Some Pixel 6 owners say factory resets bricked their phones

Some people are reporting that they are left with bricked Pixel 6, 6 Pro, and 6A phones after factory resetting them. Google is aware of the issue and is investigating, according to a comment from a member of the Pixel Support Forums’ product specialist program.

“Cannot load Android system. Your data may be corrupted. If you continue to receive this message, you may need to perform a factory data reset and erase all user data stored on this device.”

The phone gives the option to try again, which supposedly fails, or try a factory reset again, but during the wipe, a separate error says the phone is missing a file called tune2fs, which appears to refer to a line tool Unix command command used to set file system parameters.

Some people have reported seeing the issue after updating their phones, but the complaints appear to stem from a factory reset, not a specific software update. A Reddit member has gathered complaints about the issue on all three Pixel 6 phones, and some who have experienced it say that I can’t recover the phone using Google official tools for doing this.

Google did not immediately respond to our request for comment.