What is Flashing a Phone ?

[Kvishal]

Can Someone here pls explain me what is Flashing in a phone, when someone says I am flashing my phone what does it mean ? When and why is it used ?

I dont mean using Flash light in the phone most certainly not !!

[gopi_vbboy]

its like for example u have a trial windows7 beta say

now all pf sudden with a crack u make it lifetime edition eleiminating activaion

then u said to have flashed windows 7


in that analogy...same way hacking phone os/files to get some extra features

[sriharsha_madineni]

^^
Flashing means nothing but upgrading/reinstalling your Phone's firmware. It's just like installing/upgrading OS on your PC.

Manufacturers release firmware upgrades to fix bugs, improve performance etc. from time to time. So you flash your phone with the required firmware.

May be the term flashing is being used because Phone's firmware resides on EEPROM which is a type of Flash memory, and hence the term FLASHING.

---------- Post added at 06:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:01 PM ----------

Originally Posted by gopi_vbboy

its like for example u have a trial windows7 beta say

now all pf sudden with a crack u make it lifetime edition eleiminating activaion

then u said to have flashed windows 7


in that analogy...same way hacking phone os/files to get some extra features

That would come under "UNLOCKING / MODDING" I guess , which of-course involves flashing sometimes.

[gopi_vbboy]

^^i know that was a analogy

flashing means actually to reprogram the phone firmware in exact terms not upgrading or reinstalling as u said

[sriharsha_madineni]

So If you say, I just flashed my 5800 to v5,
did you reprogram your 5800??

I know that is the dictionary term, but generally speaking...... I said upgrading/ reinstalling.

May be you forgot to mention the source
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flashing

its like for example u have a trial windows7 beta say

now all pf sudden with a crack u make it lifetime edition eleiminating activaion

then u said to have flashed windows 7


in that analogy...same way hacking phone os/files to get some extra features
__________________

So is this an analogy for flashing???

[gagan007]

well definition given by sriharsha_madineni is apt and appropriate...

[FilledVoid]

Flashing would be in other words said to be the process of writing the firmware to whatever device or piece of hardware you have,. It doesn't need to be an upgrade. Basically I could flash my htc Magic back to 1.5 if I wanted to. All you are doing is overwriting whatever firmware the device came with.

And the Windows 7 analogy would be kind of wrong since you aren't flashing anything. You are basically just pirating whatever version of Windows 7 you have on your hard disk. Unless of course it involves some thing you need to write to the BIOS D: .

On the other side I believe Jail breaking an iPhone (not sure since I dont have one and never be able to afford one) involves flashing or writing another Rom to an Android Phone, or changing your motherboards BIOS etc.