Sometimes I think Android is just a zombie operating system that exists to keep Apple out of antitrust court. Like there is some kind if quid pro quo that Google is doing Apple is a favor which Apple returns somehow.
With a couple of different carriers and phones I was never able to get voicemail working with an Android phone, maybe I could do what they say to activate my mailbox but next week I’d hear from people that they’re hearing a message about how “their voice mail hasn’t been set up yet” which is the same message I hear every time any friend of mine with Android doesn’t pick up. When I got an iPhone it was the first cell I had where voicemail worked at all.
Wireless Telco: "Telstra also warned last month that older,
non-upgradeable Samsung devices could fail Triple Zero calls
Which can be less of a problem if there are full-digit emergency numbers that could be saved as a contact (preferably quick-dial).
Auto-call routing can fail if you're on one side of a regional border but are connected to a cell on the other - and local EMS can't forward calls to the neighboring EMS (or just suck at it).
I used to live on a border and local EMS was 3-digit only. The only way to call the correct EMS was to call their non-emergency number and get forwarded - but only after getting scolded first for not calling the 3-digit number.
> I used to live on a border and local EMS was 3-digit only. The only way to call the correct EMS was to call their non-emergency number and get forwarded - but only after getting scolded first for not calling the 3-digit number.
I think there's a lot more code running on SIM cards these days to reduce/prevent that. On my Canadian Rogers phone, when I do a network scan, I don't see the american networks at all, but then when I put in a foreign SIM, they light up. Similarly, it can take a while of driving into the US before it detaches from the Canadian network and finally hands over to the US.
It was actually an issue with my French SIM that was supposed to work in Canada and USA: it REALLY wanted to connect to the US networks, even though I was ~10 stories up in Toronto and very occasionally getting an SMS through once an hour to the US network.
I can't see how this is being blamed to the phone device maker (or the users who have not updated yet), why is Australia phasing out their 3G network if a large swath of their people's phones are dependent on them for dialing their emergency number?
In my view, they (the govt) either should have not gave permission on selling the devices who relies on having a 3G network for emergency calls for at least 10 years ago, or they should just have their 3G network operable for another 5 years.
For example, our country (South Korea) had 2G networks operable until ~2021, and are planning to have all of the 3G networks operable for the foreseeable future. It can be done.
Exactly. I am fairly certain 2G still works in India. Australia is not as populous and has a larger geographical area with low density. I can understand the business wanting to cut costs, but this seems aggressive.
Wow, that list on the Samsung site is concerning. The S21 is a 2021 phone. Absolutely realistic people would still be using it, and outside of a tired battery I'll bet it's performing just fine.
I only just stopped using my HUAWEI P20 Pro - which I bought in 2018 - the phone was still great and handled everything I needed it to - plus the camera was amazing. I just got a new phone as the battery life was getting silly and it began restarting all the time - and I'm not loving it compared to the P20 Pro.
I think a 7 year old phone has no reason to not be suitable to 90% of what people want from a phone (in my case it was 100%). Frustrating to see them abandoned by manufacturers.
My S21 Ultra is the best phone I've ever had. I bought it a couple of months from when it was newly released and it just will not die. I've traveled with it, played all the games, thousands of photos, used it for nearly a year while I was doing gig driving (so plugged in and screen on for hours at a time), dropped countless times, and the screen has no cracks and the battery still lasts more than a day with regular use. For the past few years every new Samsung smartphone has piqued my interest, and the second my S21 dies I will buy whatever Samsung flagship happens to be the latest, but it just will not die.
Same. I have now turned my s21 ultra into a full on gaming console with the following emulators installed on it: drastic, melonds, m64plusfz, citra, snes9x, super8plus, redream, superpsx, ppsspp, duckstation, aethersx2, ppss22, cemu, dolphin, eden, sudachi, citron. And even winlator.
