[Q] About bricked phone and warranty - General Questions and Answers

Hello. Recently I bricked my phone to point that it only show a black screen, and the notification light when connected to a power source; I got there by flashing a ROM that was intended for another regional model of the phone (I didn't know at the time).
Now, I know that this questions are morally wrong, but I want to know the answer prior to hand the phone to the technical service provided by the warranty:
Can they know that I flashed a different ROM even if the phone is in a "hard-bricked" state? This is important to me because the warranty covers the fix if they can´t prove that it was an user fault.
The other questions is, are there any non-user faults that could get a phone bricked, similar to a bad flash?
Thanks.

Any help please?

Related

[Q] No boot, but red LED and vibrate on battery insert...?

To be clear up front, I do not have posession of this phone, I am considering a purchase and try to fix the problem.
I don't know the history of the phone, if it's been rooted, flashed with a custom ROM etc...
However, I wanted to ask if these symptoms sounded familiar to anyone. The owner claims the phone randomly one day began (I somehow doubt it began without his assistance). The phone will not boot, it is a black screen, when the battery is inserted the phone vibrates and a red LED illuminates.
Sound like a complete brick? I recognize there isn't much information to analyze or go from, just curious.
ignition_point22 said:
To be clear up front, I do not have posession of this phone, I am considering a purchase and try to fix the problem.
I don't know the history of the phone, if it's been rooted, flashed with a custom ROM etc...
However, I wanted to ask if these symptoms sounded familiar to anyone. The owner claims the phone randomly one day began (I somehow doubt it began without his assistance). The phone will not boot, it is a black screen, when the battery is inserted the phone vibrates and a red LED illuminates.
Sound like a complete brick? I recognize there isn't much information to analyze or go from, just curious.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unsure of this, but you might want to ask this question in the 2 following threads, they are currently dealing with bricked Sensations.
[DEVS ONLY] Realtime Brick and unbrick Sensation
[Beta is over. Release coming] Sensation Unbricking Project
ignition_point22 said:
To be clear up front, I do not have posession of this phone, I am considering a purchase and try to fix the problem.
I don't know the history of the phone, if it's been rooted, flashed with a custom ROM etc...
However, I wanted to ask if these symptoms sounded familiar to anyone. The owner claims the phone randomly one day began (I somehow doubt it began without his assistance). The phone will not boot, it is a black screen, when the battery is inserted the phone vibrates and a red LED illuminates.
Sound like a complete brick? I recognize there isn't much information to analyze or go from, just curious.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you must check board b'coz your mobile through water.
its not bricked.ask more info from the seller
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using XDA

Is your Sensation bricked?

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.

[Q] Has unrooting for warranty ever worked for anyone?

So I have a new Galaxy S3 I747 Bell Canada, and I'm thinking of rooting it, but I still have 11 months of warranty left. Now I know that I can just follow the complicated guides to 'unroot' it, if I need to send it back, but has that ever actually worked for anyone here?
Because think about it. If you need to send your phone back for warranty, it is probably broken, right? If your phone is broken, how can you possibly unroot it first? Sure there are some non-bricked reasons you could send your phone back, such as a broken camera or a small deadzone in the touchscreen, but I'm just worried that my phone will suffer a NAND flash breakdown (after that whole kefuffle in the news) or a malfunctioning CPU while in a rooted state.
But then I think, well if the NAND flash or CPU completely dies, will THEY even be able to tell if the phone is rooted? I mean sure they have tools where they can rip the flash out of the mobo and read it and see if it's rooted, but to do all that would cost them labour hours. I would imagine if I sent back a rooted phone with just a broken camera, they would turn on the phone and see the big "THIS PHONE IS ROOTED!!!" message and refuse my warranty, but if I can turn my phone on, I will unroot it before I send it in for a broken camera. But if the phone CANT turn on, would they really bother with all those low-level hardware tools to try and fix my phone and see if its rooted? Wouldn't they just send me a new phone, and possibly try and refurbish my broken one to resell, without ever noticing that its rooted?
Depends on what your issue. Most of the buttons on my D2 stopped working and I had to send it in for warranty. Had to sbf and wipe and then it was fine. VZ has additional "root counter" features, but as you aren't using their device the standard unroot procedures should be fine. I think they take care of the on-board root counter.
If your phone is completely unusable then you're just out back. Obviously you can't take care of what you need to do if the phone isn't functioning at all. That said, depending on the damage they might not even be able to check for root anyway, and they just might not care. Also depends on your carrier's policies.
Honestly i don't recomend rooting ur phone on the the warranty period

