content: If an update involved a forced firmware update (or accidentally included one), then you might end up with a dead machine.  Considering the stunts that at least one company has pulled in this regard, which pretty much did ruin some hardware on purpose, this is hardly out of the question. Plus, with firmware being updatable in just about everything, no matter how ridiculous, and no such thing as a ROM actually being read-only anymore, it's not hard to see how an update could trigger something going horribly awry with a system.  TBH, I've been just waiting for something like this to fry specific models of some phone during an update, and I mean that as in literal hard bricking, because the bad update ended up destroying even the basic boot firmware, requiring an external reset of the flash memory chip.