Complex animated SVG is fun to roll until you get into the weeds of SMIL and Safari bricks your phone for missing a leading 0 on a float or some random nonsense.
"bricks"?
It's slang; picture a literal brick (akin to a rock or stone). Your device is "bricked" if something has rendered it useless.
I think GP is suggesting that the idea the GGP encountered an SVG that bricked their iPhone (without being a specifically crafted exploit payload) is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence.
Also easy to interpret generously as hyperbole.
Especially if you know how easy it can be to accidentally do something that works fine in other browsers but makes Safari kill the tab.
Doesn't actually brick the device but a fairly hard failure in the browser.
GP was right. I was pretty sure your interpretation is correct, but I've seen enough things over the years that I was curious if there were any more details about actual bricking.
I've always thought the word 'bricked' as more akin to 'turning the phone into a useless brick'.