Brick (electronics)

A brick (or bricked device) is a mobile device, game console, router, computer or other consumer electronic device that is no longer functional due to corrupted firmware, a hardware problem, or other damage. The term analogizes the device to a brick's modern technological usefulness. Bricking a device is most often a result of interrupting an attempt to update the device. Many devices have an update procedure which 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 which only plays DVDs sold in a particular region, can also cause bricking. Devices can also be bricked by malware (malicious software) and sometimes by running software not intentionally harmful but with errors that cause damage. Some devices include a backup copy of their firmware, stored in fixed ROM or writable non-volatile memory, which is not normally accessible to processes that could corrupt it. Should the firmware become corrupted, the device can copy from the backup memory to its main memory, restoring the firmware. Bricking is classified into two types, hard and soft, depending on the device's ability to function. Hard bricked devices generally show few or no signs of life. A hard bricked device does not power on or show any vendor logo; the screen remains turned off or blank. Some of the major reasons for hard bricking include installing firmware not intended for the device, severe physical damage, interrupting a firmware flashing procedure, or following a flashing procedure incorrectly. In the case of Android devices, some kernel bugs have been known that affect the /data partition in the eMMC chip, which becomes corrupted during certain operations such as wiping and flashing.