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It will automatically fall back to the alternate partition set after failing to boot a certain number of times. The failure count is one of the values retrieved via `fastboot getvar all`. It will only be bricked if neither of the partition sets is working which is very unlikely.

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It's not possible to disable OEM unlocking via the standard interface until the bootloader is already locked, so you need to be able to successfully boot in order to do that. I think it's very unlikely devices are being bricked in any reasonable flashing / development workflow.

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Once the bootloader is locked, you'll be installing updates via update packages, either via recovery or a system update app. Those get installed to the alternate partition set and if they fail to boot a single time it will automatically fall back to the previous installation.

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No, you can't erase or format partitions with a locked bootloader. However, I'm extremely doubtful that this is actually happening. The device will not boot a single time with a modified system partition and locked bootloader. Locking the bootloader enables verified boot.

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In order to boot, it has to pass verified boot with either the hard-wired key or the custom Android Verified Boot key that was flashed while the bootloader was unlocked. I highly doubt that people are doing that. If it can't boot, how are they able to disable OEM unlocking... ?

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I've had a lot of experience with these devices and also with users making mistakes and then doing a bad diagnosis of what happened based on a lack of understanding and incorrect assumptions. Stock OS and AOSP don't support disabling OEM unlocking until the bootloader is locked.

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Bootloader locked implies a pristine stock OS or a custom OS with a custom verified boot signing key that has been flashed via a mechanism that was not even publicly documented or mentioned anywhere until we discovered it via reverse engineering and submitted the documentation.

11:42 AM · Feb 21, 2019Twitter Web Client

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That applies to both the Pixel 2 and Pixel 3 generations. A custom verified boot key must be flashed to successfully boot anything other than the stock OS with the bootloader locked. How could they boot a single time if they weren't? I think they misunderstand what happened.

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If you have anything other than the pristine stock OS and lock the bootloader without flashing a custom AVB key, it will not boot. You could call the inability to boot a form of soft bricking, but it's perfectly recoverable since OEM unlocking wouldn't have been disabled.

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