Samsung Galaxy S3 Update May Fix 'Sudden Death' Problem

Samsung’s Galaxy S3 may have been voted "Gadget of the Year" by some critics, but even the best come with certain flaws. Owners of the device have been complaining of a “sudden death” glitch that has caused the Galaxy S3 to completely stop working, and now Samsung is rolling out a firmware update to address this concern.

At the end of December, a number of users reported that their handsets were bricking. This term refers to an error with a device’s firmware that causes it to crash and become completely unusable. On Dec. 27, a post from a Reddit user that has since been removed sparked conversation about the mysterious problem. A thread over at the XDA developers’ forum, which was created in November, also detailed the issue. Titled “**Ultimate GS3 sudden death thread**,” the post read as follows.

“There are beginning to be a lot of threads popping up regarding peoples’ S3 just suddenly ‘dying,’” a user wrote in forum. “Some while charging overnight, others simply not turning on again after scree off. I’ve made this thread so everyone that has experienced sudden death cases on their S3 can post here and keep the forums cleaner. Also it is a lot easier to gather info and find similarities when everything is together.”

As of Wednesday morning, the thread reached up to 171 pages in length. Although the post dates back to November, it seems that these complaints have finally garnered some attention from Samsung. According to news blog Sam Mobile, the company plans to release an update to eradicate this error.

“Samsung says they want to bring an update as soon as possible,” Sam Mobile wrote.

The tip originated from Samsung Benelux, who told Tweakers.net that that Samsung is busy fixing this “sudden death” problem. The website did not specify when the company would roll out this firmware update, but simply acknowledged that the company is addressing the issue. The Next Web also reported last week that Samsung is replacing the affected devices under warranty, regardless of whether or not users have installed custom firmware. This is a significant move for Samsung, considering that it’s been a hard and fast rule that devices with non-standard firmware are automatically exempt from warranty coverage. This just does more to prove how serious this “sudden death” issue is for Galaxy S3 owners.

Samsung has been pushing out new firmware to its flagship device since the beginning of December, and perhaps this bug will prompt the company to roll out new updates more frequently. The Korea-based manufacturer began rolling out Android 4.1.2 firmware updates to the Galaxy S3 last month, introducing a list of brand new Premium Suite features. These new capabilities bring enhancements to the S3, such as multi-window support and the ability to set a Facebook news feed as the lock screen.

Samsung has not issued any public statements regarding this “sudden death” error, but these problems have not stunted Galaxy S3 sales. According to data from Strategy Analytics, the Galaxy S3 was voted as the world’s best-selling smartphone in November. The statistics indicated that the third generation Galaxy S phone accounted for 10.7 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012.