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Me and my friend are currently in an argument in what the term "bricked" really means.
I am saying that a bricked device is one that is no longer functioning, like one stuck in a boot loop, BUT it is able to be fixed in many cases.
Example: When I bricked my Droid 2, I flashed a working SBF.
He is saying that when a device is "bricked" it is unable to be fixed, and is far beyond repair.
Example: When my friends mom stomped on his Evo Shift, the phone wouldn't turn on, and the device was bricked.
I understand that both of those examples are bricked (one more extreme than the other) but a device doesn't need to be beyond repair to be technically "bricked">
I would love to hear your opinion on how you view this term.
Bricked means unflashable, and you need jtag or other device to be able to fix, or not flashable or repairable through usb cable or sdcard, also a brick is when you drop it in water and it short circuits and destroys the ics, lcd etc.
Edit: brick also means if you dropped it and it now malfunctions, like lcd cracked and other crazy things happen when your using it.
Soft brick is when its stuck in a bootloop or whatever software problem that can be fixed
Hard brick is when you mess with the bootloader or something and it won't turn on BUT BECAUSE THE SOFTWARE
When its been smashed or physically damaged (ie water damage) I simply call the device "broken"
Sent from my DROID2 using xda premium
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1483113
There are two types of bricks: hard bricks are serious and can't be fixed 99% of the time (the phone is useless and might as well be a brick) and soft bricks can be. If you have a hard brick you're probably sol but if you have a soft brick there's no need to panic.
Chancee said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1483113
There are two types of bricks: hard bricks are serious and can't be fixed 99% of the time (the phone is useless and might as well be a brick) and soft bricks can be. If you have a hard brick you're probably sol but if you have a soft brick there's no need to panic.
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That's not what he was asking... read the OP again...
Sent from my DROID2 using xda premium
I see a lot of posts in both general and Q&A from people who state their device to be bricked. The contents of the topic are very divers, from actual bricks to a plain boot loop. I wanted to create this topic to shed some light on the whole Bricked concept. There's a lot of information the be red in this forum, a lot of different concepts with different definitions in diffirent context. The same goes for the concept Bricked.
so, what is bricked?
The term is actually derived from the baked lump of clay itself. A device is messed up in such a way, it serves no greater purpose then being a rectangle shaped object (which most electronic objects are) with mass, like a brick.
So how does a device become bricked?
This can be caused by multiple reasons, but the nr. 1 being; you probably weren't aware of all the ins and outs of the proces you were doing. In other words, you didn't read thoroughly enough.
Other, more technical reasons can be:
- a disruption during a firmware update in power or transfer,
- faulty application of a firmware version (incompatible),
- corrupted files,
- faulty command input with signature checking disabled (S-OFF),
- and probably more...
Most bricks, if not all, can be avoided by reading every line of a how-to, guide, ROM-topic etc. very thorough. Reread everything at least one more time and understand the thing you are doing. a good starting point to understanding what you are doing and the risk involved can be found here. Although not specifically related to Sensation, it's a general warning and self-test to those who just heard the concept 'rooting'.
The mother of all questions, when is my phone bricked?
There are actually two types of bricked devices, a hard brick and a soft brick.
Soft brick
This the type of brick that I encounter most in this forum. well, presumed by the owner that is. This is a state of the device where it's unable to boot the ROM, and in some cased the recovery aswell. It is however, still able to boot into the bootloader. This means that your phone is not dead. It can be saved. Since bootloader still works, fasboot will to and thus fasboot flashing.
Hard brick
this the type of brick that all people fear. The phone doesn't show any sign of life and doesn't respond to anything. It won't boot, not in recovery and not even in bootloader. Not even with a fully charged battery, replacement battery, wall charger plugged or USB plugged. When in this state, there's only one spark of hope and that's the Sensation Unbricking Project. If that doesn't work, well, let's just say you can use your phone the next time you're building a house.
Then I guess I'm soft bricked, so I'm still screwed right?
