Phone software updates are a good thing. In fact, they’re becoming a selling point for some premium models, a welcome change after years of manufacturers seemingly abandoning support for phones after a year or two. But pobody is perfect, as Samsung recently illustrated. Software updates for the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10 reportedly sent these phones into an unrecoverable ‘bootloop’, forcing owners to reset and lose their data.
Dozens of S10 and Note 10 users (and at least one the Galaxy M51) on Reddit are reporting that their 2020 phones keep restarting after the update is applied, never fully getting into Android and thus effectively rendering the devices unusable. According to Android Authority, the culprit appears to be the latest version of Samsung’s SmartThings Framework software, although this has not yet been confirmed by Samsung itself.
So far, the only recourse affected users have had is going into Android recovery mode and performing a hard reset (or “factory reset”) of their devices. This will make it work again, but the user will have to reset their phone and any files or settings will be lost. It’s annoying at best, a disaster at worst, as photos or encrypted files on local storage are wiped out. Even worse, the same update can come through and repeat the entire process.
This kind of thing is not uncommon with updates from phone manufacturers and software maintainers. We see it on Windows a depressingly regular basis. But a telephone is much more personal and direct than a PC; it becomes the primary device for many users and the vector through which they connect to the Internet and the rest of the world. A grueling update from the people charged with protecting it is sure to cause some commotion. Hopefully Samsung can fix this sooner rather than later.