Comment by ponector
7 months ago
Hard to imagine unrecoverable device. Maybe physically melting it into the brick will do the job. In any other case it is recoverable: you can replace whole memory with a bootloader, other corrupted modules and recover device.
I think this may have more to do with a combination of insufficient imagination and fault-tolerant manufacturing.
There are plenty of devices that can be rendered inoperable via non-physical destruction. There used to be more of them, but manufacturers try to make it impossible because it’s a support nightmare.
I think of it as generally meaning "unrecoverable for the current owner" or "unrecoverable for the average consumer", not "even the manufacturer, with hardware access, couldn't find a way to factory reset this."