Phone going into boot loop after removing SIM tray while the device was on. What do?

Hardware Librem 5
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I recently played a bit with the Librem 5 I recieved around 2 years back.

I inserted my (thankfully) secondary SIM card, and did some stuff to set it up.

At some point, it didn’t recognize my SIM, so I tried removing the tray and inserting it again, as I’ve done with literally every smartphone I’ve owned in the last decade.

This is how I learned that apparently, the Librem 5 microSD tray is not ISO/IEC 7816 compliant, and so my SIM is cooked.
But the bigger problem is - the phone went into an infinite boot loop - the light turns green with a small vibration, then the phone shuts down, then it tries to boot again, etc.
When connected to the charger, the sequence is red => green => yellow.

So, is there any way to fix this, or is this shitty phone finally cooked for good?

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Reinstall Gnu Pure OS on L5. I recommend Gnu Crimson.

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Is this post relevant here?

And if yes, how do I make sure I got the Evergreen version? I know it was ordered on November 6, 2019, shipped on Wednesday 7th of June 2023, and the item name in the order is Librem 5 (L5V1)

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Try holding down the power button for 5 seconds to force shut off the device, then half a second to turn it on, or contact Purism:

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Try holding down the power button for 5 seconds to force shut off the device, then half a second to turn it on, or contact Purism:

That’s how I stopped the infinite boot loop. Turning it on again results in the boot loop described above.

Thanks for the link, I ordered an extra battery with the phone back in 2023, so I can tell it’s Evergreen by the 4500mAh.

I’ll hopefully find the time to follow the flush guide, and hopefully it’ll work.
Now I just need to replace the SIM that was fried :unamused:

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The power rails for the SD card are energized even when off from what I recall. Always a good idea to remove power on any device you can before removing SD cards or SIM cards.

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This hasn’t been the case with any phone I’ve owned since the HTC One X, which was (checks Wikipedia) ~13 years ago.

It’s not unreasonable to expect the same standards on a 2020 phone as phones that were produced 1 decade earlier, and cost less, to boot.

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You might try holding the power button for about 18 seconds. That’s really for power issues, but maybe it will also stop your boot loop.

Also see: Troubleshooting - Purism user documentation

The section titled “Repairing a broken installation” may help with recovering your data, if any, or if desired, before you reflash the OS and lose everything on the hard drive.

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If all else fails, completely power it off, take the battery out, take the modem out, put the battery back and power it on. See what happens then.

My guess is that two active terminals on its SIM connector were shorted when you removed the SIM card, which then somehow fried the modem.

If that works, you could try sticking the modem back in and powering it on again, though I’ve no idea whether the “friedness” would be cured by removing the modem’s power. Possible, but unlikely.

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