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

[Falcon_ASUS]

@ceejeey 
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[dhaulagani]

went through the same thing, why asus why?
my phone is dead just right after warranty expired 😠 

even my Lenovo S660 is still usable after some many years!

[leoncarrera]

I'm sorry for your loss, but welcome to the club. Could you inform us on about when it died, were you doing something demanding like use of camera, or was is during charging? And you say just right after warranty, so the phone was bought new in Q1/Q2 2022? And did it had the latest build version (332)? This might be of value, because we're trying to find out if it are only the earlier models or all the ZF8's showing this malfunctioning, since Asus does not give any insight in this. 

And yes, just two years is too short, especially for products sold as premium. So we all share your frustration. Next to that Asus does not show any form of after sales service yet on this broad technical issue, but handles every dead phone as a unique incident.

[dhaulagani]

My ZF8 MFD is 2021.08, bought it from Local official store partner on 6-Nov-2021, and got ram dumped around January 2023, warranty was expired on 5-Nov-2022,
My ZP8 was on latest update if i am not wrong it November 2023 updates, but before on January 2023, ramdump already happened.
Sometimes it still can start normally again by doing hard restart by pressing vol "-" & power button,
ram dumped was happen randomly, and mostly when doing normal activity like doing whatsapp for work, youtube, chrome. btw I am not using facebook app, tiktok, instagram that heavily taking storage and spying us 👀
what's make it funny is when doing camera & gaming, like pubg (with full graphic setting) even it make the phone become hotter, ramdump almost never happened, then around November 2023 it completely dead, any button combination is not working anymore.

since warranty was expired, rather than brought it to ASUS authorized service center, that we know the price for replacing motherboard is not cheap (I prefer to buy another phone with same price), so in january 2024, I brought it into local technician to do reballing on cpu and ram, hope it can become solution, rather than become display on my shelf.
and you know what? my ZP8 is live again and no data was lost.
but not for long, it only around 6 month until now June 2024, that ramdump is comeback again, and after some tries doing hard restart (vol "-" and power), it completely dead again until now.
I am now to lazy to brought it into any technician again, because i am afraid, previous solution was not permanently fix the problem.

I love compact phone, but since ZF8 got serious issue, I now got trust issue on ASUS to bought new series such ZP9 or ZP10, so i hope there is permanent solution to fix this problem.

[leoncarrera]

Thank you for your insight. Especially since you also experienced the ram dump, multiple times. In the light of recent posts here and regarding the reballing, your story is also interesting. And this is in line with very few other attempts of succesful reballing,which I could find online previously, but not so easy anymore. Fact is, at least in your situation, the reballing seemed to work, but as a temporary fix. It can show however the weakness of the ZF8 at this point indeed, as many others do think this is the main cause of the dying phones.

And no, Asus did not showed much customer care on this matter, so trust is gone quickly and will keep people from getting into new Asus product. A shame as indeed probably all ZF owners went for the form factor. Very few alternatives out there, like the Sony Experia. With such a stance on what is clearly a very specific but broadly seen product weakness, they simply fall short in customer care and after sales. Then anyone will go for an alternative brand of course. Brand image goes further than this ZF8 alone and is damaged as a whole when you experienced such an issue first hand with a manufacturer.