We've dropped our N900 several times and subjected it to a water test. The phone stopped working after the water test.. but 20 hours later, the n900 lives again!
I suspect the N900 can only be truly bricked software wise.. or if you run it over with a car... multiple times.
Really? Seems as there is some debate on that here
The only thing mentioned in that that *might* have an impact on hardware is the software fiddling with the bios and screwing up CPU voltage but as someone said there's usualy safe guards in place againts that. And even then i think its highly unlikely, like the probability of winning the lottery every draw for 50 years is probably more likely than that. In the case of the N900, i very much doubt it has a BIOS that allows for over voltage on the CPU ha. Imagine that, an over clocked N900. Battery life 12mins, clock speed 2.4GHz
Nokia warned devs not to run the N900 continually at 600MHz, that'll overheat it, so code definitely might damage hardware. It should hopefully shut down before the heat causes permanent damage, though.
I recently got an N900 and it is cannot be revived and only worked for 12 or so hours.
Been through all the very good and detailed advice on this site, downloaded the Flasher software and understand the approach to reinstalling the firmware but I simply cannot get the PC by holding the 'u' to see the device so I cannot attempt 're-flash' the firmware.
I prefer to view it as an expensive paperweight.
The technical support people I spoke to say that they are seeing over 5% of N900's being returned with this issue.
Typical of Nokia - the hardware always runs ahead and the software catches up.
I think the only way to "brick" the device is to overwrite the config partition (mtd1). The IMEI and WLAN MAC are stored there and probably cryptographically signed.
If the 'u' key does not work, I think there is one more way to recover the device - cold flash. You have to start flasher with the cold flash option, then remove battery from n900, connect it to the usb port and insert the battery. The OMAP processor contains the built-in ROM which is able to download code via USB. You cannot download any code, it has to be signed. I have not tried to cold flash yet, however I have been able to download the original bootloader using my own USB loader, so I think that cold flashing via USB should work, and some people here have reported a success.
