It's fun to imagine a world where a lie like this could be a legal liability. I mean an actual court case, where evidence is brought and the claim is tested. "Is customer safety a higher priority than shareholder value?" and "why don't you support old devices" and then Samsung would need to produce internal evidence to try to make their case.
Nothing like that will ever happen, but I can dream.
literally the definition from there
> Puffery is undue or exaggerated praise
talking about yourself is not "praise"
I wonder if it can go as false advertizing, tho...
if you said your product is the best in the world that could be directed at yourself and still be puffery. advertising is expected and usually allowed to be inaccurate
We do them anyway.
> Under the federal Emergency Service Call Determination, all operators must block handsets that can't complete Triple Zero calls if they remain unpatched for 28-35 days after the first warning – a rule TPG says it followed.
How would you even begin to pin down what “customer safety” means here? Isn’t it very much in the spirit of safety to say “if it can call at all, it must be able to place an emergency call; if it can’t place an emergency call on the current emergency calling scheme, you have to prohibit all other calling too”?
Plus, safety from unpatched devices on the customers’ network is safety too, right? Would it be “safer” to force the system update onto handsets without letting the subscriber decide?
Plus, just because something is a “priority” doesn’t mean you’re good at it…
As it is everyone and everything are overly careful of saying anything that might have legal implications. One outcome of that are new laws that are almost incomprehensible.
And WHY could he not call emergency services if the phone worked for other calls? Shoddy reporting and, it sounds like, a shoddy system.
The telco's solution was to sell new phones to people, which a lot of people didn't do. Apparently all of these phones that still worked were flagged and blocked from using 4G but this apparently wasn't the case.
Now that should be illegal. It's absurd to think that everyone whose phone works just fine for regular calls is going to receive, understand, and heed upgrade messages. That's hugely irresponsible.
Furthermore, it looks like these customers may NOT have received any such messages: If the phone company could identify a user's phone as being out of date and send it an update warning, then that company could have banished it from its network. I see no excuse for what happened here.
I think a 7 year old phone has no reason to not be suitable to 90% of what people want from a phone (in my case it was 100%). Frustrating to see them abandoned by manufacturers.
https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/google-pixel/pixel-bug...
I was tracking that because I'm a pixel owner, though the one time I've had to phone I've not had an issue.
It plays everything below switch flawlessly. Even on switch it'll run literally everything I have thrown at it from BoTW to ToTK to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, albeit with poor performance. But lighter switch games like Super Smash Bros Ultimate or even the newer Super Mario Bros Wonder run flawlessly. Hollow Knight runs flawlessly.
I have an OLED steam deck, but I LOVE the portability of this phone. I play with it using the bsp d8 pro controller as well as the xbox series s controller using a magsafe case and a magsafe clamp that attaches to the controller. Phone works great for 3ds emulation as well.
Also the battery charges so quickly after a gaming session. It really is a wonderful gaming device.
It looks to me from the list that the newest device that needs replacement (vs updating) is a Galaxy S7, released 2017, which would be well outside the 5-year-extended-warranty period that seems to be the longest one they sell at your link, no? If I’m reading it right.
Now it feels like an afterthought compared to all of the redundancies they had put in place back then.
I experienced local POTS phone lines for something like my first 35 years.
Bad ice storms? Weeks-long power outages? Whatever; POTS didn't care.
The only time I ever picked up a real telephone at home and didn't get a dialtone, I wandered out to investigate and saw the wire for the house just laying there in the alley -- apparently, it'd been hooked by a passing truck.
They (The Phone Company) had it fixed within one hour after we let them know.
(An hour of downtime over 35 years. How many nines is that?)
Handset Manufacturer: "We strongly encourage customers
to keep their mobile devices updated with the latest software"
When manufactures say "We strongly encourage customers to update", we hear "To juice short-term shareholder value, our product will suck more than ever".
Wireless Telco: "Telstra also warned last month that older,
non-upgradeable Samsung devices could fail Triple Zero calls
Auto-call routing can fail if you're on one side of a regional border but are connected to a cell on the other - and local EMS can't forward calls to the neighboring EMS (or just suck at it).
I used to live on a border and local EMS was 3-digit only. The only way to call the correct EMS was to call their non-emergency number and get forwarded - but only after getting scolded first for not calling the 3-digit number.
I think there's a lot more code running on SIM cards these days to reduce/prevent that. On my Canadian Rogers phone, when I do a network scan, I don't see the american networks at all, but then when I put in a foreign SIM, they light up. Similarly, it can take a while of driving into the US before it detaches from the Canadian network and finally hands over to the US.
It was actually an issue with my French SIM that was supposed to work in Canada and USA: it REALLY wanted to connect to the US networks, even though I was ~10 stories up in Toronto and very occasionally getting an SMS through once an hour to the US network.
https://hackaday.com/2025/11/19/why-samsung-phones-are-faili...
In my view, they (the govt) either should have not gave permission on selling the devices who relies on having a 3G network for emergency calls for at least 10 years ago, or they should just have their 3G network operable for another 5 years.
For example, our country (South Korea) had 2G networks operable until ~2021, and are planning to have all of the 3G networks operable for the foreseeable future. It can be done.
(Ok the battery was shagged and it shut down once when it started to make a call, but it eventually worked)
With a couple of different carriers and phones I was never able to get voicemail working with an Android phone, maybe I could do what they say to activate my mailbox but next week I’d hear from people that they’re hearing a message about how “their voice mail hasn’t been set up yet” which is the same message I hear every time any friend of mine with Android doesn’t pick up. When I got an iPhone it was the first cell I had where voicemail worked at all.
I've owned several dozens of Android phones over the years and been with multiple carriers, never had an issue with voicemail. And no one should either, because it's got nothing to do with the OS.
drcongo•2mo ago
dietr1ch•2mo ago
seethishat•2mo ago
Under the Government’s Emergency Service Call Determination, all mobile network operators are required to block devices from their networks that are not configured to access emergency call services. If your device is on the list of impacted devices, you will have 28 days from when we notify you to update the software or replace your device to stay connected to the Telstra network. After this time, the device will be blocked from accessing all Australian mobile networks.
Can I still use my phone on my home Wi-Fi after it is blocked?
Yes. Your phone can connect to a Wi-Fi network for data purposes only. However, blocked devices won’t be able to make or receive voice calls over Wi-Fi, including emergency calls, or send and receive SMS.
https://www.telstra.com.au/exchange/older-mobile-devices-cal...
charcircuit•2mo ago
aaronmdjones•2mo ago
Emergency calling is supposed to work over any network (even without a SIM card inserted, much less an activated, registered, associated one), but only if the OS tries to dial it as an emergency call.
johann8384•2mo ago
dundarious•2mo ago
joshuaissac•2mo ago
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-22/samsung-mobile-device...
jerlam•2mo ago
sowbug•2mo ago
shkkmo•2mo ago
> Australian mobile operators and Samsung have identified a number of older mobile devices that will not correctly connect to an alternative mobile network to make Triple Zero calls when the customer’s primary mobile network is unavailable. These devices need to be updated or replaced to make sure they work reliably in an emergency.