Software update renders popular Samsung Galaxy smartphone unusable, leaving customers with potentially high repair bills

[Tyson Gillis]

If I get ONE more "iPhone like" update....I'm going to get a Pixel or Google phone. I'm WAY to intelligent to carry an iPhone or ANYTHING similar

[Chris O]

I have an S22 Ultra

End of Oct it turned off whilst wireless charging in the car, then went in to a boot loop
I tried the advice of putting it in the freezer which did let me clear the cache but I took well over 100 more hard reset attempts to be able to wipe the phone
With the phoen wipes it carried on boot looping,  progressing to the welcome screen, shutting down and going again.

Having looked online and found a sea of users having the same problem, it was clear one UI was to blame.
I believe that power users are hit, as the motherboard gets cooked, mine is in the car on wireless charge, running an android auto app and providing a hotspot to the Tesla, for a 70 mile each way journey, it's been fine till they updated me.

I was in warranty and reached out to technical who are a joke, I spent 2 months trying to get the phoen sorted and when it finally hit her repair company who are a contracted agent in the UK then started another 2 weeks of them trying to change as by then the warrenry had expired.

I got extremely frustrated, with technicals low English and terrible response times not going it get sorted, I had to evidence everything, corrispondemce, proof of purchase etc to the management of the repair company.

Having returned a multip thousand pounds 65" Samsung OLED did to faults and also returning a £1500 sound bar as the rears kept disconnecting and it kept falling over attempting Atmos, combined with a mid range Samsung sound bar calling out lihdly and randomly "Network disconnected" which research shows to be another known fault, this will be my last Samsung product,  they are market leading but the warrenry, support and product reliability is pathetic.

Amazingly as a cover phone I used an old note 9 (the note 10 I had also went faulty) and it was great, it's smaller, lighter, apps work with the same pace, the very annoying WiFi to car constantly dropping on the S22 Ultra or refusing to connect at all was not a thing on my Note 9, in fact the other things that are better are display and camera and i'm not overly sure the extra weight and thickness are worth it.

I'll use this tell it does, then I imagine I'll move to Google, I know it's not as top end but they are all capable of doing what we need now and I'll favour reliability and some customer support ongoing.

[Sandra M]

I have the same problem. I have a Samsung Galaxy S22. My phone has never been dropped or has had any water damage. One day while texting, it turn off and started looping. I took it to the Samsung Store. I was told the mother board was no longer working. The repair cost was $500. I paid $1,400 for this phone, this is unacceptable. Samsung should repair these phones.

Never buying a Samsung again!!!

[TheMagicAnt]

That is a really crappy situation for you all as I type this from a Samsung S22+ with the culprit update installed and device working better than ever. Why do I say it this way? Because you all are blaming Samsung for an issue that belongs to your phone carriers. Their software is to blame for ruining your phone, not Samsung. How many of you are with a phone service provider that has undeletable software added to your device? I have not one piece of Meta's (Facebook) software on my phone and once I rooted every single piece of their data from my device, Samsung's true brilliance in device creation was unleashed! You see, Facebook and certain phone service providers deemed themselves more knowledgeable in how the inner workings of your phone should operate than Samsung; they are in reality, far from. Samsung believe it or not, not only knows best but offer a slew of features that those crap companies are suppressing and keeping from you because that means you will spend less time using their app and services. Facebook is the WORST about this and will have you believing that your battery is bad, processors have become slow, and have incompatibilities that are beyond repair. You fell for it. Let Samsung back in control of the very expensive device you bought from them and don't allow a 3rd party company tell you how to run software or how to fix it. Seems some software that isn't Samsung's has shut off your device's temperature safety feature. Did you even know that all Samsung products have that? I didn't until I ripped every byte of Meta software from mine. My phone now messages me and alerts me of the temperature being too high and then proceeds in remedying the situation all on its own because that's how Samsung created their devices to act! So no, they should not be paying for the fix they did not cause as they have it built into your phone to PREVENT this from happening. Maybe you should be asking Facebook as to WHY their software is turning this feature OFF on your device just so you stay on their app longer, endlessly scrolling until it literally melts your motherboard. Well that's my suggestion anyway in ways of assistance over your $1k devices that you allowed 3rd parties to destroy. I know I'll be off today getting lots of work done on my FULLY FUNCTIONAL and even faster than ever before S22+ and checking out Samsung's DEX software by turning this versatile device into a PC! I can't wait and expect to be wowed yet again by my 5 year old device. I hope you all can start putting your anger towards those that are deserving of it this holidays and don't let Facebook or other 3rd party companies to continue destroying your bonds by misplacing your anger at them like you have with Samsung.

[Hank68743]

Soooo you're saying that my s21 ultra refusing to allow me to do a software update for the last 3 years is a feature, not a bug?

[KennyD]

My S22+ was dropping to the lockscreen and bugging out the screen when using the back swipe gesture. Turning off "predictive back animations" in developer options seems to have resolved it.

[Damien]

If you put your RAM plus on 0(off), and allow unrestricted battery use of camera and one UI it seems to really clean things up...or at least it fixed my s22 ultra I've had since release day