Newsletter
New reports are beginning to surface about possible issues with the 2017 edition of Samsung’s Galaxy A3 following the handset’s update to Android 8.0 Oreo. That’s based on Samsung community forum comments, with users of the budget-friendly device pointing to problems ranging from boot loops to the OS freezing. In fact, some users are describing their newly updated smartphones as “unusable” because of those issues and problems with battery drain. Those are obviously going to be problems for those using the device on a daily basis but the underlying cause is much more difficult to pin down. In some cases, the issue arises when users attempt to connect to a Wi-Fi network and reportedly only on specific networks in Europe – namely Eduroam Wi-Fi networks. Other users are reporting frequent app crashes and a maximum battery life of only a few hours.
Perhaps worse, a complete device reset, including a factory reset, doesn’t appear to mitigate any of the ill-effects that seem to be stemming from the firmware update. So it’s entirely possible the company will put a stop to the rollout at some point while the bugs causing problems are identified and fixed. In the meantime, the problems don’t appear to differ too much from prior issues Samsung and several other companies have been having with its Oreo updates. Android 8.0 changed quite a lot of Android’s under-the-hood optimizations related to OS management and battery. Those changes have taken a toll on OEMs trying to get updates out quickly since most Android manufacturers utilize their own software on top of the OS and that requires further optimizations and changes.
Samsung has yet to respond officially but moderators are requesting further details from anybody suffering problems following the update. Bearing that in mind, it may be a good idea for users who have not received and installed the update yet to hold off. As mentioned above, Samsung has been relatively quick about halting updates and re-examining the firmware for bugs. Once those have been sorted out, new firmware should be pushed out in short order.