Okay, so here’s the story about my Pixel 5a and its sudden black screen of doom. Man, was I freaking out!
It all started last Tuesday, I think. I was just browsing Reddit, you know, the usual time-waster. Suddenly, the screen flickered… then went completely black. Like, totally dead. But the phone was still on! I could hear notifications, feel it vibrate, all that jazz. Just no freakin’ picture.
My first thought? “Crap, this is gonna cost me a fortune.” I hadn’t even had the phone for that long! So, the troubleshooting began. I started with the basics:
- Tried a hard reset. Held down the power button and volume up button like a madman. Nothing.
- Plugged it into the charger. Figured maybe the battery was somehow drained to zero, even though it was at like 60% earlier. Still nothing on the screen, no charging indicator, nada.
I was starting to sweat. Next up, I went to the internet. Google became my best friend (ironic, considering it was a Google phone that was giving me grief). I read all sorts of things: loose connections, software glitches, the dreaded “motherboard failure.” Great.
One thing I kept seeing was the “flashlight trick.” Apparently, sometimes the screen backlight can die, but the actual display is still working. So, I grabbed a flashlight and shined it on the screen at different angles, looking for a faint image. Honestly, I couldn’t see anything. Maybe I wasn’t doing it right, or maybe the screen was truly toast.
Alright, time to get a little more serious. I remembered reading about booting into safe mode. Figured if it was a rogue app causing the issue, maybe safe mode would bypass it. The problem? I couldn’t SEE anything! This was where things got tricky. I had to rely on muscle memory and a lot of guesswork.
I followed these steps (completely blind!):
- Hold down the power button until I felt the phone vibrate (signaling the power menu).
- Counted to eight (roughly the time it takes for the “Power off” option to appear).
- Tapped the spot where the “Power off” option should be (hoping I was hitting the right spot!).
- Waited a few seconds, then held down the power button again until I felt another vibration (the Google logo SHOULD have appeared at this point).
- Immediately started tapping the spot where the “Safe mode” prompt should be. Just mashed it repeatedly.
I waited… and waited… still a black screen. I tried this a few times, convinced I was just messing it up. But then… I heard the familiar “ding” of a notification, but it sounded slightly different. Like, more basic. I took a shot in the dark and swiped down where the notification panel should be and felt the vibration of the quick settings. It WORKED! Sort of. I was in safe mode!
This meant it was likely a software issue, not a hardware one. HUGE relief. I started uninstalling recently installed apps one by one, restarting after each one (still blind, using the same power button/volume up trick to reboot). Finally, after uninstalling a sketchy wallpaper app I downloaded a few days before, the screen flickered back to life! Hallelujah!
The culprit: A dodgy wallpaper app that somehow screwed up the display driver or something.
Lesson learned: Be careful what you download! And, sometimes, blind troubleshooting actually pays off. I got incredibly lucky. I’m backing up everything RIGHT NOW. And I’m NEVER downloading a random wallpaper app again.