The headline is clickbait.

• Bricked = totally dead, no recovery without serious intervention; device is completely unusable
• Malfunctioning = buggy, slow, or misbehaving, but still fixable

like when an escalator breaks; its just stairs now.

(rip mitch)

HTC had quite a run there. I still miss my HTC One X, back when it was actually interesting to get a new phone. These days I routinely forget which iPhone it is that I have.