Disappointed – My Pixel-C tablet is not working right

I’ve had a Pixel-C tablet since they were released and until the last week or so have been very happy with it. Over the last week it has taken to having one half of the screen freeze and refusing to come out of sleep mode without a hard reset. The frozen screen even occurs at boot (when half the screen is pixel snow). As of this morning, the failure is there at boot and never goes away and even when I just press the button to put it to sleep it refuses to start up again.

At this I have an issue open with Google support, waiting for their response. Expecting at this point that they’ll provide an RMA number and paid shipping label shortly.

Pixel-C Back During Failure (blue, red, yellow, green)
Pixel-C Back During Failure (blue, red, yellow, green)

The tablet screen remains off and the light bar goes to this fixed pattern in four segments. The only way out is to hold the button until it reboots.

Booting up Digital Snow
Booting up Digital Snow

Once the tablet starts rebooting, half of the screen runs normally while the other half remains in ‘digital snow’ mode.

It had been recovering and would then freeze half the screen again.
It had been recovering and would then freeze half the screen again.

If I can get it to come out of ‘digital snow’ mode on the misbehaving side of the screen, it will generally update a bit and then freeze again displaying whatever was there at that moment.

It has been getting worse over the last few days as it now pretty much never recovers. I’ve left it at home, moving personal data off to my desktop over the Wi-Fi.

If I press the button to put it to sleep (I’ve got it out of its cover for now) it never comes back. It appears to go to sleep and get stuck there until I force it to reboot.

Tonight when I get home, I expect it will have finished moving my documents off and I’ll try applying the system update that is currently pending to see what that does.

If that doesn’t help (and I don’t expect it will) then I’ll follow the last set of directions in the email I received from Google support and revert the tablet to factory settings.

If that doesn’t work then I’ll be getting in touch with Google for an RMA to get the tablet repaired or replaced.

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