The word "brick", when used in reference to consumer electronics, describes an
electronic device such as a smartphone, game console, router, or tablet computer
that, due to a serious misconfiguration, corrupted firmware, or a hardware
problem, can no longer function, hence, is as technologically useful as a brick.
The term derives from the vaguely cuboid shape of many electronic devices and the
suggestion that the device can function only as a lifeless, square object or
paperweight. This term is commonly used as a verb.
For example, "I bricked my MP3 player when I tried to modify its firmware." It
can also be used as a noun, for example, "If it's corrupted and you apply using
fastboot, your device is a brick." In the common usage of the term,
"bricking" suggests that the damage is so serious as to have rendered the
device permanently unusable. Cause and prevention
Bricking a device is usually an unwanted consequence of an attempt to update the
device. Many devices have an update procedure that must not be interrupted
before completion; if interrupted by a power failure, user intervention, or any
other reason, the existing firmware may be partially overwritten and unusable.
The risk of corruption can be minimized by taking all possible precautions
against interruption. Installing firmware with errors or for a
different revision of the hardware, or installing firmware incompetently
patched such as DVD firmware that only plays DVDs sold in a particular region,
can cause bricking. Devices can also be bricked by malware
and sometimes by running software not intentionally harmful but with errors
that cause damage. Some devices include two copies of
firmware, one active and the other stored in fixed ROM or writable
non-volatile memory and not normally accessible to processes that could
corrupt it, as well as a way to copy the stored firmware over the active version,
even if corrupt, so that if the active firmware is damaged, it can be replaced
by the copy and the device will not be bricked. Other devices have minimal
"bootloader" firmware, enabled usually by operating a switch or jumper, which
does not enable the device to work normally but can reload the main
firmware. Types
Bricking is classified into two types, namely soft and hard, depending on the
device's ability to function. = Soft brick=
Soft bricked devices are generally those devices which show some signs of life. A
soft bricked device usually boots unsuccessfully and generally gets stuck
on boot logo, or reboots endlessly, or, while in operation, suddenly shows a
"screen of death". Some of the major reasons for soft brick are invalid or
corrupt firmware installation, flashing bad scripts, trying to root the device,
or flashing a custom recovery image to a device with a locked bootloader.
Some other reasons include invalid memory caches, malwares or wrong
read/write permissions. Some major bugs in Android smart phones have been
discovered that cause device to crash endlessly.
Device can recover from a soft bricked state by simply clearing all the
internal memory and flashing the firmware. Sometimes internal memory
partitions of the device require to be flashed again in order to recover device
from this state. The Kindle Fire and its successors show
a red screen while iOS devices show a completely black or white "screen of
death" showing only an Apple logo. The Moto G 4G has a complicated method
to install CyanogenMod 12 or any Lollipop based custom ROM coming from
the official KitKat firmware, which involved flashing a new recovery,
flashing a custom KitKat ROM, "dirty" flashing the Lollipop ROM and then
wiping. If a step was done incorrectly or skipped the device would be stuck on
a boot loop, softbricked, until fixed by following the steps again.
= Hard brick= Hard bricked devices are generally those
who show little to no signs of life. A hard bricked device doesn't power up or
show any vendor logo, basically the screen remains turned off. Some of the
major reasons for hard bricking are installing firmware not made for the
device, interrupted flashing procedure or following a flashing procedure
incorrectly. Some other reasons include flashing a
root file for a different file or using wrong commands. Some kernel bugs have
been known that affect the /data partition in the eMMC chip, which gets
corrupted during certain operations such as wiping and flashing.
Recovering from a hard brick is generally considered difficult and
requires the use of a more direct programming interface to the controller;
such an interface exists as there must be a way to program the initial firmware
on an unprogrammed device. However, additional tools or connections may be
needed. Unbricking
Some devices that become "bricked" because the contents of their
nonvolatile memory are incorrect can be "unbricked" using separate hardware that
accesses this memory directly. This is similar to the procedure for loading
firmware into a new device when the memory is still empty. This kind of
"bricking" and "unbricking" occasionally happens during firmware testing and
development. In other cases software and hardware procedures, often complex, have
been developed that have a good chance of unbricking the device. There is no
general method; each device is different. There are also user-created
modifier programs to use on bricked or partially bricked devices to make them
functional. Examples include the Wiibrew program BootMii used to fix semi-bricked
Nintendo Wiis, the Odin program used to flash firmware on Samsung android
devices, or the fastboot Android protocol which is capable of reflashing
a device with no software installed. A soft bricked rooted Kindle Fire can be
unbricked by using unrooting tools. Systems
In principle any device with rewritable firmware, or certain crucial settings
stored into flash or EEPROM memory, can be bricked. Many, but not all, devices
with user-updatable firmware have protection against bricking; devices
intended to be updated only by official service personnel generally do not.
Amongst devices known to have bricking issues are: older PCs, many mobile
phones, handheld game consoles like the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS,
video game consoles like the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, many SCSI
devices and some lines of hard disk drives and routers.
At least some older consumer market router models can become unresponsive
when the user tries to define a subnet mask that does not contain one
contiguous run of 1s and then 0s. If even a single bit is set so that it
breaks one of the runs, the router may become bricked, unresponsive to any
standard troubleshooting or resolving procedures listed in the manual.
Unbricking the router may require opening the case, shorting some jumper
pins on the board, then connecting the router by the USB cable to an old PC
with USB 1.1 hardware, running a special DOS level program supplied by the
manufacturer, and powering the router up. This procedure will flash the router
to factory settings and original firmware.
Electric cars such as the Tesla Roadster can brick if the battery is completely
discharged. Sometimes an interrupted flash upgrade
of a PC motherboard will brick the board, for example, due to a power
outage during the upgrade process. It is sometimes possible to unbrick such a
motherboard, by scavenging a similar but otherwise broken board for a BIOS chip
in the hopes that the BIOS will work even halfway, far enough to boot from
floppy. Then it will be possible to retry the flash process. Sometimes it is
possible to boot from a floppy, then swap the old presumably dead BIOS chip
in and reflash it. Online and mobile services
Many newer systems capable of accessing online services have internal
hardware-based unique identifiers, allowing individual systems to be
tracked over a network and banned from accessing certain online services.
Banned systems usually continue to operate for purposes unrelated to the
online service, but they are often considered "bricked" by users of the
online service. Mobile telephones have a fixed
identification code, the IMEI; a telephone reported stolen can have its
IMEI blocked by networks—effectively bricked—although anyone with the
necessary expertise and equipment can usually change the IMEI.
In 2011, US Senator Chuck Schumer proposed that phones be "bricked" when
reported stolen. Some local police chiefs agreed. In April 2012, the FCC
announced that the service would be available later in the year.
References