It plays everything below switch flawlessly. Even on switch it'll run literally everything I have thrown at it from BoTW to ToTK to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, albeit with poor performance. But lighter switch games like Super Smash Bros Ultimate or even the newer Super Mario Bros Wonder run flawlessly. Hollow Knight runs flawlessly.
I have an OLED steam deck, but I LOVE the portability of this phone. I play with it using the bsp d8 pro controller as well as the xbox series s controller using a magsafe case and a magsafe clamp that attaches to the controller. Phone works great for 3ds emulation as well.
Also the battery charges so quickly after a gaming session. It really is a wonderful gaming device.
I literally just upgraded from that a month ago, and only because of the degraded battery (which I was fine with but I was going on a trip and didn't want the headache). There's dozens of us, Jerry!
Only (in the case at hand) if they choose not to apply the free system update, right? And even then, only to the extent that they use cellular network calling?
It looks to me from the list that the newest device that needs replacement (vs updating) is a Galaxy S7, released 2017, which would be well outside the 5-year-extended-warranty period that seems to be the longest one they sell at your link, no? If I’m reading it right.
I'm trying to imagine a conversation with a Bell engineer in the 80s explaining that, in the future, a 4-year old phone won't be expected to call 911 any more.
These phones couldn’t do the thing in question even when 0 years old, due to a bug, and failure to fix that is the reason for getting blocked from the networks
context: from a landline you could call 911 even without a phone handset, simply by (un)touching the wires with the right timing. And this would even work in a multi-day power outage thanks to the battery banks at the central office.
>"Customer safety remains our highest priority," said CEO Iñaki Berroeta.
It's fun to imagine a world where a lie like this could be a legal liability. I mean an actual court case, where evidence is brought and the claim is tested. "Is customer safety a higher priority than shareholder value?" and "why don't you support old devices" and then Samsung would need to produce internal evidence to try to make their case.
Nothing like that will ever happen, but I can dream.
I don’t follow. In this case, the law required everyone to do what they did: provide an update, warn subscribers to update, and eventually drop devices that chose not to heed the warnings.
> Under the federal Emergency Service Call Determination, all operators must block handsets that can't complete Triple Zero calls if they remain unpatched for 28-35 days after the first warning – a rule TPG says it followed.
How would you even begin to pin down what “customer safety” means here? Isn’t it very much in the spirit of safety to say “if it can call at all, it must be able to place an emergency call; if it can’t place an emergency call on the current emergency calling scheme, you have to prohibit all other calling too”?
Plus, safety from unpatched devices on the customers’ network is safety too, right? Would it be “safer” to force the system update onto handsets without letting the subscriber decide?
Plus, just because something is a “priority” doesn’t mean you’re good at it…
What I was saying is that at least in the US any bad thing that happens to a company can be treated as securities fraud. Company had security breach but they said they follow best practices. There likely will be a lawsuit saying that they mislead investors. Not saying it makes sense more pointing out that companies often do get sued for statements they make.
It's hard to understand how this is Samsung's liability. The device was extremely old (nearly 10 years), and an update was available nonetheless. The user had received multiple warnings and notifications that this update needs to be applied for emergency calls to continue working.
When updating devices that old almost certainly means that they become unusable, I can't fault the person for not updating. I've learned not to apply updates any more, in the spirit of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it".
Exactly. I'm mystified as to why this is not addressed anywhere in the article. Did the phone work to make phone calls or not? If yes, then a user should not be expected to guess that he can't call emergency services.
And WHY could he not call emergency services if the phone worked for other calls? Shoddy reporting and, it sounds like, a shoddy system.
Australia shut down its entire 3G network, which a lot of devices used for emergency calls. A lot of phones worked with 4G still but did not support using 4G for emergency calls.
The telco's solution was to sell new phones to people, which a lot of people didn't do. Apparently all of these phones that still worked were flagged and blocked from using 4G but this apparently wasn't the case.
We have all lost functionality of a device we paid for after an update. You can’t fault a user for avoiding it. It’s the root that should be addressed.
