# hard brick vs. soft brick?



## dvader (Jul 3, 2011)

Can someone please explain "hard brick" to me on this phone?
I obviously understand what each is, but the "why" is what i don't get.

if a phone is bricked, why can't i just use ODIN and restore the samsung image?
what and why does it become "hard" bricked?

one would think that a hard ware sequence should put you in "download" mode so you can send an new image to the phone.
if not, why not? seems silly to make a phone that can die/brick and never be restored by techs


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## RMarkwald (Oct 19, 2011)

I look at like this:

If you flash a BIOS to your computer and something happens (corrupt, power loss, etc), the computer won't boot right? There's no magic button pressing that can restore it, and if it doesn't turn on, then the motherboard would need replacement.

If you flash something to your phone that is corrupted, run wrong commands to flash things (fastboot flashing the wrong images), or use methods like the new nvflash for the Transformer Prime, you can easily do the same thing to your phone. For example the Triangle Away method for this phone if it is not listed as working for your device, you run the risk of damaging the motherboard, so fixing that would require a motherboard replacement and/or JTAG to fix that.

I'm sure if it was sent into Samsung they could fix it, as they'd have access to tools/items that we don't have access to, or they'd just replace the defect parts and reload the stock firmware. ODIN comes in handy if you can get the phone to turn on and you have a jig with working USB port.


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## dvader (Jul 3, 2011)

thanks for the reply.. I guess i figure if i was designing a phone, i would have (on a ROM chip) that when powered on by a specific hardware sequence puts you into download mode and then everything would be flash able from that point. but what do i know.. lol


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## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

hard brick = can't recovery from anything short of a jtag rigging if that

soft brick = bootlooping


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## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

dvader said:


> thanks for the reply.. I guess i figure if i was designing a phone, i would have (on a ROM chip) that when powered on by a specific hardware sequence puts you into download mode and then everything would be flash able from that point. but what do i know.. lol


But that's too hackable for us (and malicious peeps), so they put protections into place to make that more difficult. Not that such a thing technically exists but there have been some devices that have been relatively hardbrick-proof. The Nook Color, for example. No matter how bad you screwed up the software on there, it was okay because it was programmed to ALWAYS boot from the SD Card first. Very handy for us rooters/rommers, but also very handy for somebody trying to do malicious things. Just imagine, all it took to gain FULL ACCESS to somebody's Nook Color was to write a few files to the SD Card, a permission that most apps that we install has.

So from a computing standpoint, you're exactly right. That would be a good idea. But when the manufacturers try to lock things down from both us and bad guys, well, things become more complicated. Throw into the mix DRM crap, and well, good luck!


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## tpike (Sep 8, 2011)

It's only hard bricked if you can't get into those boot options like recovery, download mode, or the always fun emergency download mode. Samsung is hard to hard brick. People freak out sometimes cause the Rom isn't booting and usb isn't recognized, but after reinstalling drivers you're back in business. What's funny is I've had some of our bone stock galaxy tabs at work boot loop, i fixed it by flashing a rooted kernel
I've even flashed kernels in the modem part of odin and still been able to get it back to stock. 
There is usually a way to recover.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Xparent ICS Tapatalk 2


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