No. Considering bricked devices I like to refer only to the hard brick, meaning a soft brick isn't really a brick. You are still able to flash firmware, recovery and gain S-OFF if you're hboot 1.17 or higher. Search the forum for related issues and if you're lost, the brilliant contributers can most likely help you out.
As long as your phone starts the bootloader, you're not bricked.
I hope people will find this topic a source for better understanding of a bricked device.
My sons handset has developed a fault.
Please bare with me..... On the very odd occasion it will boot, it will eventually shut down and won't reboot for hours if not days. If it does reboot it looses the rom and I've got to reflash it. Sometimes it will keep running, but asleep, for a few hours but when it's used it will crash and not restart, as I said above, for hours or days.
The only roms that I can get to run are the "pure" android roms. I can't get any sense 5 ones to start.
I sent it back to o2, but they just sent it back to me stating it's "liquid damaged".
As far as I'm aware it hasn't been "liquid damaged", but obviously can't prove that. I also don't think they've checked it to come to that conclusion. These things are well made and there's no obvious signs of it being taken apart.
Any suggestions as to... (a) Do the symptoms re losing the rom etc, sound like liquid damage ?
(b) Can liquid damage be repaired ?
Personally, I don't think they've done "jack ****" about the fault because it's easier to say "liquid damage" and wipe there hands of it.
Thanks for "listening".
So, I flashed my S8+ onto BatMan-Rom today with no apparent issues. Clean flash, booted with no problems. While restoring apps (not system data) with Titanium Backup, my phone's screen switched off and I couldn't get it back on. The phone got really hot but would not reset with holding power+vol+bixby or any other button combination. Tried plugging into my PC, ADB didn't detect the phone. Desperate, I disassembled the phone far enough to disconnect the battery from the mainboard and then reconnect it, hoping that would force some kind of reset. Instead, I went from a hot phone I couldn't do anything with to a cold one. No button combo gets me anything - no recovery, no odin mode, nothing. Am I as screwed as I think I am? It seems to me I'm out $900 on a paperweight, and I can't even figure out what went wrong since I wasn't messing with anything at the system level when this happened.
tardis_42 said:
So, I flashed my S8+ onto BatMan-Rom today with no apparent issues. Clean flash, booted with no problems. While restoring apps (not system data) with Titanium Backup, my phone's screen switched off and I couldn't get it back on. The phone got really hot but would not reset with holding power+vol+bixby or any other button combination. Tried plugging into my PC, ADB didn't detect the phone. Desperate, I disassembled the phone far enough to disconnect the battery from the mainboard and then reconnect it, hoping that would force some kind of reset. Instead, I went from a hot phone I couldn't do anything with to a cold one. No button combo gets me anything - no recovery, no odin mode, nothing. Am I as screwed as I think I am? It seems to me I'm out $900 on a paperweight, and I can't even figure out what went wrong since I wasn't messing with anything at the system level when this happened.
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Oh, dude...I feel your pain....wish I could help.
Can't you just contact the retailer and sort of, ahem, forget to tell them that you rooted it and took it apart and that it just, well, simply broke?
Surely there's some kinda warranty?
Or claim on home contents insurance?
Sorry i can't be more help..but hopefully some of the XDA experts will be replying very soon.
Come on guys, try and help this guy out:good:
Matt
matthew33 said:
Can't you just contact the retailer and sort of, ahem, forget to tell them that you rooted it and took it apart and that it just, well, simply broke?
Surely there's some kinda warranty?
Or claim on home contents insurance?
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You're proposing fraud, which is a form of theft. And ultimately, it's all the other customers who subsidize such acts.
What we customers are subsidizing is Samsung's greedy bull**** of producing different versions of a product specifically so they can get away with not offering warranty coverage for unlocked/rooted devices in North America. If there were a way for me to game the system to force them (or a retailer) to replace my phone, believe me, I would, especially since this happened when I was restoring apps and not in the course of flashing a rom or otherwise messing with anything at the system level; it does feel like a defect in the device to me at this point.
