Brick

A brick may refer to any of the following:

1. A brick describes early cell phones invented by Martin Cooper and popularized in the 1990s. These cell phones were called bricks because of their size, weight, and because they resembled a brick you would find in a building. The picture shows how the brick cell phone looked. As seen in the picture, these phones are much larger than the cell phones used today.

2. The terms brick, bricked, and bricking also refer to a computer or hardware that no longer functions because of a bad update, most commonly a firmware update. For example, if someone did the wrong firmware update or didn't let the firmware update complete properly, the device being updated would no longer function.

These terms are also used when a company ends the support of a product reliant on servers maintained by the company. For example, when Spotify ended its support for Car Thing in 2024, a device that required access to a server. Ending support prevented anyone who purchased the product from continuing to use it because of its reliance on a server. In other words, the product became a brick that did nothing.

Cell phone, Computer slang, EOL, E-waste, Obsolete, Phone terms