Samsung issued a software update on October 2 that bricked some older Galaxy smartphones. While Samsung has stopped the update from rolling out further, those with broken phones have received a harsh reminder of the importance of data backups.
On Wednesday, numerous people online started complaining about their Samsung phones being stuck in a bootloop (you can see examples here, here, and in newer comments here).
A Samsung spokesperson confirmed to Ars Technica that an update to Samsung’s SmartThings Framework app for managing smart devices caused the problems: