Asus Zenfone 8 - Waiting for flashing full ramdump...

Tags: android, asus, zenfone, ramdump,

Added: 2022-02-09T00:00

Asus Zenfone 8 - Waiting for flashing full ramdump...

When my aged Wileyfox phone grew too old, I started looking for a new phone.
I had two hard criteria - it must have a headphone socket, and it must be able to run LineageOS.
The reason for Lineage is that I don't want a phone where the manufacturer stops supplying updates in two or three years. I take good care of my phones, and if the hardware is good, why should you have to throw it away because the software is unsupported?

I settled for the Asus Zenfone 8. It is slightly smaller than most phones these days, which I don't think is a bad thing.
I flashed it with LineageOS as soon as I got it in October 2021, and it has run perfectly ever since.

Until 2022-02-05, when, just as I was leaving the house, it froze, and then displayed me a screen which had the words "Waiting for flashing full ramdump..." in green lettering at the bottom of some sort of stacktrace.

I couldn't power it off, or reset it, even holding down the volume buttons and the power button.

Unfortunately, searching for this, it seems to be a common problem. People seem to suggest that it is a hardware issue, possibly related to the motherboard.

And given that I had charged the phone before setting off, I couldn't do anything except let the battery run down.

I did finally manage to get it working again. After several hours, I tried holding all three buttons in for quite a long time, which did get out of the screen, and into a bootloader. From there, I think I chose Power off, and then I could power it back on.

So at least I don't have to deal with sending the phone back for repairs (for now, anyway).
It does mean that I can't rely on my phone any more - for instance, having flight tickets on it would be a gamble, as I'm just waiting for it to go wrong again.

I had wanted to support a smaller phone maker, but this has put me off, and I'll probably stick to Pixels in the future.

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