Don't offer me advice, give me money - Spanish proverb
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Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 update is bricking encrypted devices
THE INQUIRER has learned that developers who chose to encrypt the Galaxy Tab they were given at Google IO are having problems after an over-the-air Android update. It's a pretty serious problem that is rendering the 10.1in device unusable.
Samsung has since published a web page that urges owners of the Google IO edition Galaxy Tab to remove any device locks before they perform the update. However this information wasn't made available in advance to people who accepted the over-the-air update and no warning was given. The first clue for affected developers will be when their device changes from a sexy tablet into a useless wedge of plastic.
The developer who tipped us to this issue thinks the problem lies with the update not preserving the encryption seed. Although it's not possible to know that for sure, it's a pretty decent guess from someone who has a good understanding of Android devices.
Unfortunately, the best owners of the 10.1in tablet can hope for now is an update that lets them back into the device. Their data is going to be impossible to recover in its encrypted form. Even if Samsung could push an update to reverse what it did to break the devices it's unlikely that the data can be decrypted.
On the plus side, the device's download mode is working, so once Samsung gets around to letting affected users have a copy of the firmware a recovery will be possible. Our contact is trying to get hold of the firmware at the moment, but so far Samsung has not been forthcoming.
We asked Samsung for a comment, but it had not responded by the time of writing. If the company responds, we'll post an update. µ
Tags: Hardware
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After update which reported successful! Now unusable.
Device just loops around startup screens and can't be switched off. Not bad for £500 .!
Damn - June 23 Samsung should have raised awareness since June 10.
Four days and still nothing from Samsung. Like Andrew said, the company's developer contact is no longer responding to tweets or DMs and hasn't said anything else publicly. The company hasn't even acknowledged this as an issue and won't even say if they're working on a fix or if a fix is even possible. That's all I'd like to know so I can decide if I should go ahead and factory reset and lose some files I'm trying desperately not to lose.
Yes, we all got these things free at Google I/O and the number of people affected is incredibly small, but you'd think a company that has made renewed efforts to reach out to developers would at least communicate with us honestly...and quickly.
And the previous password does not work.
The XDA forum talks about a different problem.
Why did I think that they did the QA properly when even the 3.0 version hangs the entire device now and then.
XDA has a solution to the issue: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1119492
I was able to get my back up and running.
Oh, that really sucks for both parties involved. :|
I've tweeted the support contact for this specific device. At first he was very quick to DM a response, but I haven't heard from him since describing the problem to him. I really hope this gets resolved soon. Shame on them for not testing their own update.