That's all academic though, since I'm outside the retailer's return window and there's not going to be anything accomplished through that angle. Worst case scenario at this point is selling the device for parts and going back to my Nexus 6P with all its battery issues until I can get my hands on a phone made by a company that doesn't pull this "no warranty for power users" crap - an Essential Phone or a Pixel 2 XL, I guess. But I would of course prefer to find a way to fix my S8+. At the moment I think the first problem is that it's not charging - battery doesn't even get warmer than room temperature after being plugged in for hours. I'm going to try a wireless charger tonight and see if the charger lights up saying it's connected to the device, but I'm not holding out much hope.
I've read that previous Galaxy devices could be reflashed to stock with special USB devices that repair shops had access to...do we know if there's anything like that with the S8?
"Power users" amount to nothing now with all the millions sold and billions made. They make more locking down there stuff. Doing the stuff we do now is considered a security risk.
Look, this is getting off topic. Whether or not you think billion-dollar corporations should be able to artificially create situations that drive certain customers to purchase devices without warranty coverage so they can ignore us when things go wrong and make another easy $800 is not really important. The situation I'm in is what it is, and I imagine others might find themselves in that situation sooner or later, so does anyone have any ideas on a) how this might have happened in the first place or b) what I might try in the way of repairs, short of replacing the mainboard?
tardis_42 said:
Look, this is getting off topic. Whether or not you think billion-dollar corporations should be able to artificially create situations that drive certain customers to purchase devices without warranty coverage so they can ignore us when things go wrong and make another easy $800 is not really important. The situation I'm in is what it is, and I imagine others might find themselves in that situation sooner or later, so does anyone have any ideas on a) how this might have happened in the first place or b) what I might try in the way of repairs, short of replacing the mainboard?
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just sent it to change/repair using ur garant...it seems a phisical problem more than firmware/software issue...if not go to a repair service so they can check wich piece is making the problem.
Theres a posibility is the mainboard so dont waste more time asking here and go to a repair center in or out of warranty.
Is bricking a phone just a myth? I mean there is always a way to fix it isn't there? The phones are a blank slate when they are produced so I would imagine you just re-flash the stock OS with Odin don't you? Brick must just be a word some n00b associated with his phone when he couldn't fix it comparing it to a coaster cd, would this assertion be correct?
i understand a phone would become hard-bricked if you destroyed the hardware in some way but could someone cause an unfixable soft-brick?
Bricking a phone, as you realized, can mean both "it got soft-bricked" and "it got hard-bricked". This forum at 99% is used by people who think they have to redesign a phone software-wise and when doing so miserably fail - will say they soft-bricked the phone.
Have always wondered why people buy a phone of which they are not convinced what does not have the features they expect.
A soft-bricked phone always can get fixed, at least by authorized repair center. That's also true with hard-bricked phones.
Unfortunately, bricking is real and not only a myth. Most of the time you can easily repair a brick, but there are also hard-bricks that can’t be repaired or can only be repaired with soldering knowledge.
As jwoegerbauer has already mentioned, you can try to contact a repair center, but if there is no official repair center nearby, or even worse, there isn’t an official repair center at all, your phone will be a useless brick :/
xando10 said:
Unfortunately, bricking is real and not only a myth. Most of the time you can easily repair a brick, but there are also hard-bricks that can’t be repaired or can only be repaired with soldering knowledge.
As jwoegerbauer has already mentioned, you can try to contact a repair center, but if there is no official repair center nearby, or even worse, there isn’t an official repair center at all, your phone will be a useless brick :/
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If i'm not wrong, flashing corrupted bootloader and prebootloader is unfixable without soldering knowledge because it destroys the bridge between flashing software and the phone??
Flashing a corrupted bootloader and prebootloader will cause a hard brick. If I remember correctly, you can sometimes still fix the phone without soldering, via EDL mode, but that still requires a lot of knowledge and time. Either way it would be a really bad situation Please correct me if I am wrong.