Less than a month after the release of the Sprint HTC EVO 4G, many of the smartphone’s users recently found their devices rendered completely inoperable. That’s because a firmware update released by Sprint this week seems to have gone badly awry for an unknown number of the customers who installed it. For those customers, the firmware update has “bricked” their phones — a term not so affectionately used for phones that behave more like doorstops than multifunction communications devices. The screen is blank, the signal is gone, the phone is dead.
I bought my HTC Evo on launch day, June 4th from Best Buy. It was an upgrade from a 3-year old Samsung Instinct.
From the get-go, I loved my phone. It's processor speed, apps and camera are incredible. It was also the first Android phone I owned.
My Evo functioned beautifully for 3 weeks, and I was loving using it everyday. Then, on Monday, when Sprint rolled out the update, it was pushed to my phone twice. The first time, it was pushed, I accepted the update, and was actually in the process of installing the update when I noticed in the status bar that another download had started. When my phone started power-cycling as part of the update, it made it through the first power cycle, and during the second it simply never came back on. Dead... kaput...
Just to clear the air, my phone was unrooted and every app I had was from the Android market. My phone was brand new, and I didn't want to risk bricking it by rooting it, so I didn't muck around with it at all.
I have to admit that I'm getting a little angry at all the people on the forums insisting that those of us who got our phones bricked, it's somehow our fault through user error. I won't disagree with you that anyone who had their phone rooted knew that they were opening themselves up to risk. But there were those of us who simply got the update pushed through twice and got our phones bricked...
As it stands, it was a hassle to return my Evo back to Best Buy (although I was finally able to), but all of the outlets around my area are sold out completely with no clue when they're going to be getting more units in. So, here I sit, Evo-less with my old phone reactivated for the meantime while I wait and see how long it will be until I get another HTC Evo.
With a lot of this sort of stuff they need to rethink the concept and do something, like having a small amount of non-volatile ROM on the chip as a sort of 'boot loader', if you had to, it could detect/be reset in a way that would give you a basic working state, which could then be used to re-flash the firmware, in cases where you really fowled the thing. The silly mess where you can't redo such a thing, because the code to support doing it at all is part of the firmware you just trashed, seems, to me, to have some **major** drawbacks, to say the least...
I purchased my HTC EVO the day it was first available. I haven't rooted my phone and had no problems installing the update mentioned in this article, over-the-air.
Anyone who has experience rooting devices, whether it be a phone or other device, knows they are taking a risk in "bricking" the device.
I would like to hear from folks who have installed the update, who don't have a rooted phone, in which the update has bricked their phone.
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Users Fume as Software Update Bricks Sprint EVO Phones
Posted by: Kimberly Hill June 30, 2010 07:00 AMLess than a month after the release of the Sprint HTC EVO 4G, many of the smartphone’s users recently found their devices rendered completely inoperable. That’s because a firmware update released by Sprint this week seems to have gone badly awry for an unknown number of the customers who installed it. For those customers, the firmware update has “bricked” their phones — a term not so affectionately used for phones that behave more like doorstops than multifunction communications devices. The screen is blank, the signal is gone, the phone is dead.
From the get-go, I loved my phone. It's processor speed, apps and camera are incredible. It was also the first Android phone I owned.
My Evo functioned beautifully for 3 weeks, and I was loving using it everyday. Then, on Monday, when Sprint rolled out the update, it was pushed to my phone twice. The first time, it was pushed, I accepted the update, and was actually in the process of installing the update when I noticed in the status bar that another download had started. When my phone started power-cycling as part of the update, it made it through the first power cycle, and during the second it simply never came back on. Dead... kaput...
Just to clear the air, my phone was unrooted and every app I had was from the Android market. My phone was brand new, and I didn't want to risk bricking it by rooting it, so I didn't muck around with it at all.
I have to admit that I'm getting a little angry at all the people on the forums insisting that those of us who got our phones bricked, it's somehow our fault through user error. I won't disagree with you that anyone who had their phone rooted knew that they were opening themselves up to risk. But there were those of us who simply got the update pushed through twice and got our phones bricked...
As it stands, it was a hassle to return my Evo back to Best Buy (although I was finally able to), but all of the outlets around my area are sold out completely with no clue when they're going to be getting more units in. So, here I sit, Evo-less with my old phone reactivated for the meantime while I wait and see how long it will be until I get another HTC Evo.
have not rooted my phone
I have had no problems updating my EVO OTA
I don't know any body that as not rooted there phone that has had a problem.
And yes people that root there phone know that thay stand a chance at bricking there phone.
Anyone who has experience rooting devices, whether it be a phone or other device, knows they are taking a risk in "bricking" the device.
I would like to hear from folks who have installed the update, who don't have a rooted phone, in which the update has bricked their phone.