Phone software updates are a good thing. In fact, they’re becoming a selling point for some high-end models, a welcome reprieve after years of manufacturers seemingly dropping support for phones after a year or two. But it’s a problem for everyone, as Samsung recently illustrated. Software updates for the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10 reportedly sent those phones into an unrecoverable “bootloop,” forcing owners to reset and lose their data.
Dozens of S10 and Note 10 (and at least one Galaxy M51) users on Reddit are reporting that their 2020 phones are continually rebooting after applying the update, never fully entering Android and thus rendering the devices effectively unusable . According to Android Authority, the culprit appears to be the latest version of Samsung’s SmartThings Framework software, although this has not been confirmed by Samsung itself.
So far, the only recourse available to affected users is to enter Android recovery mode and perform a hard reset (or “factory reset”) of their devices. This gets it back to working order, but then the user has to set up their phone again and any files or settings are lost. This is a nuisance at best, a disaster at worst, as encrypted photos or files on local storage are erased. Worse yet, the same update might appear and repeat the whole process.
This sort of thing is not uncommon with updates coming from phone manufacturers and software maintainers. We see this regularly on Windows. But a phone is much more personal and immediate than a PC: it becomes the primary device and vehicle for connecting with the web and the world at large for many users. A debilitating update from the people charged with protecting it will certainly cause some consternation. Hopefully Samsung can fix this issue as soon as possible.
