Motorola to replace bricked WIND Mobile Moto X’s after failed Lollipop soak test

Update #2: Motorola has released a statement regarding the Moto X soak test, and there is good news and bad news. Good news is that you’ll be able to get a new device, no questions asked, by returning your affected Moto X to a WIND store. Bad news is that you’re going to lose all your apps, photos and data unless they’re backed up.

The statement:

“Yesterday we began testing Android 5.0 Lollipop by pushing out a beta upgrade to a small number of WIND Moto X (2nd Gen.) users in Canada. Some of those users are reporting issues with the test upgrade and we are actively looking into the cause. We’re asking the owners that have been impacted to return their affected Moto X to a WIND store for a replacement. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes.”

Update: According to WIND Mobile, do not visit a warranty centre at the moment, as they’re unable to do anything with the bricked phones. I’ve confirmed with Motorola Canada that they are actively working with WIND to figure out a way to fix the devices remotely, but WIND stores have been told they’re not allowed to replace damaged phones.

@graemeRharvey We apologize, we did receive a notice that the warranty centre is not able to assist with this. We appreciate your patience.

— WIND Mobile Care (@WIND_Cares) January 22, 2015

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Motorola has begun pushing out a small soak test for the WIND Mobile Moto X after a similar rollout for the TELUS version over the holidays. Soak tests are exactly what they sound like: deliberate distributions of code to a small group of users, meant to weed out problems before a wider dissemination.

@Leegaul Some users have received Lollipop on Moto X (2nd Gen) as part of Soak activity. If the results look good this will expand further. — Motorola Canada (@Motorola_CA) January 19, 2015

While the TELUS soak test went off without a hitch, the same cannot be said for the WIND version, which is reportedly sending devices into a boot loop that cannot be reversed, even by entering the recovery and resetting the device to factory settings. Only a few hundred people have reportedly been issued the update.

It appears at this point that the only way to recover the phone is to reflash it to an older version of Android, namely 4.4.4 KitKat. While it’s not recommended to do so right away — we’d recommend waiting for Motorola and WIND to find a fix — if you can’t wait, it’s possible to download the WIND Moto X Android 4.4.4 system image and use this guide to flash the individual components using Moto-Fastboot.

We’ve reached out to Motorola to find out what’s coming next, but in the meantime don’t reset your device if you’re not comfortable losing your data and starting from scratch.

[source]Reddit (1), Reddit (2)[/source](Thanks for sending this in, everyone!)