Getting your smartphone repaired can seem like a daunting prospect; knowing that your mobile – full of personal information and photos and sensitive apps – is going to be in the hands of a stranger for a time without you present.
And sure, the vast majority of repair specialists are trustworthy experts, but now Samsung phones are getting an extra feature that'll help ease your mind. This is called Repair Mode, and it's rolling out to phones from the company starting with the Galaxy S21 series.
When activated, Repair Mode lets you block access to certain functions or apps on your mobile – for example, you could lock off your social media accounts or gallery apps, so that they can't be accessed by strangers.
According to Samsung, once you trigger Repair Mode, your phone will reboot and “you won't be able to access your personal data, such as photos, messages, and accounts, and only use the default installed apps.”
This means you can hand your smartphone over to repair companies without either worrying about your information, or having to back up and reset your phone.
It's not quite clear when this update will arrive on users' devices and although we know the S21 series will be the first to receive the feature, Samsung hasn't provided a timeline as to when that mobile family, or subsequent ones, can expect to gain access to Repair Mode. That said, we expect Samsung is staggering its updates on a region by region, as that's common industry-standard practice.
Analysis: a good time to get a Samsung phone
Samsung has been surprisingly generous in 2022, with multiple updates bringing new features to its smartphones.
Sure, the company has a habit of bringing the latest functionality from its flagship phones to older models soon after launch, but we've seen more this year.
For example, the company recently launched the Photoshop-esque Enhance-X app, which lets you use AI to fix photos, even those you didn't originally take on a Samsung phone.
It seems that Samsung is taking a page out of Google's book, which has previously been good at bringing new tools and features to Pixel phones with its regular Pixel Feature Drops.
Because of this, and also because of Samsung's promise that its newer phones will get four years of software updates, now is a really great time to pick up a new phone from the company. We've got a list of the best Samsung phones if you want to peruse them, but our list of the best Android phones overall will help you check out Samsung alongside its rivals.
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