Another piece of information that may be potentially relevant:
With the photon in the state described as above, upon attempting to flash it with the same / a new binary results in a time-out. The photon is showing solid magenta.
I searched for what this means but couldn’t find it on: https://docs.particle.io/guide/getting-started/modes/photon/#troubleshooting-modes
However I did find an old post indicating that maybe it gets stuck on a packet: Solid magenta after a few minutes of flashing magenta?