Sorry yesterday installing LineageOS because wanted to Android 10 and got tired of OxygenOS replacing recovery and root every time it updates...

The build failed and bricked my phone so installed Lineage Pie.... so same as before...

Then found out today there an app that will indeed OxygenOS 10 and for all future updates can auto install and keep root....

So now reinstalling OxygenOs...

@torbuntu what do you describe it as then? Screwed up?

@billgates typically you'd call a device 'bricked' if it cannot be fixed/reset/resurrected in any way anymore - eg: a rom flash fails, and you can't flash anything anymore because the device can't even boot up and respond because of the failed flash.
As torbuntu put it: the device basically becomes a dead, unresponsive, paperweight, and nothing can be done to bring it back to a working state.

@endor hm.... Well the only thing usable was TWRP which I happened to flash. Otherwise I think just the bootloader... Which I guess would still be ok since can use fastboot...

So not bricked but had to do a full manual wipe and reinstall everything... Now what's a shorter wired for that?

@billgates folks there'e something called soft brick and hard brick in flashing ROMs.

it's amusing and sad to read people's experiences about installimg "better" OSes, that are basically the same as my experiences with installing win95/98/xp 20 years ago.

i mean, yeah, getting away from big brother is a nice and valuable sentiment. but it would be nice to be able to do it because some of the alternatives are at least as not shit, as what the big brother provides, not DESPITE the fact that they're as shit as what not-yet-big-brother was providing 20+ years ago.

Soft brick: software is in an unrecoverable state (e.g. OS, recovery or bootloader won't boot until hard restart), until a new image is flashed. Or maybe the device is in a boot loop (infinite rebooting).

Hard brick: your device doesn't do anything anymore to the point that its only use would be to use it as a brick.

Your case was at worst a soft brick. Access to the bootloader or recovery means you can flash or boot images, wipe partitions, etc. (unless specific storage hardware is broken, which is highly unlikely given that you can boot to some partition).

@eeee
Nah bricks are much better than smartphones. Well unless you are using the 3310 nokia...