The quote is from the CEO of TPG, not Samsung. TPG was required to block any phones that couldn't place 000 calls. TPG claims to have done that, yet the phone wasn't blocked. If they didn't, they would seem to be very definitely liable.
if you said your product is the best in the world that could be directed at yourself and still be puffery. advertising is expected and usually allowed to be inaccurate
I think it would be a worse world then the one we live in today where we allow some leeway for exaggerations.
As it is everyone and everything are overly careful of saying anything that might have legal implications. One outcome of that are new laws that are almost incomprehensible.
Handset Manufacturer: "We strongly encourage customers
to keep their mobile devices updated with the latest software"
Updates (routinely!) sabotage user experience (inc handset updates). Users have reasonably learned to mistrust manufacturer recommendations.
When manufactures say "We strongly encourage customers to update", we hear "To juice short-term shareholder value, our product will suck more than ever".
The issue is due to the older phone not being fully compatible with VoLTE when roaming on a different network. A lot of older phones only supported emergency calls over 2g/3g which is slowly getting shutdown by networks. https://hackaday.com/2025/11/19/why-samsung-phones-are-faili...
If the OS doesn't recognise it as an emergency number then it may fail the call if it believes that whatever network it is associated with won't connect it ("No service" vs "Emergency calls only" indicators etc if you are out of coverage from your SIM's network but within range of other networks).
Emergency calling is supposed to work over any network (even without a SIM card inserted, much less an activated, registered, associated one), but only if the OS tries to dial it as an emergency call.
It's not about the "age" of the number at all, devices are mandated to try all available networks when it is a recognized emergency number. In this case, even though the number was indeed a device-recognized emergency number, it failed to try all available networks as mandated. The article mentions Triple Zero several times, but not because that is specifically noteworthy beyond it being the typical emergency number.
Emergency calls often aren't just normal phone calls. At least in the US, they're required to transmit their location to the operator, and this is the case in many other countries as well. I doubt the technologies are standardized.
It would be surprising if location transmission failure led to complete call failure. You'd think that it ought to fall back to just making a regular phone call.
Under the Government’s Emergency Service Call Determination, all mobile network operators are required to block devices from their networks that are not configured to access emergency call services. If your device is on the list of impacted devices, you will have 28 days from when we notify you to update the software or replace your device to stay connected to the Telstra network. After this time, the device will be blocked from accessing all Australian mobile networks.
Can I still use my phone on my home Wi-Fi after it is blocked?
Yes. Your phone can connect to a Wi-Fi network for data purposes only. However, blocked devices won’t be able to make or receive voice calls over Wi-Fi, including emergency calls, or send and receive SMS.
This is explained if you click through the link to the Samsung post about this issue.
> Australian mobile operators and Samsung have identified a number of older mobile devices that will not correctly connect to an alternative mobile network to make Triple Zero calls when the customer’s primary mobile network is unavailable. These devices need to be updated or replaced to make sure they work reliably in an emergency.
Sometimes I think Android is just a zombie operating system that exists to keep Apple out of antitrust court. Like there is some kind if quid pro quo that Google is doing Apple is a favor which Apple returns somehow.
With a couple of different carriers and phones I was never able to get voicemail working with an Android phone, maybe I could do what they say to activate my mailbox but next week I’d hear from people that they’re hearing a message about how “their voice mail hasn’t been set up yet” which is the same message I hear every time any friend of mine with Android doesn’t pick up. When I got an iPhone it was the first cell I had where voicemail worked at all.
Auto-call routing can fail if you're on one side of a regional border but are connected to a cell on the other - and local EMS can't forward calls to the neighboring EMS (or just suck at it).
I used to live on a border and local EMS was 3-digit only. The only way to call the correct EMS was to call their non-emergency number and get forwarded - but only after getting scolded first for not calling the 3-digit number.
> I used to live on a border and local EMS was 3-digit only. The only way to call the correct EMS was to call their non-emergency number and get forwarded - but only after getting scolded first for not calling the 3-digit number.
