I don't think I've ever truly "bricked" a iPhone, or got one to the point it CAN'T be put DFU mode and restored. Cydia tweaks made it sound like one wrong move could render your device permanently unusable, at most it was a inconvenience.

You can very easily brick an iPhone by logging in to an iCloud account and then forgetting the password (which of course TFA will not help with)

if you go into an apple store, they can fix that for you. might help if you look... i dunno, middle aged?

Does it still work if you're not the original retail customer?

i was not the original retail customer, it was a phone used by a small business that I had owned, the employees were not good about keeping track of stuff like that, they'd use their own personal deets to sign up for business things all the time.

my point was that there was not "official" procedure to verify, I told him the story, he believed me, and went in the back and reset the password or something. They have the capability if they want to. He was a manager I think, and I didn't get to him through the reservations queue, I just walked up to the counter to find out if this was the place I should go, and after I asked my question he took an interest and solved the problem for me.

Did you have receipts or any other way to prove that you/the business you owned purchased the phone?

semi-brick

Brick Different!

Keep trying to de-dramaticize language, you'll get there!

Seriously though, the last time I truely bricked something was because I overwrote the bootloader on a chip that had no other way to flash, and it was an all-in-one, so I couldn't solder to the chip and reprogram it directly. Now that was a brick. A board that I can still solder to a chip and bus pirate my way to victory, isn't a brick. Being able to do so wirelessly? psh.

Edit: I'm remembering now, that hardware was an Apple keyboard. I wanted to flash the firmware so I could have capslock be left Ctrl in hardware, but I flashed the wrong thing and then could not flash an updated image to it.

> I wanted to flash the firmware so I could have capslock be left Ctrl in hardware

You're a person after my own heart. If there is a God, you're doing his/her/their work.

What was the hardware and firmware you were flashing?

Why have three Ctrl keys? Why not use an empty modifier and have your own shortcut keys that you can guarantee no other program uses?

> Why have three Ctrl keys?

You could just swap caps with one.

> Why not use an empty modifier and have your own shortcut keys that you can guarantee no other program uses?

Because that would require messy tinkering with multiple layers of software.

From memory, Linux has spare modifiers. You can see them using xmodmap. It's easy to assign shortcuts using them.

It was one of those wireless Apple keyboards, and I thought I had the settings right, but it turns out I didn't.

Everything is a brick until you figure a way to fix it.

I thought I bricked my old phone but it turns out I just needed to open the phone, short a couple of pins 5-10 times and trying to quickly boot into flashboot, repeat if it didn't work.

It turns out I was a fool thinking that it was bricked after all.

Sure, but shouldn't there be a minimum standard like "the built-in and well-documented recovery process failed?"

Depends on where this process is well-documented: if it is available on iFixit or somewhere super obvious but if I've got to go to xda or some Russian hacking forum, download a bunch of files strictly internal to the company and hope someone made a video about it, then it doesn't matter how "well-documented" it is.

Also it's basically the core of the highly-paid tech expert meme "not paid for turning the screw but to know which screw to turn".

If the issue is not easily troubleshootable and searchable then the keyword for it if the device doesn't reach stage X of boot will always be "bricked".