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

[nvubu]

@fatalerror  - the simple answer is anything on your phone is unrecoverable - unless you had set them to backup, so that will include WhatsApp, photos, messages etc.

Check to see if you had turned on Camera backup - to either Google or OneDrive. Login to your account on a PC. Google does set their backup as on automatically I think - but without paying you only get 15Gb, which gets filled up very quickly.

Mine backs up to my family account on OneDrive - 1Tb of space.

[JohnWick_]

Hey, does it have no life at all? Does volume up and down + power for 10 seconds do nothing? If so open the phone unplug the battery wait a day plug the battery in and then connect charger cabel

[leoncarrera]

Thanks for your effort to help, but this thread is clear as daylight regarding this ZF8 malfunction. It is a cpu to motherboard issue. Most likely the soldering. But even without the exact technical issue, all phones went dead the same way, no matter quality of battery etcetera. Out of the blue unresponsive. And the only possible repair is a complete new motherboard. There is no combination of buttons which brings the broken down phone back. Also not by connecting it to a laptop or whatsoever. It is a goner, as same as the data stored on it. 

[JohnWick_]

I would let it untested, how you know its the motherboard and not just a battery fault? A complet dead battery act same as the phone is complet dead

[leoncarrera]

Because it is a known case. Every exact same faulty ZF8 which went for repair got the exact same treatment: that of a replacement of the mb. This when phones were repaired under warranty or even when customers have payed for the repair. There are some repair shops who can fix this error. And they all fix the soldering of the CPU to the mb. But this job is just done by a couple of repair shops world wide. 

This faulty build of (probably) a batch of initial ZF8's has nothing to do with the battery. Next to that diagnosis lead to a dead mb, it is acknowledged that a simple battery replacement did not do anything. When the mb is dead, the battery can be alive and kicking, this does not bring the mb back to life. 

Next to that this thread was started to gather all the dead ZF's to prevent from cluttering the board with the exact same issue. This helps 'victoms' of a dead phone from going in circles, give them false hope with suggesting button combinations etcetera and also might help to build a case, since Asus still doesn't replied on this broad issue with an official statement. Until that potential customers of a ZF are being warned about the build quality of the ZFnas well as the stance Asus takes in this. This tread was not meant to bring up all possible solutions which have everyone already tried themselves. When the phone shows the signs mentioned by everyone experiencing their phone dying (sudden black screen, blinking led for a couple of seconds and no single response on whateve combination) you can be assured your phone joined the brick squad. Only a mb replacement under warranty of costs of roughly €550/$600 will bring it back. Again, only the phone, the data is gone.