Some owners of faulty Nexus 5X units purchased from Project Fi are eligible to have their unusable devices replaced with a new Moto X4 Android One, Android Police reported Sunday, citing official communication from the MVNO’s customer support service, as well as one person who successfully managed to have their bootlooping smartphone replaced. The deal is only valid for Nexus 5X owners who pay a $69 for Device Protection, Project Fi’s insurance plan that used to be known as Nexus Protect back in late 2015 when the LG-made smartphone was first released in the United States. Save for the deductible, being covered by the plan sets you back $5 per month.
The issue of spontaneous and unrecoverable bootloops is one that’s been troubling Nexus 5X owners for a while now, with Project Fi initially offering insured customers refurbished models of the same device as replacements. The offer to replace such handsets with new Moto X4 Android One units is the most generous attempt to remedy the situation Google made so far but it also comes nearly two years after the original controversy emerged, with many Nexus 5X owners reporting bootlooping issues throughout 2016. The mid-ranger with apparent quality control issues originally retailed for $349, making the Moto X4 Android One a suitable replacement, with the Lenovo-made handset having a $399 price tag but one that can go as low as $0 under certain circumstances such as phone trade-ins. Project Fi is presently offering the Android One-branded smartphone for $299 or $12.46 per month for two years.
The bootlooping controversy surrounding the Nexus 5X even prompted a lawsuit but the origins of the issue remain unclear. Google initially attributed the problems to a hardware defect affecting a small number of users, with LG vowing to reimburse customers with such units in late 2016 when the device was nearing the end of its production run. The term “bootlooping” refers to a smartphone being unable to get past its boot screen, i.e. start running its operating system. An unofficial fix was distributed by an independent developer in the summer of 2017 but involved disabling both A57 performance cores of the device’s Snapdragon 808 chip running at 1.8GHz, leaving it with only four A53 cores clocked at 1.4GHz and a significantly deteriorated performance.