It seems that the motherboard is dead, and that it’s a common issue with the 5a and I “should’ve known better,” despite it being impossible to find decent information on phones these days.
I got it because it was the last Pixel with a headphone jack, and because it had good official LineageOS support. But I compromised: giving up the SD slot was tough for me, and now that I’ve been burned by not having one (I typically auto-backup my Signal history and other things to the SD card) I don’t want to get another phone without it.
But the landscape seems bleak. The vast majority of phones that are officially supported by LineageOS are Pixels. It’s impossible to find easy information on which phones have non-official LOS ROMs. Search results are useless these days, and I also keep running into an issue where after researching a phone for half an hour I discover that it has some arcane process to unlock the bootloader that doesn’t always work, and the forum posters imply that the purchasers “should’ve known better.” I’m just at my wit’s end.
If anyone can suggest something that has decent deGoogled ROM support with the following features, I’d be very grateful:
- OLED screen (a must-have for my photosensitivity)
- SD card slot
- I am willing to give up the headphone jack in order to expand my options
Sounds like OP was aware the 5a had a known higher failure rate, ignored the reports and bought one anyway. Just doing a search for Pixel 5a comes up with results about motherboard failures. I’ve never seen that while searching for phones, so it must have been a significant issue with the 5a.
Someone looking for flashable phones is going to run into these results while choosing a device. I know everything about the phones I have - it’s part of choosing a device.
I wouldn’t buy a 5a knowing there’s a higher-than-usual failure rate.
I should’ve known better when I flashed a phone and bricked it by not following proper procedure - I knew the risk and ignored it, like OP.
Uh, no. I had no idea that the phone had issues. You are the kind of person I’m alluding to in the post.