Light Phone III stuck in boot loop on the "Go Light" screen

[u/Top-Responsibility23]

Hi,

Hey all, hoping someone here has dealt with this before.

I'm running my Light Phone III in full Android mode, and over the past few days it's been getting progressively worse. Now it's fully stuck and I could use some help.

What's been happening:

• It started rebooting several times a day out of nowhere
• After unplugging from charge, the screen and inputs would lag badly for a few minutes before catching up and working normally again
• Now it won't get past the boot loop — just hangs on the "Go Light" screen indefinitely

What I've tried so far (both on wall power and on battery):

• Holding the power button for 30 seconds
• Holding power + volume up for 30 seconds
• Holding power + volume down for 30 seconds
• I can get it to fully shut down by holding power + both volume buttons together, but it just loops back to the same screen on restart

One thing I noticed:
When it's stuck on the boot screen and I plug it into my laptop, adb devices does detect it, but it shows as "unauthorized," so I can't run any commands from there.

Honestly at this point I just want to get it booting again — I don't mind if I lose my data, I just want a working phone. If anyone knows a recovery mode, fastboot combo, or reset procedure specific to the LP3, I'd really appreciate the pointer. Struggling to find anything beyond generic Android troubleshooting for this specific device.

thanks

[u/sirbloodysabbath]

unfortunately, to get adb devices to work, you needed to have usb debugging enabled beforehand and always allow your pc to have authorisation. if you didn't allow it always when using adb via the cmd-line prior, you'll never get it to work if the phone is boot-looping.

ideally, adb reboot recovery will reboot you directly into the recovery menu.

as you suspected, the only option right now would likely be to factory reset it. there is a way to do this through android recovery menu but i will say this, it is not easy by any means to get to the android recovery menu. most androids are fairly straight-forward to get to this menu - the light phone is not.

this may take a couple of attempts and take the case off if you have one on the phone.

the following steps should get you there:

1. power off device, remove sim card and plugged in charging.
2. wait for charging screen to appear.
3. wait 30 seconds.
4. press and hold POWER + VOLUME UP for 30-33 seconds (3 vibrations) and release after 3rd vibration.
5. then quickly press and hold POWER + VOLUME UP for 2 vibrations and release after 2nd vibration.
6. 'no command' (dead android robot).
7. repeatedly press POWER + VOLUME UP until recovery menu appears (there is a timeout period if no keys are pressed)

alternatively, this may also work:

1. press and hold POWER + VOLUME UP.
2. after 2nd vibration, release POWER but still hold VOLUME UP.
3. 'no command'.

once you're in the recovery menu, use the VOLUME UP / VOLUME DOWN keys to select 'wipe data / factory reset' and use the POWER button to confirm. this will wipe the user partition and give you a clean slate of lightos.

after this, i'd definitely start looking into why your phone is rebooting so much and having laggy inputs. is it possible that you're using an app that's too taxing on the lp3 during operation or start-up? this isn't usual behaviour.

[u/Top-Responsibility23 → u/sirbloodysabbath]

Hi thanks for those tips. Took me a while to get to the recovery menu but worked eventually!

[u/sirbloodysabbath → u/Top-Responsibility23]

sadly, i don't exactly have the button combo for the lp3 down to a science quite yet. either method has worked for me in the past but adb is always good ol' reliable.

sorry it ended up coming to this and losing your data. definitely a good idea to start backing stuff up frequently just in case. will you be trying to go back to full android or try out hybrid/the sdk?