Ask HN: Photos corrupted on Google Pixel phones over time?
I have had this problem for years now: Scrolling through photos on my phone that are maybe a year old or older I notice grey squares here and there in my Google Photos app (used without an account). The files are properly corrupted - can't view them on other devices either. I checked some out in a hex editor and sure enough there is a good chunk of null bytes in the beginning. Sometimes it's just the first byte and changing it from 00 to FF fixes the image. But oftentimes it's a whole lot more 00s to the point where I don't know how to recover the image. I've been using only Pixel a-series phones for the last couple years (3a, 6a, 9a) and had this happen on all of them. It surely can't be bad storage, can it? I feel like there is a bug in some part of Google's Android OS. Has anyone of you encountered this issue? I can't believe I'm alone with it. 1 comments on Hacker News.
I have had this problem for years now: Scrolling through photos on my phone that are maybe a year old or older I notice grey squares here and there in my Google Photos app (used without an account). The files are properly corrupted - can't view them on other devices either. I checked some out in a hex editor and sure enough there is a good chunk of null bytes in the beginning. Sometimes it's just the first byte and changing it from 00 to FF fixes the image. But oftentimes it's a whole lot more 00s to the point where I don't know how to recover the image. I've been using only Pixel a-series phones for the last couple years (3a, 6a, 9a) and had this happen on all of them. It surely can't be bad storage, can it? I feel like there is a bug in some part of Google's Android OS. Has anyone of you encountered this issue? I can't believe I'm alone with it.
I have had this problem for years now: Scrolling through photos on my phone that are maybe a year old or older I notice grey squares here and there in my Google Photos app (used without an account). The files are properly corrupted - can't view them on other devices either. I checked some out in a hex editor and sure enough there is a good chunk of null bytes in the beginning. Sometimes it's just the first byte and changing it from 00 to FF fixes the image. But oftentimes it's a whole lot more 00s to the point where I don't know how to recover the image. I've been using only Pixel a-series phones for the last couple years (3a, 6a, 9a) and had this happen on all of them. It surely can't be bad storage, can it? I feel like there is a bug in some part of Google's Android OS. Has anyone of you encountered this issue? I can't believe I'm alone with it. 1 comments on Hacker News.
I have had this problem for years now: Scrolling through photos on my phone that are maybe a year old or older I notice grey squares here and there in my Google Photos app (used without an account). The files are properly corrupted - can't view them on other devices either. I checked some out in a hex editor and sure enough there is a good chunk of null bytes in the beginning. Sometimes it's just the first byte and changing it from 00 to FF fixes the image. But oftentimes it's a whole lot more 00s to the point where I don't know how to recover the image. I've been using only Pixel a-series phones for the last couple years (3a, 6a, 9a) and had this happen on all of them. It surely can't be bad storage, can it? I feel like there is a bug in some part of Google's Android OS. Has anyone of you encountered this issue? I can't believe I'm alone with it.
Hacker News story: Ask HN: Photos corrupted on Google Pixel phones over time?
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November 24, 2025
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