Death of my S7 edge and warranty

Hi, this is not exactly question, so I post into discussion, I want just your opinion... or if somenthing like this happened to you:
It started by simple restarting, or random vibrating from time to time. I just thought its some ROM related bug becouse I didnt update it for about 2 months, maybe something got messy. But I had some work to do and told myself it can wait few days. Then some strange freezes occured with vertical or horizontal strips made of small colourful dots. Only hard reset holding all buttons helped. Freezes, restarts etc. then continued quite frequently. This was time for clean rom installation. I went to TWRP, wiped everything except external SD. Done. I was going to hit install in twrp when freeze occured last time and after long continuous vibration it was gone. Now it does not react toabsolutely anything, holding all buttons - nothing. Connecting to charger - nothing, no icon, no charging indicator. Connecting to PC - nothing, it dont even notice connection of new hardware, Odin also sees nothing... It seem to be as dead as possible.
But this situation seems very good to me after all, becouse phone was rooted, knox tripped. They would never repair it for free if it was freezing, restarting or bugging screen becouse my warranty was gone by rooting long time ago... But now they will have hard time to get into Download mode or connect it to anything to see my voided warranty, or fact there is no ROM at all becouse it got broken right after last TWRP wipe. I might be able to come out of this with new S8 for 100€ (price difference between S7 edge and classic S8 in shop where I bought it).
What do you think? Will they tear it apart and find out about knox etc., or they will not go so deep when its completly dead and there are no physical marks of even using that phone? Have no idea how deep is their analysis and if they will try to change motherboard or just trash it giving me new one or money...
Any experiences with samsung repair service?
PS: sry for my grammar, had only 4 years of english classes at high school, not using it until then (only in forums like this)
Usually the guys at service station don't bother to go in download mode to check the tripped know it depends on countries to countries in most of the countries people got their phone repaired even though there phone was knox tripped and rooted
I hope they fix your phone for free as the service guys are lazy they'll probably tell that your SOC is fried and would recommend changing the SOC
thx for reply... true, they dont bother in my country very much at service ... they already changed my camera lens becouse left corner was always blury and no problem with knox tripped, but it was clearly HW problem on their side which appeared even on first photo, I just didnt notice it and rooted it first week of S7 launch... this also was not caused by root, but if they somehow find out they could use it as excuse, so i hope they will not try hard with software examination when its HW problem again
Just want to add to the list.My previous device (xperia z2 which goes to the same service center here in Bosnia) ,they never searched if i had custom rom installed.They just fixed it by changing motherboard.Please let us all know what will happen when you return your device to them.I think there is no way they can find out what you did to that device or if it is knox tripped.
Ok, I will report results here. It should be fixed in two weeks, max one month (or not if they find out about root, but I also think they will not)
Got my repaired phone back. With new motherboard and 0x0 original knox etc. Old motherboard was compleatly dead with all root info with it... Everything works now

SquareTrade sent me a bricked phone?! HELP!

Hey all,
I'm admittedly not into the whole rooting scene, so I know very little about it... bear with me.
I have a Galaxy S6 with water damage to the screen, so I used my SquareTrade warranty to receive a replacement device. Just turned it on this morning and set it up, no problem - synced my Google account, re-installed my apps, etc. Then it popped up a message that Samsung had a major firmware update and that it needed to restart to complete the process, so I clicked restart and install.
Phone restarts, and doesn't come back on. Top left of the screen it says something about "Custom binary blocked by FRP Lock". I Googled this and found stuff coming up about rooting phones, but obviously that's not what I was even trying to do. Someone said if you try a hard reboot it can fix the issue, so I did that, but when I hard rebooted it a message came up warning me about the dangers of installing firmware from third parties and whatnot, but that I could proceed if I knew it was safe, so I did that. I also noticed in the top left of this screen it said "Knox Counter: 1 x 00500"
At this point it tells me it's installing and to not reboot the phone, but a half hour goes by with no progress. I Google the Knox counter thing and stuff comes up about rooting and voided warranties. I call Squaretrade, and speak to a specialist with broken English and try to explain. He says he'll send a replacement to me (and they can't guarantee that it will be a black S6 which I'm bummed about). I make it clear that I was not the one who "jailbroke" the phone because my concern is that Squaretrade will turn the device on, see the message and assume I did it and charge me the $750 replacement fee, believing me to have voided the warranty. He assured me that he made a note of it on the claim and that I shouldn't be charged... but I'm still worried about it.
Worst case scenario just in case something goes wrong and they try to charge me, I'd love to know what y'all think might have happened here. Do you think the previous owner of this phone (since the replacements are refurbished) tripped the Knox counter? Why did it work the first time I turned it on but then crash after I tried to install a firmware update? And when I receive the next replacement, how can I make sure this doesn't happen again?
Now I have TWO phones I'm on the line for sending back to SquareTrade (the original damaged phone and the replacement with the voided Knox counter) and I'm so paranoid that I'll get f**ked over somehow. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

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