Since the old one ended up locked despite the issue very much remaining unfixed even with the recent BIOS 310 update, guess we need another one for people to report their issues in. Yes, I notice the "may be locked due to inactivity" disclaimer, but it's also very suspicious that the lock just so happened to occur when reports were starting to trickle in of BIOS 310 not actually fixing the issue, and in particular, not in line with any likely "expiry period" since the last post (was a bit more than 6 weeks, but well under 2 months, which are the closest expiry periods likely to be in use).
For the full story and history there's a Reddit thread, but also included a summary here. https://www.reddit.com/r/ROGAllyX/comments/1eoch1d/rog_ally_x_black_screen_crashes_has_it_happened/
There's also a previous topic on these very forums (which along with this one itself have been archived in case ASUS try to delete the evidence): https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/rog-ally/crashes-to-black-screen-on-rog-ally-x/m-p/1035043
Around August last year, an issue started to crop up with some Ally X units where the device would randomly crash to a black screen while gaming in handheld mode. ASUS initially ignored and denied the issue (much like they did with the microSD issue on the original Ally), then later claimed they were trying to produce a fix and sent out beta BIOS builds that did not help.
Not much progress has been made on identifying why this happens or finding community-sourced fixes. One user reported having the issue across multiple RMA'd units, suggesting a software issue rather than a hardware one. The one thing that has been identified is that the crashes are usually triggered by pushing the Y button, and especially by mashing it - and for most affected users, can be avoided by remapping Y to a different physical button, or using an external gamepad. (However, this is very obviously not feasible as a permanent solution.)
There have also been reports that ASUS have begun to make false claims of "water damage" in cases where people have sought warranty cover for this issue (though eventually backed down): https://www.reddit.com/r/ROGAllyX/comments/1je65cw/asus_at_it_again_denying_rog_ally_x_warranty/
Users who were sent the beta build of BIOS 310 were told it was attempting to address this issue. However, the eventual stable release of BIOS 310 makes no references to this issue in its changelog, and while one user reported improvements from it, the majority have had no benefit from doing so.
I'm going to continue to encourage ASUS to actually try and find a fix for this issue because the Ally X would be an amazing device were it not for this, but in the meantime I'm just going to start encouraging affected users to seek refunds for their devices (and doing the same for mine) as it doesn't look like ASUS are genuinely interested in addressing this issue. This perhaps shouldn't be a surprise - look at how much the spotlight was needed on them over the OG Ally's microSD issue, before they finally addressed it, and even then didn't so much admit to it as just covertly address it for future models and play a bit nicer to people making RMA requests.
