ZenFone8 stuck on waiting for flashing full ramdump

[mail_jackr]

As requested by the mod - opening new discussion for the issue.
The Flashing Full Ramdump happened to me too - the phone was being charged over the night and the error was waiting when I woke up.
I hope that at least your service will fix it quickly.

[HeLLKiTe]

jakislogin2

@xonics Thank you for your voice of reason in this whining thread. The most valuable posts since lot of pages, as I see it.

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Buddy most of us here have lost money, time and data dealing with Asus and this device, it helps to have a little empathy. I'm sure a lot of people came here looking for answers and not complains but we like you at one point is also asking for answers from Asus. The reason we became aggressive is because they are not giving us any explanation at all.
So we have to do the investigations ourselves such as speculating if issue is isolated to certain batches or getting feedback from those that got their phones back from repairs. All these should have been done by Asus and not us but since they are so incompetent we have to do their job for them.

[cicagorio]

HeLLKiTe

https://zentalk.asus.com/en/discussion/comment/189617#Comment_189617

Buddy most of us here have lost money, time and data dealing with Asus and this device, it helps to have a little empathy. I'm sure a lot of people came here looking for answers and not complains but we like you at one point is also asking for answers from Asus. The reason we became aggressive is because they are not giving us any explanation at all.

So we have to do the investigations ourselves such as speculating if issue is isolated to certain batches or getting feedback from those that got their phones back from repairs. All these should have been done by Asus and not us but since they are so incompetent we have to do their job for them.

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You didn't lose data because of Asus, backup is a must these days. Doesn't matter which device you have. There are reports of devices of all brands catastrophically failing (including Apple, Samsung, Google, Sony, Huawei....). Also you shouldn't have lost money as the devices are covered by warranty. You did lose some time and went through some hassle though.
Try to look at a bigger picture here. If Asus sold only 100.000 Zenfone 8 phones (for comparison it sold 500.000 phones in 2020), and if 100 of those have failed with "ramdup issue" that is 0.1% failure rate. It is almost in the range of a statistical mistake.

[marzvin]

I'm only here to complain and I don't care. Asus screwed me right up, by selling me a doggy device, so I'll mourn as loud and as much as I can. The device died on me, out of the blue, when I was travelling to work, lost my sat nav, lectures and all the data I needed at that point. The worst part was then to findout that this affects others as well, so I'm well posses off as Asus should do a recall ad this phone is faulty! They took the phone away for repair on 7.9.21. Its now 9.10. 21 and I still don't have the handset, so I'm not going to be happy am I!

[flolaff]

cicagorio

https://zentalk.asus.com/en/discussion/comment/189641#Comment_189641

You didn't lose data because of Asus, backup is a must these days. Doesn't matter which device you have. There are reports of devices of all brands catastrophically failing (including Apple, Samsung, Google, Sony, Huawei....). Also you shouldn't have lost money as the devices are covered by warranty. You did lose some time and went through some hassle though.

Try to look at a bigger picture here. If Asus sold only 100.000 Zenfone 8 phones (for comparison it sold 500.000 phones in 2020), and if 100 of those have failed with "ramdup issue" that is 0.1% failure rate. It is almost in the range of a statistical mistake.

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I understand that it's annoying to see people whine, and of course it can happen to have an problem on an electronic device, and you should always back your data up. But the situation here is a bit more complicated, and I think people have the right to be upset by Asus' attitude.
First, Asus doesn't cover everyone under warranty and try to find excuses all the time. I litteraly had to threaten to sue them like 6 times until they agreed to fix it for free instead of for 500€, and they didn't even tell me or apologize.
Second, lots of people have been waiting for over a month for their phone, this isn't normal at all, even at a time of shortages (the phone is still in stock if you want to buy it, so are the shortages only for repair centers?).
Third, their communication is absolutely terrible. They didn't acknowledge the issue, and seem to treat it as individual cases in an automated RMA process. I'm not even sure they are investigating, collecting data or even referencing the cases of defect ZF8. I hope you're right with your 0.1% number, but it could as well be 1%, we have no way of knowing at this point.
On a more positive note, I have to say the repair has been done properly for me and I'm not experiencing any issue with the new motherboard, if anything it seems to heat up a bit less.
I'll keep using the phone personnally, but still wouldn't recommend the brand to anyone given how I've been treated by customer service, and the fact that we don't know how likely the issue is to occur.

crebach

Update: Got my phone to charge and did some digging.

Shows up as Qualcomm HS-USB Diagnostics 900e under USB devices when its plugged into my computer. FYI this is bad news for the prosumer/ tinkerer/ enthusiast.

What you'd want to see if you were trying to flash a new ROM onto an Android device using a Qualcomm chipset (Huawei, OnePlus, Samsung, etc.) is Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008. There are tools and guides online about fixing a device stuck in Diagnostics 900e mode and manually switching it to QDLoader 9008. Not specifically an Asus or an Asus Zenfone 8/8 Flip but other manufacturers.

Special programs and hardware are required. Maybe some folks here are familiar with EDL cables or deep flash cables. Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress, etc. have loads of them for cheap. There's also sketchy community developed software for diagnosing issues shared across XDA. Lots of guides bits and pieces can be taken from.

Now everything that's attempted has a higher chance of breaking the phone further than actually working, especially if Asus's only fix at the moment is to replace the motherboard. That isn't very suspicious considering Asus is an OEM and corporations like to waste precious time and resources doing anything to avoid liability. It is well known that other Android phones with similar issues can be restored, albeit dubiously, simply by flashing new firmware.

Asus isn't going to cover my phone under warranty and the eBay seller is going to ignore my requests for a refund. Might as well try fixing the phone and coming up with a guide that will be posted on the XDA forums if and only if any attempts are successful. No promises for a solution and you will only know if anything is fixed because something will be posted about it. I'm very busy so don't expect updates like, "tried this doesn't work". There will be no timeline or schedule.

