The sad little tale of my Moto Z

[D13H4RD]

This is gonna be a long one, so settle down a bit. 

 

It all started with the Note7 recall fallout. I opted for a full refund and was left with a HTC One M7 with a dying battery that could barely last the day. I needed a new phone real quick and up came the Moto Z. The mods alongside it running close-to-stock Android were really appealing, and so I went for it while I was on holiday. 

 

It went really well for the first few. Battery life was surprisingly decent given the smol battery capacity for its size and performance was absolutely top notch. In December though, it kinda went downhill. 

 

It all started when the phone randomly rebooted while on a charge and displayed a dm-verity message saying that verification had failed. "No biggie", I thought. Then, the Android 7.0 update hit. I sideloaded the OTA via ADB, only to be hit with the dreaded "ERROR" and was left with a phone that can't boost past its bootloader. 

 

I went to a Motorola support center hoping they'd at least be of some help but alas, because it was a unit that despite sharing the same model and region code, was purchased from a different country, they can't do anything. It wasn't until later that a friend let me in on a tool and supplied the original factory image that I got it working again. 

 

I later then flashed the Nougat factory image and all seemed well.....ezcept when I went to apply the OTA that was pushed. The same "ERROR" message appeared and I was left with a phone that would reboot a minute after the screen turned off. 

 

Flashed the original Marshmallow factory image and then flashed Nougat over it, alongside a custom recovery, kernel and root access. Worked fine for a long while except for constant overheating and thermal throttling. That was when I had it and moved to the Galaxy Note8. Ouch. 

 

But I kept the phone around because it might prove useful as a secondary. Flashed Android 7.1.1 in the beginning of the year with no issues and 8.0 Oreo a month ago. Cool beans, and it applied the May OTA just fine. But when I tried to apply the July OTA that was released a day ago, the dreaded "ERROR" reared its ugly head again. 

 

Sigh

 

Went back to the computer and flashed the Oreo factory image and it's working again. I'll most likely keep it on the current March build, which is working perfectly and I don't really feel like going back to square one all over again until someone releases an 8.1 factory image. 

 

A lot of trouble just for updates. I strongly suspect the NAND on this particular unit has a corrupted block as my Note8 had zero issues applying updates and other Moto Zs as well.