Sometimes, the rollout of an untested update can cause a lot of headaches. The effect of the “CrowdStrike incident” on millions of Windows PCs around the world was clear proof of that. Users of older Samsung Galaxy devices are experiencing something similar. Reports indicate that a Samsung system app update has left the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 series stuck in a bootloop.
A SmartThings app update is leaving Galaxy S10 and Note 10 series stuck in bootloop
Usually, OS updates are the ones that cause such severe problems. However, this time the root of the problem was a new version of Samsung SmartThings. The latter is an app for managing IoT devices and wearables from Samsung. In the last few days, platforms like Reddit have been filled with reports from users of older Galaxy devices warning about the problem.
It’s not just the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 series that are getting stuck in bootloop after the latest SmartThings update (v2.2.02.11, October 2). There are also users of models like the Galaxy A90 and M51 suffering from the same thing. Interestingly, the Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite don’t seem to be experiencing the issue.
If you’re facing the bootloop on your Galaxy devices, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that you can get it back by forcing a factory reset from the native recovery menu. The bad news is that doing so will delete all the content on your local storage. So, you’ll have to say goodbye to everything you don’t have backed up in the cloud or somewhere else.
You should disable automatic updates in the Galaxy Store right now
If you’re a user of an older Galaxy device and haven’t experienced the issue, you should immediately disable automatic app updates from the Galaxy Store. That should prevent your phone from suddenly becoming a brick without you even realizing it. Even if Samsung releases a fixed update for the SmartThings app, it won’t do any good to “dead” smartphones.
This isn’t the only issue Samsung has had lately related to updates. The company had to pull the One UI 6.1.1 update for the Galaxy S23 Ultra due to a degradation in camera quality.