Everyone here who is in the same boat is encouraged to make some lemons from lemonade and tinker with me. More heads are better than one. I'm relatively savvy in this field but by no means an expert. Of course I will not be liable or responsible for anything that happens to anyone's device. There's even a good chance this post will be deleted by Asus.

TL;DR going to try and fix this phone on my own, don't expect anything though.

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xonics

Just thought I'd add that this has happened to my ZenFone8 this evening. Browsing the Internet, screen went black - as if it had powered off, then the 'Waiting for flashing full ramdump...'.

I'll admit that I've not finished reading this thread yet but it seems like some sort of software failure as there's a lot of recent posts reporting the same issue - a mass hardware failure would seem unlikely (my 2 cents anyway).

Just thought I'd add an update, found a similar issue happened with some Pixel phones recently, (https :// support . google . com/pixelphone/thread/113517096/pixel-3-xl-bricked-overnight-computer-recognizes-as-qusb-bulk-cid-likely-caused-by-security-update?hl=en) further suggesting this issue isn't limited to just Asus. I've also had a web chat with the US support, and although they weren't able to assist with fixing my phone they did say it wasn't an Asus specific issue but an Android one. I doubt it helps anyone though, but thought I'd share.

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I'm not sure the issue is software, because we also have several cases (including mine) of devices not even displaying anything, not heating when plugged in, and that are just pure bricks, which definitely seems hardware to me. Maybe it's an entirely different issue, but it seems weird that there are so many cases of both issues just for this phone, and not that many on other Android phones.
Also, if it was software, it would be really weird of them to just replace motherboards, and therefore waste pefectly working hardware just because they don't want to flash the OEM image. But again, I wouldn't really be surprised by Asus' incompetence at this point, so maybe you're right.
I don't really have ideas to help you guys in the process of fixing the phone, but if you want me to extract some data from my working ZF8, I'll gladly do it for science (Discord flood#4171 if you need anything).

[xonics]

flolaff

https://zentalk.asus.com/en/discussion/comment/189642#Comment_189642

I understand that it's annoying to see people whine, and of course it can happen to have an problem on an electronic device, and you should always back your data up. But the situation here is a bit more complicated, and I think people have the right to be upset by Asus' attitude.

First, Asus doesn't cover everyone under warranty and try to find excuses all the time. I litteraly had to threaten to sue them like 6 times until they agreed to fix it for free instead of for 500€, and they didn't even tell me or apologize.

Second, lots of people have been waiting for over a month for their phone, this isn't normal at all, even at a time of shortages (the phone is still in stock if you want to buy it, so are the shortages only for repair centers?).

Third, their communication is absolutely terrible. They didn't acknowledge the issue, and seem to treat it as individual cases in an automated RMA process. I'm not even sure they are investigating, collecting data or even referencing the cases of defect ZF8. I hope you're right with your 0.1% number, but it could as well be 1%, we have no way of knowing at this point.

On a more positive note, I have to say the repair has been done properly for me and I'm not experiencing any issue with the new motherboard, if anything it seems to heat up a bit less.

I'll keep using the phone personnally, but still wouldn't recommend the brand to anyone given how I've been treated by customer service, and the fact that we don't know how likely the issue is to occur.

https://zentalk.asus.com/en/discussion/comment/189541#Comment_189541

https://zentalk.asus.com/en/discussion/comment/189576#Comment_189576

I'm not sure the issue is software, because we also have several cases (including mine) of devices not even displaying anything, not heating when plugged in, and that are just pure bricks, which definitely seems hardware to me. Maybe it's an entirely different issue, but it seems weird that there are so many cases of both issues just for this phone, and not that many on other Android phones.

Also, if it was software, it would be really weird of them to just replace motherboards, and therefore waste pefectly working hardware just because they don't want to flash the OEM image. But again, I wouldn't really be surprised by Asus' incompetence at this point, so maybe you're right.

I don't really have ideas to help you guys in the process of fixing the phone, but if you want me to extract some data from my working ZF8, I'll gladly do it for science (Discord flood#4171 if you need anything).

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Doesn't seem like you can use the quote function for specific parts of someone's post. I only wanted to comment on the software vs. hardware fault.

As we don't really know enough about how each device was used, how long they've been active etc. all we can do is speculate, it could be software or it could be hardware. Not all devices with the same manufacturing date are apparently affected, for example, my device is an April 21 build, I purchased it in June and have been using it roughly 3 months before experiencing the problem - why did I not have the issue in August or September like many other 0421 builds? The link I shared on my original post is for Pixel 3 handsets experiencing similar problems within the same time frame as the ZenFone 8's, evidently from an OTA update. As OTA updates are usually staggered it would explain the flow of the failures and how they've affected different devices at different times. Maybe it's just a coincidence but I'm not a big believer in coincidence, it's usually because we don't have enough pieces of the puzzle to understand why something happened (which is why I said we don't know enough about how each device was used).

Whilst it's possible the failures are triggered by some soft of hardware issue, why now? Do the phones have 3 or 4 months of running time before a component failure? The swapping of the motherboard may only be something they are doing for devices that no longer power up, like your device, whereas mine still powers up - perhaps that'll be a re-flash, won't know until I hear back from Asus. It's also possible that the repair centres have been told to replace the boards and not re-flash, maybe Asus feel that is a better option than a re-flash (maybe to have the boards sent back for inspection/review), or the centres have no ability to re-flash so they can only do a board swap - we simply don't know.

I'll post any updates I get to my case here to keep everyone updated. Currently I'm attempting to let the battery drain down and see what happens after that.