, but my years of working with Windows and Android incl. rooting and using custom roms and kernels want to disagree here. There can be half a gazillion software based reasons for an OS crash, especially with a buggy release like Android 12. Not sure if you participated the beta, but it reminded me of Windows 11. There was a buggy beta build with about 100 bugs, they fixed 20, called it a day and released it. Now we new P6 owners can play beta testers Volume 2 for Google.
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Click to collapse
Sure, but the OP stated the crashes are happening right after a factory reset, and anecdotal evidence on this thread suggests it's not widespread. It does point to some sort of hardware problem.

I'm having exactly the same issue!
I got the phone today and booted it up for the first time. I selected my language and as soon as I pressed get started it froze, then got stuck in a bootloop. I fixed that by factory resetting from within recovery.
Once I'd gotten through the setup it crashed again when I clicked on the apps button in the optional setup. Because of this I factory reset and set the phone up for a third time.
Third time I got through setup with know issues but the phone freezes/reboots roughly once every two hours. I've been searching all day to see if anyone else has mentioned this issue.
I guess this phone is going in for replacement. Does anyone happen to know how long that takes/ if I'm going to be without a device for long?

They told me 3-5 business days to get a replacement. I expect mine early next week.

skyman631 said:
They told me 3-5 business days to get a replacement. I expect mine early next week.
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Do you have to send the old device back first?

skyman631 said:
Well, I had the 6 Pro for about 36 hours. It kept rebooting randomly, even after a factory reset, so it's going back for an exchange.
Has anyone else had this issue?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just had 3 random reboots today. Phone just laid on the side of my table on my laptop, doing nothing. It was in the span of probably ~10 minutes each reboot. A strange observation I made - now that I removed my phone from the back of my laptop and laid it directly on the table, no more reboots. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it has something to do with the magnets of my Laptop (has quite a lot inside). Not sure what to make of this. It kinda feels like a software buggy-thing, but it's odd that it sometimes just comees and goes. It also only appears to be in absolute idle. I had my phone working yesterday for about 12 hours, incl. using it constantly with navigation, and it never faltered for once. That's why I'd say it's a software thingy, if it had something to do with hardware, it would reboot/fail when under load. But it doesn't.
Had 4 total reboots as of now (had the phone since 27.10).
First reboot was yesterday (28.10) morning when working out, phone laid idle around, booted up.
And now again 3 reboots, morning, laid around, did nothing.

So I've had probably a dozen in two days. I take my phone out of my pocket and attempt a fingerprint unlock only to be told that my PIN is required after a restart. At first I wasn't sure if it was actually rebooting until last night. It prompted me for my pin and upon entering it, the screen locked up for about 20 seconds and it rebooted.
This morning I woke up and was yet again greeted with the "PIN required after restart" and less than 20 minutes later it was the same thing. Only once hav I witnessed the "G" boot animation, but everytime I see my UI loading. So I'm not sure if it's always a full reboot or some times it's just the UI crashing. Everything on my device is stock.

cloudraker said:
So I've had probably a dozen in two days. I take my phone out of my pocket and attempt a fingerprint unlock only to be told that my PIN is required after a restart. At first I wasn't sure if it was actually rebooting until last night. It prompted me for my pin and upon entering it, the screen locked up for about 20 seconds and it rebooted.
This morning I woke up and was yet again greeted with the "PIN required after restart" and less than 20 minutes later it was the same thing. Only once hav I witnessed the "G" boot animation, but everytime I see my UI loading. So I'm not sure if it's always a full reboot or some times it's just the UI crashing. Everything on my device is stock.
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Click to collapse
Did you transfer your old phone over with a cable, or backup, or did you start "fresh"?
Maybe we can narrow it down if it's software or hardware problem.

Morgrain said:
Did you transfer your old phone over with a cable, or backup, or did you start "fresh"?
Maybe we can narrow it down if it's software or hardware problem.
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Click to collapse
I did a partial transfer. I was coming from an iphone 12 so I transferred photos and contacts only. And I transferred via cable.

Question Every 3-4 days I must reboot

Ok, so like the title says, every 3-4 days I must reboot my phone.
When I play games, the game icon will show up in the lower right corner, I have everything for the game stuff turned off. I can click on the icon and it will ask me to turn on. I back out and it's gone for a few minutes. Mostly until I swipe back, then it will reappear. I can reboot the phone and it will work fine again for a another 3-4 days.
There are other instances that force me to reboot as well, one happened last night. I was scrolling through a local news app and the touch stopped working. I could not scroll up or down, and swiping back did not work. I had to lock the phone and just as the screen went dark, the phone scrolled in the directions I did and it backed out. This only happened when I hit the lock screen.
Is there a fix for this? Has anyone else experienced this?

My phone is rebooted on two to three occasions a month. Others have it more frequently. I wouldn't even say rebooted. Mine just shuts down at random times like other users so I don't know if there's a fix for this. I'm hoping there will be one within an update soon.
Google's absolutely ****ty disregard for their customers and customer service. I'm not Keen on sending a brand new device over to get a refurbished one that isn't guaranteed to solve the issue and most likely guaranteed to come with different issues that my device doesn't have already.
Does it back up to combat this since I have alarms set for work? In case the phone turns off, I don't want to miss work. I use my Google Home Mini speakers, a backup alarm.

thepersona said:
My phone is rebooted on two to three occasions a month. Others have it more frequently. I wouldn't even say rebooted. Mine just shuts down at random times like other users so I don't know if there's a fix for this. I'm hoping there will be one within an update soon.
Google's absolutely ****ty disregard for their customers and customer service. I'm not Keen on sending a brand new device over to get a refurbished one that isn't guaranteed to solve the issue and most likely guaranteed to come with different issues that my device doesn't have already.
Does it back up to combat this since I have alarms set for work? In case the phone turns off, I don't want to miss work. I use my Google Home Mini speakers, a backup alarm.
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Click to collapse
Mine does not reboot or shutdown on it own, not once... I have to reboot every so often to keep it functional.

