Oven Fresh Nexus 5X

Woe and calamity. Yes, I got the dreaded Nexus 5X bootloop issue a couple of weeks back. Having thrown my phone in the freezer (inside a zip-lock bag) I got a boot out of it. That points to the issue being a bad solder joint. Maybe not in the general case but in at least mine. If your device passes a similar test you can try reflow soldering your device by following along below. Warning: this process will void any warranty you have, only do this as a method of last resort if Google or LG will not service your phone. You may also want to consider taking it to a professional electronics repair shop for reflow work.

With that warning out of the way and the freezer test having roused my suspicions I pulled the case off and took the motherboard out. iFixit has a great guide here for that process.

Time to cook!

With the motherboard out I inspected the teardown photos also provided by iFixit and determined which side of the board the packages (chips/black squares) I was interested in were on. The suspect package is the RAM. A Samsung K3QF3F30BM-QGCF with CPU the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 conveniently located directly beneath it. The constant flexing of the phone in my pocket has most likely cracked one of the tiny BGA solder connectors off the motherboard underneath one of those packages.

Now that you have your motherboard separated from the phone's chassis preheat your oven to 195 degrees Celsius or 390 Fahrenheit whichever is appropriate for your current locale setting. While your oven is heating take out some aluminum foil and crush it into a ball. Un-crumple it so that there is still a rough texture as shown. This is going to help limit the heat transmission to the underside of the motherboard which we don't want to reflow. Place the motherboard on the foil and press it down. At this point attempt to get the board laying as flat as possible. You don't want parts sliding down the board on an angle if you overcook. Place the foil and motherboard on an oven safe cooking surface, a ceramic casserole dish will do nicely so long as it has a flat bottom, I used the spill tray from a waffle iron. So pick whatever looks good to you. Season with a twist of lemon and cracked pepper.

Now that your oven is up to temperature place the dish into the oven and start a timer for 6 minutes and 30 seconds. Wait anxiously. Note: If your oven is fan forced you may need to make an adjustment to the cooking time.

Remove your motherboard and let it rest until completely cool. Inspect the board for any physical damage, if you've really messed it up be extremely careful with reconnecting the battery. Who knows what you might have shorted out.

Reassemble your phone following the guide from iFixit and give that puppy a charge. Power it up and hope for the best!