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Samsung has now removed the April OTA update for the Galaxy S20 Ultra. It appears that the firmware was pulled after the company’s website was flooded with complaints regarding bugs.
The update can neither be downloaded over the air nor via Samsung’s Smart Switch software any longer.
Since only Galaxy S20 Ultra seems to have been affected, the firmware is still available for the Galaxy S20 and S20 Plus models.
In a statement to SamMobile, the company said its aware of the issue and working on a fix, which should arrive soon.
Samsung says that the problem affects a very limited number of Galaxy S20 Ultra units. What it failed to mention though is that the problems seem exclusive to the Exynos variant.
Customers are already quite vocal about their dislike for the Exynos silicon owing to its poor performance when compared to the Snapdragon 865. However, Samsung remains adamant that there are no discrepancies.
Regardless, the new incident only goes on to strengthen the evidence that this perhaps isn’t the case.
The firmware version G988xXXU1ATCT was not received well as it led to various problems. Chief amongst them was an annoying green tint that affected numerous apps including Camera, Samsung Pay, Telegram, Chrome, and PUBG: Mobile.
The green tint crops up when the refresh rate of the Galaxy S20 Ultra is cranked to 120Hz and brightness is kept below 30 percent. Thus, it’s possible to fix this issue by increasing the brightness or lowering the refresh rate. But of course, users aren’t happy with this supposed workaround. After all, it should be up to a user to decide how much brightness they want. The problem also pops up when the battery is at 5 percent of its capacity.
April Galaxy S20 Ultra Update also affects charging speeds and camera
The green hue isn’t the only issue. The firmware has also slowed down fast charging speeds. Moreover, it has also brought with it camera quality problems. Funnily enough, the update was actually supposed to improve the camera.
In short, it’s a mess and makes you wonder how it was rolled out in the first place. The Galaxy S20 Ultra is a premium, pricey phone. You’d expect Samsung to at least run some quality controls before deploying an update.
But then again, these types of issues do happen sometimes. And the good news is that this isn’t a hardware related problem.
However, it does seem to be connected to a hardware component, namely the in-house Samsung chip. This isn’t a good look for a chip that’s already receiving criticism for power efficiency and autofocus problems.
It seems like Samsung is well aware of the fact that its Exynos chips are not at the same footing as their Snapdragon counterpart. And with each subsequent generation, the gap seems to be widening.
Thus, the company really needs to do something about the issue. Hopefully, these mistakes ill not be repeated with the upcoming Note series flagship. Otherwise, consumers will be tempted to switch to rival offerings