Don’t Factory Reset Your Pixel 6 – It May Break Your Phone
Google Pixel 6, Pixel 6a and Pixel 6 Pro users should refrain from resetting their smartphones to factory settings for now. That’s because new reports suggest that rebooting your phone can render it completely inoperable.
As Tech-Issues Today reports, the issue first surfaced on Google’s own support forums . There, users posted photos of their locked (or inoperable) phones. Google itself is aware of the problem and is investigating, but there is no fix yet. There is also no estimated time of arrival on when to expect it.
The error appears to be related to the “Unable to boot Android system” message that appears after resetting your device. The message also informs users that their device data may be corrupted and prompts them to perform a factory reset. They are also given the option to “try again”, although responses on Google’s support forums indicate that this will be futile.
Any additional attempts to perform a factory reset also seem to result in even more warning messages, including references to missing important files such as “tune2fs” or even warnings that the device failed to “enable ext4 verification” . This is quite jargony, but these links could point to much deeper problems in the phone’s storage systems, which could cause more problems for users experiencing the issue.
Unfortunately, since Google hasn’t given an estimated time when the fix will be released, it’s best to hold off on performing a factory reset on your Pixel 6 for now. This is a disappointing result since a factory reset is a common step to fix other problems. It also seems that Google’s own recovery tools can’t even solve the problems users are experiencing with this error.
There is currently no indication that the issue is affecting other Pixel models such as the current generation Pixel 8, Pixel 8a, and Pixel 8 Pro.