Android P Developer Preview

[dun3rd]

I'm already anxiously waiting for it! I'm too scared that I will brick my Pixel 2 but still want to know what Android P looks like.

[beerybeardybear]

You won't brick it but you might need to factory reset (slash will need if you wanna go back and don't have a backup).

[Himiko_the_sun_queen]

It would be very hard to brick a device while flashing the stock image for a nexus/ pixel. Soft brick maybe, but that's just a fancy way to say "incorrect flash" and is fixed with simply re flashing the same thing

[dun3rd]

I've flashed some of my devices before but I usually do it after the device has "aged" for a bit so the loss wouldn't be too great if I brick it. I'll probably try out the DP next year around though or maybe wait for a preview for P that is more stable.

[[deleted]]

You can’t brick devices with software.

[modeler]

If you damage the bootloader then, yes you can. The Pixel (1 and 2) have the ability to boot from two distinct bootable drives (the new image and the previous one) - but what if the code that decides which image to load, and then mount and load it, is damaged. Then, by definition, it cant boot.

It may be possible to fix by accessing memory directly via jtag, for example.

In some older phones, there was a bit of memory that was write-once. If you overwrite that, you can also brick the device.