A Nexus 7 meets an untimely death

My 2013 Nexus 7 died. It hangs at the Google logo during the boot process. Hard reset (Power/Vol up/Vol down) produces the same result. I looked on the web for solutions, and found some, all of which require using the Android Software Development Kit (SDK). It doesn’t seem right that an ordinary consumer should have to result to such extremes to fix a boot hang. That’s assuming I don’t have a hardware problem. I could use the SDK, but I think I’ll just act like a civilian and contact Google Support.

The tech at Google Play emailed me after a day or so with instructions on how to do the hard reset. Following the instructions, not surprisingly, produced the same result as when I’d perform the other hard rest attempts. I sent the tech an email to that effect. He replied that my Nexus 7 was out of warranty, and that he could do nothing further for me. I emailed that he must have been looking in his records at an earlier Nexus 7 purchase, and sent him an image of a Best Buy order confirmation. He said that I should contact either Best Buy or Asus.

The idea of contacting Asus seemed strange; it’s sort of like calling Apple support and having them say, “Talk to Foxconn.” I did email Best Buy. After a couple of days, I got a response saying that they would prefer to deal with the issue on the phone, and giving me a number — 1-888-237-8289 — to call. I waded through layers and layers of “press 5 to order a pizza” prompts, and finally got to a person. She said that Best Buy couldn’t help me, that I should contact the manufacturer.

I went to the Asus web site and opened up a chat session with a tech. He led me through the hard reset. Again. Then he said he’d issue an RMA. That hung up on two fronts. Asus won’t process an RMA without a serial number. There is no serial number on the back of the device, and the box that it came in is long gone. So Asus can’t process an RMA. Even if they could, I’d be worried about sending the broken tablet back to them, since they explicitly say to remove all passwords from the device and I can’t do that since it won’t boot.

In fact, I don’t know how to remove all passwords from a flash-based device even if it will boot, since I know of no way to overwrite all inactive flash locations. I don’t like this whole, “Send in your broken computer and trust us” routine. That’s why I purchase on-site service contracts for laptops, desktops, and servers. That’s not an option for something like a tablet.

I will destroy the device and replace it. But not with another Nexus 7, even though I like the tablet. I’m just too ticked off at Google. I ordered an iPad Mini. Yeah, I know. Boring. I agree. But sometimes boring is OK.