4 ms·

Does it really "brick" your phone, as in "makes it crash in a way that is completely irrecoverable and that can never ever be repaired, therefore turning your p

Does it really "brick" your phone, as in "makes it crash in a way that is completely irrecoverable and that can never ever be repaired, therefore turning your phone forever into a piece of hardware comparable in functionality to a brick" or does it just make the phone crash?

gedekran 15y ago
People use bricked incorrectly way too often. Leading to others wondering if they actually mean it is as functional as a brick or that it just crashed and thus can be rebooted or restored. Then again I haven't personally bricked a device in a long time.
- repsilat 15y ago
  > Heretofore, "to brick" can brick anything. http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=423338&cid=22102564 http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=423338&cid=221...
  - GrandMasterBirt 15y ago
    I have to say, I once came fairly close to bricking my router. However after I realized the router was complete and utter garbage I put the brick to it, so now it is officially bricked, office space style.
TillE 15y ago
I'll accept "brick" when recovery requires flashing via JTAG. But not when you just have to press a few buttons.
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  This is the definition used by people that actually hack hardware, people who are used to performing brain surgery on set-top-boxes and such like. It's not bricked unless unbricking requires a soldering iron or similar, and some JTAG action. These days its getting harder and harder to brick devices, as bootloaders are becoming more and more advanced and more separate from the cores of the devices themselves. Once upon a time a faulty network cable could render your router forever inoperable due to a dropped byte in a firmware flash. Today, my galaxy S phone has had some truly awful things done to it, including corruption of the supposedly sacred NVRAM data, and the USB bootloader has always faithfully come up after the button combo, ready to accept a new flash. It must run on totally separate hardware from the phone proper.
  - joezydeco 15y ago
    Most of the newer SoC chips like Freescale iMX and TI OMAP have the USB core hardware built into the chip, so it's easy to have the chip provide it's own USB bootloader that doesn't require any code out of flash or RAM to get started. The only trick is to make sure the chip can start in this mode when necessary, usually a little helper PIC or some custom gates takes care of that.
  - napierzaza 15y ago
    You say this because you haven't tinkered with wireless routers... Just because it's harder to brick things doesn't mean the meaning of the word has changed. People are right to think this is a mis-statement.

gedekran 15y ago

People use bricked incorrectly way too often. Leading to others wondering if they actually mean it is as functional as a brick or that it just crashed and thus can be rebooted or restored. Then again I haven't personally bricked a device in a long time.

repsilat 15y ago
> Heretofore, "to brick" can brick anything. http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=423338&cid=22102564 http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=423338&cid=221...
- GrandMasterBirt 15y ago
  I have to say, I once came fairly close to bricking my router. However after I realized the router was complete and utter garbage I put the brick to it, so now it is officially bricked, office space style.

TillE 15y ago

I'll accept "brick" when recovery requires flashing via JTAG. But not when you just have to press a few buttons.

JonnieCache 15y ago
This is the definition used by people that actually hack hardware, people who are used to performing brain surgery on set-top-boxes and such like. It's not bricked unless unbricking requires a soldering iron or similar, and some JTAG action. These days its getting harder and harder to brick devices, as bootloaders are becoming more and more advanced and more separate from the cores of the devices themselves. Once upon a time a faulty network cable could render your router forever inoperable due to a dropped byte in a firmware flash. Today, my galaxy S phone has had some truly awful things done to it, including corruption of the supposedly sacred NVRAM data, and the USB bootloader has always faithfully come up after the button combo, ready to accept a new flash. It must run on totally separate hardware from the phone proper.
- joezydeco 15y ago
  Most of the newer SoC chips like Freescale iMX and TI OMAP have the USB core hardware built into the chip, so it's easy to have the chip provide it's own USB bootloader that doesn't require any code out of flash or RAM to get started. The only trick is to make sure the chip can start in this mode when necessary, usually a little helper PIC or some custom gates takes care of that.
- napierzaza 15y ago
  You say this because you haven't tinkered with wireless routers... Just because it's harder to brick things doesn't mean the meaning of the word has changed. People are right to think this is a mis-statement.