I think there's a lot more code running on SIM cards these days to reduce/prevent that. On my Canadian Rogers phone, when I do a network scan, I don't see the american networks at all, but then when I put in a foreign SIM, they light up. Similarly, it can take a while of driving into the US before it detaches from the Canadian network and finally hands over to the US.
It was actually an issue with my French SIM that was supposed to work in Canada and USA: it REALLY wanted to connect to the US networks, even though I was ~10 stories up in Toronto and very occasionally getting an SMS through once an hour to the US network.
I can't see how this is being blamed to the phone device maker (or the users who have not updated yet), why is Australia phasing out their 3G network if a large swath of their people's phones are dependent on them for dialing their emergency number?
In my view, they (the govt) either should have not gave permission on selling the devices who relies on having a 3G network for emergency calls for at least 10 years ago, or they should just have their 3G network operable for another 5 years.
For example, our country (South Korea) had 2G networks operable until ~2021, and are planning to have all of the 3G networks operable for the foreseeable future. It can be done.
Exactly. I am fairly certain 2G still works in India. Australia is not as populous and has a larger geographical area with low density. I can understand the business wanting to cut costs, but this seems aggressive.
Wow, that list on the Samsung site is concerning. The S21 is a 2021 phone. Absolutely realistic people would still be using it, and outside of a tired battery I'll bet it's performing just fine.
I only just stopped using my HUAWEI P20 Pro - which I bought in 2018 - the phone was still great and handled everything I needed it to - plus the camera was amazing. I just got a new phone as the battery life was getting silly and it began restarting all the time - and I'm not loving it compared to the P20 Pro.
I think a 7 year old phone has no reason to not be suitable to 90% of what people want from a phone (in my case it was 100%). Frustrating to see them abandoned by manufacturers.
The fix is just a software update for that phone, it's not on the replacement list.
Ah, ok, that makes a lot more sense, but I still have concerns about how this is a critical breaking fix, affecting so new devices.
Google seems to have a worrying amount of emergency call problems with their Pixel line, so it doesn't seem to be limited to Samsung.
My S21 Ultra is the best phone I've ever had. I bought it a couple of months from when it was newly released and it just will not die. I've traveled with it, played all the games, thousands of photos, used it for nearly a year while I was doing gig driving (so plugged in and screen on for hours at a time), dropped countless times, and the screen has no cracks and the battery still lasts more than a day with regular use. For the past few years every new Samsung smartphone has piqued my interest, and the second my S21 dies I will buy whatever Samsung flagship happens to be the latest, but it just will not die.
Same. I have now turned my s21 ultra into a full on gaming console with the following emulators installed on it: drastic, melonds, m64plusfz, citra, snes9x, super8plus, redream, superpsx, ppsspp, duckstation, aethersx2, ppss22, cemu, dolphin, eden, sudachi, citron. And even winlator.
It plays everything below switch flawlessly. Even on switch it'll run literally everything I have thrown at it from BoTW to ToTK to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, albeit with poor performance. But lighter switch games like Super Smash Bros Ultimate or even the newer Super Mario Bros Wonder run flawlessly. Hollow Knight runs flawlessly.
I have an OLED steam deck, but I LOVE the portability of this phone. I play with it using the bsp d8 pro controller as well as the xbox series s controller using a magsafe case and a magsafe clamp that attaches to the controller. Phone works great for 3ds emulation as well.
Also the battery charges so quickly after a gaming session. It really is a wonderful gaming device.
I literally just upgraded from that a month ago, and only because of the degraded battery (which I was fine with but I was going on a trip and didn't want the headache). There's dozens of us, Jerry!
Something is definitely wrong when devices still under an extended warranty plan are totally useless bricks.
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/extended-service-faqs/
Only (in the case at hand) if they choose not to apply the free system update, right? And even then, only to the extent that they use cellular network calling?
