It makes a ton more sense that there is a somewhat of a reset that is randomly happening when people are fixing stuff nearby and thinking their main target was the thing that fixed it.
Plastic and rubber can get weird/gross to the touch over the course of a few years or change color (due to additive breakdown/outgassing, UV radiation etc.).
Flash storage cells can lose their stored information (over time) or their capacity to retain it (due to wear, i.e. erase cycles that are each slightly destructive to the materials) etc – and we even use them in things called "solid state drives" :)
FWIW, thanks to a number of issues, even solid state devices will fail over time.
https://c3.ndc.nasa.gov/dashlink/static/media/other/Observed...
(This entire presentation is worth the read, by the way).
Common misconception. Most solid state tech will fail over time, with wildly different timescales depending on the tech. For example, semiconductor technology is subject to electromigration, thermal effects and other material failures. As design geometries get smaller, these effects get worse.