Samsung has gone overboard to urge Note 7 owners to return their flagship phones. The company is poised to push an OTA update for all Note 7s in the US with a new battery restriction that limits charging to a paltry 60% of its capacity.
The new update is also expected to throw up incessant reminders and notifications about turning in your phone to Samsung at the earliest. Although the update has already made some waves in Korea about a couple of months ago, the recent confirmation for the US-based phones only reiterates Samsung's commitment for customer safety as being of paramount importance.
Apart from the nagging reminders to return your phone, the impending software update will notify you with a flurry of warning messages while the device is plugged into the wall socket or booted up or when the screen turns on.
According to Samsung, around 85% of the total Note 7 devices in the US have been returned while the rest are still posing serious threat to the unsuspecting users. If the reduced battery capacity of the phone does not entice you to return it, you may be living dangerously with an actively-ticking time bomb that could go boom anytime.
In related news, T-Mobile has just started pushing the new Note 7 update with 60% charging limit on the ill-fated phone's battery. The OTA update is expected to hit your phone starting 12:01 am on 5 November.
It is still unclear if Samsung and T-Mobile would adopt the forced-update strategy without prompting explicit user consent or authorisation, before installing the new software on their phones.
Furthermore, if the Korean update is any indication then Note 7 users might have the manual option of pushing the battery-charging limits up to 80% via battery settings at their own risk.
Close on the heels of T-Mobile, we might expect other US cellular carriers to start pushing the new update in the coming days. Meanwhile, New Zealand has just imposed a country-wide ban on Note 7 across all of its mobile-service networks.
