Some models of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus are reportedly suffering from severe bugs that cause them to completely freeze and reboot at random. According to several members of the XDA Developers boards, some models are apparently showing graphical glitches for a few seconds along the bottom of the screen and then rebooting, while others are freezing up entirely and becoming completely unresponsive and unable to be woken up in any way. Most users reporting issues like these are coming to the conclusion that they have something to do with the biometric sensors of their devices, with some users even claiming that having multiple modes of biometric authentication turned on at once make crashes more likely. The phones’ handling of MicroSD cards is also being pointed out as a potential culprit behind the issues. For now, users that contact Samsung about the issue are being told to return their units to their retailers.
Some users are reporting as many as seven reboots in ten hours of using the device, and many others are claiming that the issue is persisting across replacement units. Samsung has yet to make any sort of statement on the matter, leaving users to seek help on Samsung’s forums. Owners of the new devices there are claiming they’re experiencing multiple reboots on a daily basis. Some people are speculating that the clock and weather widgets are causing the defect, and even the popular Lookout anti-malware app has been highlighted as the potential cause of the problem. Other possible fixes, according to users on XDA Developers boards, include doing a hard reset of the handset out of the box before setting it up properly and wiping the phone’s data through the recovery menu.
The bug outlined above is not the only one that the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus buyers have recently complained about. Some owners of the new flagships are talking about issues like the biometric authentication feature not working and the phone becoming sporadically unresponsive or overheating for no apparent reason. Thus far, Samsung has issued a fix for an issue that made some devices unusable due to a looping force close message and helped users whose screens displayed an overly reddish hue.