Is it possible to hard brick a razr?

[joemcp]

Hey All,

I've got an upgrade coming up and I was leaning towards as Galaxy s3, however after reading about rooting and romming it I see that its possible to hard brick one by messing up the boot loader. You would need to ship it out to get it fixed.

So for the razr is it possible to hard brick it or is there ALWAYS a way back? I've done some research but I can't find an answer.

Thanks!

Joe

 

[jpcalhoun]

Hey All,

I've got an upgrade coming up and I was leaning towards as Galaxy s3, however after reading about rooting and romming it I see that its possible to hard brick one by messing up the boot loader. You would need to ship it out to get it fixed.

So for the razr is it possible to hard brick it or is there ALWAYS a way back? I've done some research but I can't find an answer.

Thanks!

Joe

Nothing is impossible, lol. Even an experienced, very knowledgeable "hacker" can accidentally do something that he/she knows is wrong and brick their phone. Once you start "hacking" the manufactures safeguards/locked components/partitions etc there is always a chance you flash something or change a setting that will result in a non recoverable phone...hard brick. Rooting and flashing roms is generally regarded as safe for users that have done their research. Just finding a thread and a link in a forum for a "one click" root process IS NOT doing research. Most user who get into trouble are those who were trying to do something they knew nothing about and didn't know how to recover when something went wrong...and it will go wrong from time to time for a multitude of reasons.

 

[joemcp]

Yup I have been rooting and romming since the OG droid. I could have sworn that some phones were unbrickable. Like for the OG Droid the SBF process overwrote everything so you always had a failsafe. With the Galaxy S3 there seems to be a couple diff situations... one is fixed by a hardware "dongle" and the other has to have someone mess with the mobo.

Just wondering if the same thing exists with the razr or is there something like SBF that would fix most anything.

Thanks,

Joe

 

[jpcalhoun]

Yup I have been rooting and romming since the OG droid. I could have sworn that some phones were unbrickable. Like for the OG Droid the SBF process overwrote everything so you always had a failsafe. With the Galaxy S3 there seems to be a couple diff situations... one is fixed by a hardware "dongle" and the other has to have someone mess with the mobo.

Just wondering if the same thing exists with the razr or is there something like SBF that would fix most anything.

Thanks,

Joe

There is no sbf for the Razr. There are the Fastboot files and as long as you can boot into bootloader then you can use adb/fastboot commands to flash/push etc files to your phone. But, if you can't get to the bootloader then you are screwed...and that can happen in extreme cases.

 

[joemcp]

Ah so it's the same for both.

Thanks for the help!

 

[JohnFH]

Thanks, jpcalhoun! Your detailed explanation helped me as well.

 

[jpcalhoun]

Ah so it's the same for both.

Thanks for the help!

The RazrUtility available at in the "sticky" at the head of this subforum is a great way to root your phone, install safestrap and return your phone to stock if you need to do that. It is safe, easy to use and is probably the best way to "hack" your phone. Many users find it to be the "must have" utility if you're going to root, flash ROMs, flash themes etc. The only trick, and it's not really a trick, is that you need to follow the instructions for setting up the utility to a "T" which means you have to extract the utility to its own folder on the c:\ of your PC and you have to have the Moto drivers installed on your PC (the drivers are in the utility). The utility uses the adb/fastboot commands to perform the actions (root etc). It's a safe and easy way to "hack" your phone if you're not used to using a command prompt and adb/fastboot commands. But, nothing takes the place of doing research about root, fastboot, flashing ROMs, recovery etc. The other important thing to come to grips with is...what is it you want to accomplish by rooting? Rooting by itself does absolutely nothing for your phone...it won't get better battery life, it won't work faster and it won't improve anything...nothing. It is what you do after root that can make the difference.