What is considered a 'Bricked' phone?

[Mbk]

I've heard that term ever since I got my Droid, and more so after I joined this forum...
What exactly is considered a 'bricked' phone? I know that there are broken or fried Droids, but is that the only things that's considered bricked?

I always also considered it an unusable Droid for whatever reasons........ stuck on the M logo, unable to boot into recovery...no?
That happened to me in a situation and I mentioned it here, but was told that was not what is considered bricked....and that made me wonder what exactly everyone considers a 'bricked' Droid.

My Droid got stuck like that with no boot up and no ability to boot into recovery.
And how I got it back from that state was to connect it to RSDLite on my PC, then access it's bootloader and reflash SPRecovery, then copy over an Update.zip ROM onto my SDCard manually so that SPRecovery could have something to flash with....

Anyways, I've seen that 'term' used over and over again, but it's obvious that different members have different ideas of what 'bricked' really means...

what say you guys... I'd like to know what members think bricked means.

 

[Corinacakes]

Bricked means it will NOT TURN ON. It's essentially just a "brick" with no possible way to recover.

 

[Mbk]

Bricked means it will NOT TURN ON. It's essentially just a "brick" with no possible way to recover.

I know now since you told me that's what bricked means, but I wonder if everyone thinks that as well.... or like I was thinking before which included unbootable Droids?

Anyways, it'd be good to clarify for everyone....

 

[titans]

Corina stated it perfectly. It won't do anything, it's a brick. Won't turn on, won't go to recovery, doesn't work with RSD, etc.

 

[JCo352]

Bricked means it is essentially a brick, or a paper weight. It won't do anything, and there is no coming back. In other words, if your phone is working now, it was never a brick, because a brick can never work again. Hope this helps.

 

[Tallica]

You have a bricked droid ONLY when you can't boot into one of these 3 things:

1. Your current Rom
2. Your recovery
3. The bootloader screen

If you can get into one of these then your droid is not bricked, and you will probably be able to fix it.

 

[christim]

Bricked is permanent, like death.

You don't un-brick a phone. If you do it never was in the first place.

You may think you have bricked your phone but usually you have not.

The term is also usually reserved for when you are doing something to it, software wise, and you screw it up.

Drop it in the toilet and it is fried. It may never turn on again but we don't tend to call it bricked when that happens.

Also, if you run over it with a steamroller then we call it crushed, not bricked.

I suppose if you drop something heavy on it and break the screen you could call it hammered.

 

[thinkmega]

what are the reported scenarios caused the phone bricked?

I've played with different ROMs but each time I do wonder if the bootloader will come back ... Knowing the causes help to steer clear.

Thanks.

 

[Tallica]

what are the reported scenarios caused the phone bricked?

I've played with different ROMs but each time I do wonder if the bootloader will come back ... Knowing the causes help to steer clear.

Thanks.

I'm sure there are ways to brick it by screwing with the software enough.

But I know if you are flashing an .sbf and you unplug your phone before it's done, that's a good way to do it!

 

[Dave12308]

Also, if you run over it with a steamroller then we call it crushed, not bricked.

Well then, here's the question......

If I mixed the crushed pieces in with a bunch of clay, formed it into a rectangular shape, and fired it in a kiln..........

Could I then call a device run over by a steamroller "bricked"?

 

[christim]

If you went to that sort of effort then yes, we would let you call it bricked.

However...not true without pics!


And yes, unplugging your phone half-way through a SBF flash that is replacing all software on your phone....rom, boot-recovery tool, etc. That is just a bad idea.

 

[thinkmega]

A few days ago (seems a long time) when I tried to flash SPRecovery_ESE81.sbf to my phone, the process ended in failure as per the message I got on the screen. Stun and confused, I pulled the battery out...

When I tried the process the 3rd time (the 2nd ended the same) on a laptop, it worked.

What might have caused this? The PC I used to flash the first two times is a 486 2.66G built in 2003. I suspect the BIOS might be too old to work with nowadays gadgets.

We experienced a power outage next day, luckily during that time I was not doing anything with the phone.

Ever since I use laptop to flash and make sure both are fully charged first.

One thing I am always uncertain is the quality of either Clockworkmod or SPRecovery.

When using these programs alone, they appear to be stable. However, the restoration process was hang when using SPRecovery, which was flashed by ROM Manager. What to blame? Nothing. These are the tools we have today and it is the risk associated with the adventure.

Maybe I should learn to enjoy the new features more as opposed to digging deeper what else I can do.... I bet there are a lot of customization if I knew how. ....At the end, the update to 2.2/root has served me well.

 

[Se7enLC]

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/hacking-help/21433-i-bricked-my-droid.html

 

[TuBitMittens]

I JUST HAD A FCKING HEART ATTACK A MINUTE AGO...I have a BB and I'm tryna figure out how to install these cusom themes...and well my phone was stuck on the motorola logo. *PANT PANT PANT* LMAO...

 

[Mbk]

Lmao guys..... we got a bunch of comedians eh??? ...lol
Well I guess that I can never really consider my Droid bricked then since I can pretty much rec@over it from any state other than an outright hardware failure, and even then I'd try to fix that as well..lol... so it appears that I had too broad a view as to what bricked could mean...... ;p ...thanks for the feedback guys.

At least now newer members can see that our Droids can be revived from almost any state..... where as before some considered their Droids bricked when failing to boot up because they didn't know how to use RSDLite or recoveries........and now they know...lol

OK...then my Droid was 'almost' bricked when trying to customize a forbidden ROM...lol

Have a good one guys