At that time, “Hard Brick” was getting used for the hardware was damaged
“Soft brick” was something like a boot loop where the device was unusable, but something like a DFU flash could repair (using DFU since every manufacturer had their own boot flash implementation back then)
At some point after that, people just went back to saying “bricked” for both
bitwolf@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Soft brick is like when you mess up fastboot and need to use Qualcomms tool to repartition and repair fastboot.
Generally you cannot do this, but the tool leaked for some devices, this it’s softbricked
ozymandias117@lemmy.world 1 year ago
QC uses the firehose protocol to load software that early, but that’s a good overview
The tools are generally available to flash, but manufacturers may not offer the next signed bootloader as something you can easily download (that one then implements fastboot)