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Comment by orf | Hacker News Reader

Because if you go about flashing your phone willy-nilly and some bad firmware bricks the phone, it's not the manufacturers fault is it.

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Yes, if your firmware breaks the phone it won't be covered under warranty. If your phones hardware breaks, the firmware doesn't matter.

Of course the manufacturers, who have vested financial insterest, will make you think otherwise.

It's cheaper for manufacturers to blame non-official firmwares for bricking a phone and saying "I told you so" as a big fuck you

I'd argue that you have a hard time bricking a phone.

But even if you manage to do that somehow, that is a specific problem. Using a general statement like 'flashing voids your warranty' remains weird (and wrong imo).

"Stuffing your phone in your pockets voids your warranty. Because if you stuff it in your back pocket and sit down on it, hard, it's not the manufacturer's fault if the screen breaks. Is it?"

But you _do_ void the warranty if you break your phone when sitting on it. It's a specific action that does that, and it's not as simple as "only rooting your phone voids the warranty"

I.. think we agree? Are you just chiming in to support my position? Because I think that is what I wrote above. That was the point, I tried to answer the GP's 'if you brick it (by flashing it)..' line of reasoning with 'if you brick it (by sitting on it)..' and showing that there is no connection between flashing and bricking in general.

There's plenty of opportunity. For example, there are reports of flashing the wrong firmware (Galaxy Note) on a similar phone (Galaxy SIII) can lead to bricking touchscreen controller-

There's also plenty of opportunity to accidentally drop your phone in the loo. Common sense and being somewhat careful helps in the vast majority of things, flashing your phone included.

That said, even if you flash stuff without reading instructions or fully understanding what you do: Most errors I've seen are flat-out not working (software stating: "Can't do this, you're messing up") or recoverable/soft-bricks only.

(In the end it doesn't matter if you CAN kill your phone by flashing nonsense: That still wouldn't make a good argument for "Flashing voids the manufacturer's warranty". I'd just mean that those individuals who bricked their phone .. might not be covered.)

Since when is dropping your phone in the toilet covered under warranty ?

Apple added "been in water detection" to avoid payout on that very activity.

The thing is that if you drop the phone in the toilet you aren't covered but that doesn't mean that you void your guarantee by using your phone while you are there, for me that's the difference.

If I flash my phone and later some part of it breaks because it came bad from factory, that is independent of me flashing the phone and should be covered.

I never claimed that this was under warranty. I'm constantly trying to use this thread to kill any connection between 'rooted my phone', 'flashed a different firmware' and 'bricked my phone'.

GP replied to one of my posts, saying that there IS a real risk of bricking your phone when you flash it (I don't disagree, but consider it unlikely).

By comparing the process with a totally different ~real risk~ (phone -> toilet) I'm trying to drive the point home that it isn't a problem of either flashing your phone or playing some mobile game on that white throne of yours, it is a problem of being careless. Bricking my phone shouldn't be covered by a warranty. Flash or flush doesn't matter.

But trying to imply that the warranty is void because I installed software is overly broad and crazy: If I flash CM today and the phone dies in a month from now due (battery dead, hardware issues w/ screen or power button, antenna issues, pick anything faulty you had with a vanilla/unchanged handset in the past), then CM isn't to blame and my phone has a working warranty (for all I know, for all I care - and anything else seems completely unacceptable in my world).

It's possible, but rare. As an example, some Samsungs had faulty eMMC chips (used in the Galaxy Nexus, SGS2 and Note 1) and certain operations when installing custom ROMs (eMMC secure erase/wipe) would trigger the infamous BrickBug that crashes the eMMC chip from next boot on. The problem was faulty eMMC firmware that Samsung later patched but never acknowledged (it was discovered by reverse engineering [1]) and worked around.

[1] https://plus.google.com/+AndrewDodd/posts/Drq9uJbkGfq

Are you aware if eMMC firmware is signed?

Then it is your flashing of your phone willy-nilly and bricking the phone by doing that which might void your warranty, not rooting your phone.

Of course, this depends on the laws in your jurisdiction.

Yeah, I'm tired of using these proxies to unwanted behaviour when the behaviour itself is easy enough to see.

"What did you do that bricked your phone?"

"I flashed some custom firmware and stopped the flash mid-way"

"But how? All our phones are locked"

"I unlocked it"

"Aha! That is the real culprit!"

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