How many of you have bricked a phone while flashing a cutom ROM

[rituraj]

So a bit of a context here...

I have a galaxy note 2 purchased back in 2013. It served me well for 2 and a half years before 'dying' one day. It would not start or charge at all. I don't blame the phone for dying. It dropped several times and Many a times I slept on it. So a hardware failure was likely.

The service centre here in India told me that it will cost me about $120 (Indian Rs. 8000) for a motherboard replacement. I didn't think it was worth it so just kept the phone as it is and bought a new cheap smartphone for nearly $100 (Rs. 6600, No carrier contracts like USA are available here). But as sometimes I really miss the capabilities of the note especially the S-pen, I am planning to revive it as a consumption device and keep the cheap one as the primary phone. As I will consider it as an 'expendable' device now, I am ready to take risks and thinking of flashing ROMs every now and then.

So as the title says how risky is it to flash a custom ROM if I follow proper instructions and use only proven and reliable (based on popularity) ROMs?

Also is it worth it to spend on a device that old? My requirements are not that demanding. Just want to browse web, play a couple of games, (it played Real Racing 3 pretty well) and instagram/facebook. I dont want to get a mid range phone that does not have a stylus and the newer notes are way too expensive when I can repair my old one.

 

[gorcorps]

I don't understand the 3rd option... a bricked device is unrecoverable, otherwise it's not "bricked"

The closest I ever came was with the original Nook color. I don't remember how, but I completely hosed it up and it took a while to get it running again. The only thing that saved me was a decent community, and some tools that let me get a bootable image on the SD card. If it didn't have an external SD card slot it would have been bricked.

Have you looked into how much a replacement device would be? The note 2 is quite old so I imagine you could find one for close to the same price as the motherboard. Either way it should be safe enough to try to modify. Just ensure you're using ROMs for your model (Samsung is notorious for releasing multiple models around the world with slightly different internals, so just make sure)

 

[Raduque]

Option 3 is generally called a soft brick. Almost very type of software caused brick is recoverable.

Only a hardware failure generally causes a true hard brick - such as when the NAND died in my old T-mo G2.

 

[jhu]

I don't understand the 3rd option... a bricked device is unrecoverable, otherwise it's not "bricked"

The closest I ever came was with the original Nook color. I don't remember how, but I completely hosed it up and it took a while to get it running again. The only thing that saved me was a decent community, and some tools that let me get a bootable image on the SD card. If it didn't have an external SD card slot it would have been bricked.

Have you looked into how much a replacement device would be? The note 2 is quite old so I imagine you could find one for close to the same price as the motherboard. Either way it should be safe enough to try to modify. Just ensure you're using ROMs for your model (Samsung is notorious for releasing multiple models around the world with slightly different internals, so just make sure)

Almost all "bricks" can be recovered via JTAG as a last resort (eg flashing a Samsung ROM onto an HTC device). But that requires cracking open the device, finding the JTAG headers, soldering, etc. In my opinion, third option is for those motivated enough to do all that.

 

[VashHT]

I chose option 3 for a G2 that I managed to get working again but thought was bricked for a couple weeks. It wasn't specifically flashing a ROM that did it, there was a bug in the custom recovery that people were using that messed up the partitions on the phone and screwed up the "download mode".

Anyway my phone tried to download and install an OTA update which screwed up my phone since I had a custom ROM, couldn't get into recovery and download mode didn't work so I had no way to just flash the stock rom. I ended up getting lucky and finding someone had put up all the original partitions to flash, I went through and flashed each one and the phone came back after that.

 

[monkey333]

I wouldn't worry about flashing roms to to the note 2, I did it all the time. If you are new to it - read, read, read.

 

[sweenish]

Worst I had was a boot loop on my N7 2013 because I did stuff in the wrong order. Once I was able to get into recovery, I fixed it just fine.

 

[core2slow]

Yes, but i returned it to amazon (said it was the wrong color as advertised), got reimbursed, and purchased another one of the same color :sneaky:

 

[shortylickens]

Almost.

Droid. Put Cyanogen on it. Didnt like. Almost couldnt go back.

 

[Crono]

Never hard bricked a phone. Closest I've ever come is getting stuck in a boot loop once or twice, but always fixable.

 

[rituraj]

Thanks guys. I think I am just gonna get it repaired as the refurbished and second hand ones here in market will cost a bit more than the repairing cost. Anyway this is now going to be a play device for me, so not going to worry too much if something happens again.

 

[holden j caufield]

Boot loop on my nice Note 4 after flashing xposed framework. Could not get back to recovery, reflashed everything stock recovery, rom, kernel, baseband, bootloader many times and many different iterations. Then tried to flash twrp, philz recoveries, cf autoroot, roms, kernels everything I could think of in odin. Tried restore via kies and said it completed but was still in a bootloop. Just bought a brand new phone as I wasted a weeks time on it and at that point it costs me more money in opportunity cost that just buying a new phone. Was not happy.