The pain of being “bricked”

When Apple’s iPhone was released, it was the buzz of the tech world, and much of the buzz focused on how to hack the it.  The phone came with service provider restrictions which many purchasers felt were unfair, so some ingenious minds got together and quickly figured out a way to modify iPhones to work with other cell phone companies.  Thanks to the Internet, detailed instructions on how to hack an iPhone were quickly available via a number of websites, and suddenly an awful lot of iPhone owners had modified, but working, cell phones.  And they were happy.

Jump ahead a month or so, and Apple made a new firmware update available for iPhone users.  A surprise was built-in for folks using hacked phones; once they installed the upgrade, their phone no longer worked.  The newly-born word for the phenomenon was “bricked”, which described how useful the upgraded phone was—it was just a big paperweight (one which cost $600).

Luckily, owners of hacked iPhones can breathe a sign of relief, as a number of new applications are trickling in, and all promise to make the phone useful again.  iPhone Atlas mentions one method, and ZDNet offers some other suggestions.  If you’re an iPhone user who didn’t hack your phone, and you want to be patted on the back for being so well-behaved, then the Macworld blog is probably right up your alley.  No suggestions on how to fix your bricked phone, but you’ll learn about how cool it is that you can shop on iTunes via WiFi.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 10/24 at 01:34 AM

Next entry: Pick your favorite viral video

Previous entry: Happy Birthday, iPod

<< Back to main