5 ms·

> I flashed my cellphone but it failed and now it's bricked. It doesn't sound wrong to me, both "flash" and "brick" are correct in an appropriate context. It's

> I flashed my cellphone but it failed and now it's bricked. It doesn't sound wrong to me, both "flash" and "brick" are correct in an appropriate context. It's not "updating the system" but "flashing" if the process uses some low-level recovery mode, and it would be "bricked" if can no longer be recovered by usual means.

gruez 6y ago
Most of the time "flashing" a phone (presumably referring to androids) involves using the recovery, which is basically a stripped down version of android. In that sense it's not any lower level than booting off a USB drive to fix your computer.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  According to your standard: to "flash" something, at least you need to use the bootloader itself, or possibly at a lower level? Well, calling the process of uploading a firmware image to an embedded device during early boot via U-Boot as "firmware flashing" is well established, so we can start from here... thus, uploading a new Android image in Android Recovery is not "flashing", but uploading a "recovery" image in Android bootloader is? Now, would you call firmware uploading via iOS's DFU mode "flashing" too? Or do you believe that the DFU mode is end-user accessible, thus not low-level enough? Then, would you accept that uploading the firmware to the baseband processor (which I believe uses its own EEPROM) via DFU "flashing"? I guess the definition varies, it was what I meant by "an appropriate context".
  - gruez 6y ago
    >thus, uploading a new Android image in Android Recovery is not "flashing", but uploading a "recovery" image in Android bootloader is? Now, would you call firmware uploading via iOS's DFU mode "flashing" too? Or do you believe that the DFU mode is end-user accessible, thus not low-level enough? Then, would you accept that uploading the firmware to the baseband processor (which I believe uses its own EEPROM) via DFU "flashing"? The difference is that the recovery is almost a full blown operating system. It can mount filesystems, has various shell utilities installed, and there's a user interface (through ADB and on-screen). This in contrast to fastboot which has noneof those things, and only allows you to flash/erase partitions with the help of a computer.
    - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
      Fair enough.

gruez 6y ago

Most of the time "flashing" a phone (presumably referring to androids) involves using the recovery, which is basically a stripped down version of android. In that sense it's not any lower level than booting off a USB drive to fix your computer.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
According to your standard: to "flash" something, at least you need to use the bootloader itself, or possibly at a lower level? Well, calling the process of uploading a firmware image to an embedded device during early boot via U-Boot as "firmware flashing" is well established, so we can start from here... thus, uploading a new Android image in Android Recovery is not "flashing", but uploading a "recovery" image in Android bootloader is? Now, would you call firmware uploading via iOS's DFU mode "flashing" too? Or do you believe that the DFU mode is end-user accessible, thus not low-level enough? Then, would you accept that uploading the firmware to the baseband processor (which I believe uses its own EEPROM) via DFU "flashing"? I guess the definition varies, it was what I meant by "an appropriate context".
- gruez 6y ago
  >thus, uploading a new Android image in Android Recovery is not "flashing", but uploading a "recovery" image in Android bootloader is? Now, would you call firmware uploading via iOS's DFU mode "flashing" too? Or do you believe that the DFU mode is end-user accessible, thus not low-level enough? Then, would you accept that uploading the firmware to the baseband processor (which I believe uses its own EEPROM) via DFU "flashing"? The difference is that the recovery is almost a full blown operating system. It can mount filesystems, has various shell utilities installed, and there's a user interface (through ADB and on-screen). This in contrast to fastboot which has noneof those things, and only allows you to flash/erase partitions with the help of a computer.
  - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    Fair enough.