To Asus and all owners of a dead Zenfone 8

[leoncarrera]

By now is it clear the Asus Zenfone 8 has a weakness when it comes to its motherboard. Phones are dying in very comparable situations; after installing an update or patch and/ or when charging. The died phones show the same state: a sudden black screen, no response on buttons or screen, sometimes an orange fast blinking LED for about ten seconds when the charger is attached, after which also this stops blinking. Even the life duration of the phones are alike when this happens;  around two years.  Some people are lucky that it can be repaired under warranty, most aren't when warranty has just expired.

All of the phones which were repaired received a new motherboard. So also in here the fix seems comparable. Or at least not repairable with a soldering or partial replacement of other components. There is no wide variety of repairs to be found on ZenTalk on this. 

This issue goes beyond individual or even wrong use, a single faulty or unfortunate phone. All phones that died did this in comparable situations and after comparable life times. There is something wrong with the design or components of the Zenfone 8, or at least a batch, which can't be put on warranty alone when it comes to a repair. 

Asus, please take this matter and your clients serious. At least more then you have proven till this date. Asus can't just address this matter with the initial question if the phone is still under the warranty. Asus does know what the technical issues are with these phones, so please then also take your responsibility. Asus put this premium phone on the market at a premium price. This comes with an expected life duration that goes beyond a hard line of just 24 months. Warranty is for specific situations. These dying Zenfones are not specific. It is a general issue. So please handle it as such.

Can Asus confirm that they will keep addressing issues regarding these dying Zenfones as individual technical matters? And thus with warranty as strict and main component to define if Asus or customers are financially responsible for further action? And if so, what is their response to these resembling dying phones that Asus will keep holding onto this strict warranty duration when it is clear customers can't be held responsible for their broken Zenfones, since they die during normal use or especially after installing new and updated Asus firmware?

To all users of a died Zenfone 8: please add your phone to this thread, when it died (lifetime) and on which occurence. 

Kind regards,
León

[mrav8214]

What about this kind of repair ?

https://youtu.be/MbqgWyIPxMU?si=RhbyAOVWT--LovC-

[leoncarrera]

What do you think yourself after you've watched the video? Does it seem like a viable and workable solution to you? Reballing is a specialized repair. And from the video you understand why ASUS only replaces MB's and does not repair them. When you dig deep into this subject you find just very limited successful cases of reballing the Zenfone 8. And even those were most of the time temporary solutions. Although new or better connections of the CPU might solve the problem of the original boards, repairing them isn't simple nor guaranteed fix. And as said before and by others as well, you need the MB and its original cpu to decrypt the stored data. The same counts for restoring the data by skilled people with the right software to do so. Also they found it very hard and in most cases impossible to retrieve the data. So it's almost a sure thing, when you're Zenfone 8 bricked, you'll lose your data. As well as your phone when you don't comply with a MB replacement, being it under warranty or at the costs of more then a new 

[ajp1]

I live in Taiwan.  When my zenfone 8 bricked after 2 years of use, I found a guy that reballs the CPU.  When I took him my phone, he said the process was 50/50, no guarantees, but also said he wouldn't charge me if it didn't work.  So, I gave him my phone for a few days, and when I returned, I paid him around $120usd and had a working phone with all my data. 

He recommended that I buy a new phone asap, and said that it WILL happen again, maybe in one week, maybe in 2 years, but it will happen again.  My Chinese isn't totally fluent, but what I got was that the construction of the motherboard and CPU is **bleep**e.  bad design, destined to fail.   **bleep** asus forever.

[leoncarrera]

That is the overall conclusion which can be found when you dig deeper into the issue of the dying phones. There are multiple cases where technically equiped people took the phone apart and examined the quality of the soldering of specifically the CPU to the MB. It indeed tends to be of a lesser quality and the number of phones dying because of this isn't a coincidence but a clear causal relation. 

Things like this can happen, a bad batch of production. The real issue is however, that ASUS does not own its responsibility and it let warranty be the decisive factor if a MB is replaced free of charge. It has to be a calculated decision. Losing customers over this is probably not weighing more than service the phone regardless. 

[Daniel87]

My Zenfone 8 stopped working on 22nd of April 2025 (bought in July 2021). It suddenly turned off during connection to Android Auto via cable and then I was not able to turn on the phone, no response on charger or hard reset, just black screen. Serial Number: M4AIB7608731CSZ