@thepersona My phone doesn't auto reboot either. I'd say do a backup and run https://flash.android.com/welcome to fully Factory Reset the phone and see if that helps (Mine upgraded just fine, but my parents both failed the Dec update and had random issues requiring the use of the Android Flash Tool).
Like the OP I do have to reboot my phone about every 3-4 days, but I don't attribute that just to Google Android, coders have become lax on how tight they keep their code, and I say that because in Windows 10 and Windows 11 you have to reboot every few days as well or see an increase in weird issues.

card13 said:
@thepersona Mine upgraded just fine, but my parents both failed the Dec update and had random issues requiring the use of the Android Flash Tool).
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Just to clarify this, most carriers prevented the December update from releasing as Google has asked them to prevent it from going through, primarily due to an issue with calls dropping.
I always manually update my phone, however, I noticed the call dropping bug one day for about an hour straight.
But aside from this meaningless info, I agree with what you said: Attempt a factory reset and see what happens. I turn my phone off every night and charge it, so I don't notice any issues similar to what OP has mentioned.

thepersona said:
My phone is rebooted on two to three occasions a month. Others have it more frequently. I wouldn't even say rebooted. Mine just shuts down at random times like other users so I don't know if there's a fix for this. I'm hoping there will be one within an update soon.
Google's absolutely ****ty disregard for their customers and customer service. I'm not Keen on sending a brand new device over to get a refurbished one that isn't guaranteed to solve the issue and most likely guaranteed to come with different issues that my device doesn't have already.
Does it back up to combat this since I have alarms set for work? In case the phone turns off, I don't want to miss work. I use my Google Home Mini speakers, a backup alarm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah mine did that it would randomly restart once a week no matter what I was doing but I did a factory reset and it hasn't happened since!

wilpang said:
Yeah mine did that it would randomly restart once a week no matter what I was doing but I did a factory reset and it hasn't happened since!
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In your case, was it just a restart? Because mine literally powers off It doesn't reboot again. It shuts down in the middle of the night and I wouldn't know until I wake up when using my phone to figure out it won't turn on. I almost missed work on several occasions because of this lol

thepersona said:
In your case, was it just a restart? Because mine literally powers off It doesn't reboot again. It shuts down in the middle of the night and I wouldn't know until I wake up when using my phone to figure out it won't turn on. I almost missed work on several occasions because of this lol
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Yeah I was lucky and it was only once a week which was tolerable!
Something is definitely not right, hopefully is not a dodgy app but that would be preferable than something unfixable.

Ok guys you are missing my point and question. I DO NOT have the random reboots most have, but I have other issues that no one seem to have. Example, I listen to Spotify over night, I fall asleep to music, but 2 days ago it would randomly pause. At first I thought it was do not disturb that I just turned on, on my watch. It was not. Then I thought I may have been hitting my watch, I took it off and it still paused. I rebooted my phone and it's been fine since, no random pauses. Another example is, I play a game but I have the game dashboard turned off, but there times where the icon will pop up in the lower right. When I go into the settings for it, it shows it's off. When I go back to the game the icon is gone for a few minutes then it reappears. The only way for me to get it to stop showing for a few days is to reboot my phone.
I know you shouldn't have to reboot your phone every few days, and by few I mean sometimes it's 3-4 times a week. That tells me something is wrong.

Are you on the November or December update?
If November, I would try the December one.
Rooted or not rooted?
Either way, I would try a factory refresh and don't restore your apps from backup. Manually install only your most critical apps and see if you have the problem. Even better would be not install any additional apps at all and see if the problem happens. If it doesn't happen, install another small group of your most important apps and test again for long enough. Etc.
If you try thre update and/or factory reset, you could try restoring your cloud backup as normal and see if you have any problems still, but if you do, be prepared to factory reset and try like I mentioned in the above paragraph.
Until you can narrow down if the phone has this problem on the December update before you even change settings and add your favorite apps, then you won't know if it's the phone itself (possibly hardware problem), an app you have installed, a problem particular to a combination of factors including if you're on the November update, or what.
Good luck! Please let us know what happens.

I can tell you that until I updated to the December update I had the kinds of issues you had, where my P6P would malfunction (scrolling, just freezing) and I had to reboot the device. That was the first 6 weeks of using it. But when I updated to the December build, the issues for the most part went away. Hopefully you are on November and can update to December or wait until the January update drops. But I can say that I almost considered returning the phone due to the bugs until the December update resolved everything and it was like a new phone!
Good luck.

darbylonia said:
I can tell you that until I updated to the December update I had the kinds of issues you had, where my P6P would malfunction (scrolling, just freezing) and I had to reboot the device. That was the first 6 weeks of using it. But when I updated to the December build, the issues for the most part went away. Hopefully you are on November and can update to December or wait until the January update drops. But I can say that I almost considered returning the phone due to the bugs until the December update resolved everything and it was like a new phone!
Good luck.
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Awesome!!! This is the kind of news I like to hear..... Just waiting for att to send it through. I checked this morning as my work Verizon Samsung phone got an update.