How I’ve fixed the “Can’t load Android System” issue

That will be a short story.
Google Pixel 2 phone was recently upgraded to Android 10 and suddenly just got frozen. I tried to reboot and got this unpleasant black screen with the following message:

“Can’t load Android System”

and blah-blah-blah, corrupted data, blah-blah, you can “Try again” or make a Factory reset, that will wipe all of your data.

The “Try again” option of course didn’t help. “Factory reset” — the very last option for me.

Recovery mode

When the phone is starting press and hold (5–10 sec) “Volume down” until you see a black screen with a green android on its back. Using volume buttons you can navigate through the menu and the power button will confirm your choice.

Find the “Recovery mode” option and press the power button once. After that, you can see “No command” on a black screen. It’s okay, no worries. Just press the “Volume up” + “Power” buttons at the same time (no need to hold).

Now you see “Android Recovery” mode with a bunch of options — from “Reboot system now” to “Power off”.

ADB

Now it’s time to install some software on your computer.

I have macOS, so I’ll put the instructions for this case. Run console first.
Then:

1. Download and install SDK Platform with Homebrew.
   I hope you already have Homebrew. If not, just install it:
   /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
2. To install ADB and other tools run:
   brew cask install android-platform-tools
3. Run ADB
   adb devices

OTA Image

Now it’s time to download the OTA image for your phone from here https://developers.google.com/android/ota

For me, that was 10.0.0 (QP1A.191005.007.A1, Oct 2019) in the “walleye” for Pixel 2" section. In my case, that image took 1.3Gb.

Magic

It’s time to unbrick the phone. Connect phone with cable to the computer.

On the phone in Recovery mode pick “Apply update from ADB”.
On computer in Console run:

adb sideload ota_image_with_long_name.zip

You’ll see some progress in Console and on the phone.

Once the OTA image upload completed you’ll see a message on the phone screen and now you’re ready to reboot the phone by selecting “Reboot system now” on the Recovery mode screen.

In my case phone normally restarted with all data like nothing just happened.

🤙🏼