I am so happy to see a chor bazaar reference here. I got one of my antique SLR cameras from there!

Pretty sure this doesn't remove Activation Lock so it shouldn't make a difference

Bricked as in doesn’t boot the OS, not bricked as in unable to be activated.

Then it's not a brick.

Why is the term "bricked" in the first place?

Because of the utterly dead properties of a brick. The whole point was a visceral image of just how not remotely recoverable under any circumstances, vs merely a little extra effort can recover.

An unformatted empty computer with no os is not a brick in the same way a cd player with no cd inserted is not a brick. It's still fully functional.

Okay, fine, but you're replying in the wrong spot. The point being made here is the difference between broken and locked, regardless of whether it's a little broken or very broken.

No, this is not adding a new version of resetting a device, it's just providing a mode where if your phone is bricked you don't need to find a computer and cable to get back to a working state if you're with someone else who has an iPhone.

The thing the limits the resale/theft value of an iPhone is activation lock - not the ability to reset the device. Resetting or restoring an iPhone does not remove activation lock, and this does not change that.

India have a lot of carriers that don't care about stolen IMEIs?