It is inevitable for nearly all devices with heavy aftermarket development that the occasional mistake is made, and the user ends up with a piece of hardware that is as useful as a paperweight. As typical hard bricks are nearly impossible to fix without OEM support, a fully functional method to restore a device from such a situation is a pretty big deal. Fortunately, OnePlus smartphones earned a reputation of being almost impossible to brick, thanks to the easy availability of device-specific unbrick packages. The low-level flashing utility (internally known as "MsmDownloadTool") is quite a better and substantially less time consuming alternative than having to send your device to OnePlus or send it to a repair shop. And now, much like older devices from the company, OnePlus' official unbrick tool for the OnePlus Nord N10 5G has been popped up in our forums.
XDA Senior Member Some_Random_Username has provided a very well laid out guide on how to make use of the flashing tool yourself. Under the hood, the flasher utilizes the Emergency Download Mode (EDL) of the Qualcomm SoC for restoring the stock firmware. You will need to have a PC running Microsoft Windows 7 or newer, as the unbrick package isn't compatible with Linux and macOS. In case your phone doesn't show up in the tool, then you’ll need to download and install a compatible Qualcomm driver from Microsoft update server as well.
Download MsmDownloadTool for the OnePlus Nord N10 5G
If your OnePlus Nord N10 5G is already bricked, connecting the device to a USB port on your computer should expose it as "QDLOADER 9008" (or "QHUSB_BULK", if the driver isn’t properly installed) under Device Manager. To manually trigger EDL mode, hold down both volume up and volume down buttons, and plug the phone into your PC.
Apart from unbricking, the tool might also be used to roll back to a previous version of OxygenOS, which can really come in handy if an update is plagued with critical bugs. However, cross-flashing regional builds is no longer possible via EDL on the OnePlus Nord N10 5G, since the low-level firmware is now tied to the internal device region ID.