I have read that a certain version upgrade bricked some phones.
That's not true, it's not that any version is causing problems. If you have a defective motherboard, any stress on the motherboard can cause it to fail, of course performing a firmware update is stress, the Antutu test is stress, playing challenging games is stress.
If all this is ever done and the phone is OK, then there is a high probability that your motherboard will not suffer from this issue.