They are not bricked, the update is just buggy. They will release a fix and you will have to put it on a USB and upgrade from that. Bricked means it is completely unusable. It is a sensationalized title.
Yeah, neither is good for PS3 owners, that's not in question here, but there is a big difference between being bricked and not.
From wikipedia:
"In one common sense of the term, "bricking" suggests that the damage, often a misconfiguration of essential on-board software, is so serious as to have rendered the device _permanently_ unusable."
There is, usually, no such thing as _permanently_ unusable. 99% of the time a bricked device can be recovered by reflashing a working FW through JTAG or equivalent. This needs a piece of equipment to do so, but so does online or USB flashing...
Wait for the company to realize what's going on. Wait for said company to release a patch to fix a problem that was obviously their fault to begin with. You face can return to it's normal color now. Jumping to conclusions like "SOL" is a bit ridiculous
edit:
I'll gladly take a downvote for this, you're talking about screaming at customer support and IM getting downvoted. Constructive group we have here.
This happened during another wave of bricked PS3's about a year ago. One year later - same shit is happening to PS3 owners, no real addressing of the problem happened.
My device has been stuck in a perpetual (failing) update loop like many others. No patch was ever released. There's no known way without specialized hardware (PS3Key) or out-of-warranty RMA. I don't want to invest in either solution.
My device does something similar. When a new update comes out, 95% of the time the update will fail. When that happens, it continues to fail no matter how often I retry.
Through much trial and error, I found a way to make the update work every time. This may look stupid, but I swear it works:
1. Try the update. It fails.
2. Turn off the console.
3. Take the hard drive out.
4. Turn on the console. It will fail to boot and shutdown.
5. Put the hard drive back in.
6. Turn on the console. The update will start again and succeed.
I have no idea why this works, it makes no sense to me. But it's been working this way without fail for a few years.
Thanks man. I tried this out to no avail. When I realized that I was faced with a hefty RMA bill, I tried both removing the battery and letting its settings RAM clear overnight as well as booting without a hard drive. Both had no effect unfortunately.
In my opinion, it's a poorly designed update mechanism that makes it prone to failure. There should be some redundancy built into the process so that the machine can always force itself back to a "known-good" state and at least access the recovery menu.
IANAL but I suspect the law would have been on your side in that scenario, if you'd been able to use it. Seems pretty clear-cut that they broke your device. The guarantee ought not to be relevant.
This depends on the jurisdiction. Consumer protection laws vary per-state in the US. Not sure what they're like in Canada, but you can bet Sony did everything they could to limit their liability.
Officially you are out of luck if it is completely bricked though for PR purposes, especially this close to a new product launch, they may far more generous than that.
The question was what happens if your device is bricked. Bricked means you are unable to even apply a patch and need to take the device in for servicing or replacement.
If you are able to apply an update yourself, your device is not bricked.