Samsung promises fix for 'sudden death' bug in Galaxy S III

Samsung will soon be issuing a software update to fix the 'sudden death' issue on the Galaxy S III, a report by Tweakers has confirmed. Samsung's fix will reportedly prevent the smartphones from "dying in the future."

Reportedly, some Galaxy S III units affected by this issue suddenly gave up on life, obviously causing much inconvenience to owners. Samsung is said to be aware of the bug and has maintained that only a "very limited number of handsets" with 16GB memory have been affected by the bug. The company spokesperson Anne ter Braak told Tweakers that the problem lies with a firmware bug that can be fixed by a firmware update.

While there is no exact schedule for the availability of the update, Braak revealed that it will be rolled out as soon as possible. "The problem occurs for users according to both the software from Samsung itself as custom ROMs. If the problem occurs, the phone will not be activated. This often happens at night when not in use," reads a translated bit of the report. 

Sudden deaths will soon be a thing of the past

On a related note, the company recently announced that the Premium Suite upgrade for the Galaxy S III has begun rolling out. This update aims to improve the user experience by adding more convenient features.

The Galaxy S III Premium Suite upgrade will include many of the productive features that were introduced with the Galaxy Note II. Users can utilise two different applications simultaneously for a convenient multitasking experience.

Through Samsung Gallery, they can view more photos at the same time and also create and categorise photos and videos. Exclusive to Samsung, the Paper Artist app offers creative picture-taking effects. It also provides photo editing functions such as the brush colouring tool

With Group Cast on the Galaxy S III and a Wi-Fi network, users can share and collaborate on documents, presentations or images in real-time without loading a file separately. This is now a stand-alone app, rather than part of Allshare Play.

The Smart Rotation feature lets the device detect and recognise the user's face, automatically rotating the screen direction to adjust to the user's face position. Contextual Page lets the device detect when earphones are plugged in and automatically opens up the music player. By setting the camera to 'Auto Share Shot' mode, a user can quickly share photos and videos by simply tapping the Galaxy S III with other NFC and S-Beam enabled devices.

Using one continuous finger/ stylus motion across the keyboard, users can type words faster. Wirelessly connect the Galaxy S III to the television to transfer smartphone content onto a larger display. The interface now allows people to adjust the phone settings to automatically switch to a relevant UI when a device is connected to the docking station. A user can avail of a faster and smoother touch response on the Galaxy S III. Samsung claims that by touching another S Beam-enabled device, the Galaxy S III allows a 1GB movie file to be shared within three minutes and a 10MB music file within two seconds, even without a Wi-Fi or cellular signal