It looks to me from the list that the newest device that needs replacement (vs updating) is a Galaxy S7, released 2017, which would be well outside the 5-year-extended-warranty period that seems to be the longest one they sell at your link, no? If I’m reading it right.
I'm trying to imagine a conversation with a Bell engineer in the 80s explaining that, in the future, a 4-year old phone won't be expected to call 911 any more.
These phones couldn’t do the thing in question even when 0 years old, due to a bug, and failure to fix that is the reason for getting blocked from the networks
context: from a landline you could call 911 even without a phone handset, simply by (un)touching the wires with the right timing. And this would even work in a multi-day power outage thanks to the battery banks at the central office.
>"Customer safety remains our highest priority," said CEO Iñaki Berroeta.
It's fun to imagine a world where a lie like this could be a legal liability. I mean an actual court case, where evidence is brought and the claim is tested. "Is customer safety a higher priority than shareholder value?" and "why don't you support old devices" and then Samsung would need to produce internal evidence to try to make their case.
Nothing like that will ever happen, but I can dream.
Chances are there will be securities fraud case. Where they will refer to statements such as these and the fact that it wasn’t really the case. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
I don’t follow. In this case, the law required everyone to do what they did: provide an update, warn subscribers to update, and eventually drop devices that chose not to heed the warnings.
> Under the federal Emergency Service Call Determination, all operators must block handsets that can't complete Triple Zero calls if they remain unpatched for 28-35 days after the first warning – a rule TPG says it followed.
How would you even begin to pin down what “customer safety” means here? Isn’t it very much in the spirit of safety to say “if it can call at all, it must be able to place an emergency call; if it can’t place an emergency call on the current emergency calling scheme, you have to prohibit all other calling too”?
Plus, safety from unpatched devices on the customers’ network is safety too, right? Would it be “safer” to force the system update onto handsets without letting the subscriber decide?
Plus, just because something is a “priority” doesn’t mean you’re good at it…
What I was saying is that at least in the US any bad thing that happens to a company can be treated as securities fraud. Company had security breach but they said they follow best practices. There likely will be a lawsuit saying that they mislead investors. Not saying it makes sense more pointing out that companies often do get sued for statements they make.
It's hard to understand how this is Samsung's liability. The device was extremely old (nearly 10 years), and an update was available nonetheless. The user had received multiple warnings and notifications that this update needs to be applied for emergency calls to continue working.
When updating devices that old almost certainly means that they become unusable, I can't fault the person for not updating. I've learned not to apply updates any more, in the spirit of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it".
If a phone functions properly with a SIM card (i.e gets good signal/reception), then in my opinion the user should be able to call emergency services.
Exactly. I'm mystified as to why this is not addressed anywhere in the article. Did the phone work to make phone calls or not? If yes, then a user should not be expected to guess that he can't call emergency services.
And WHY could he not call emergency services if the phone worked for other calls? Shoddy reporting and, it sounds like, a shoddy system.
Australia shut down its entire 3G network, which a lot of devices used for emergency calls. A lot of phones worked with 4G still but did not support using 4G for emergency calls.
The telco's solution was to sell new phones to people, which a lot of people didn't do. Apparently all of these phones that still worked were flagged and blocked from using 4G but this apparently wasn't the case.
We have all lost functionality of a device we paid for after an update. You can’t fault a user for avoiding it. It’s the root that should be addressed.
The quote is from the CEO of TPG, not Samsung. TPG was required to block any phones that couldn't place 000 calls. TPG claims to have done that, yet the phone wasn't blocked. If they didn't, they would seem to be very definitely liable.
Is this puffery or not? I don't know, IANAL, but maybe? I checked and Puffery is legal in Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery
literally the definition from there
> Puffery is undue or exaggerated praise
talking about yourself is not "praise"
I wonder if it can go as false advertizing, tho...
It isn't talking about yourself, it is talking about your product
note "typically produced by the seller"
if you said your product is the best in the world that could be directed at yourself and still be puffery. advertising is expected and usually allowed to be inaccurate
You don’t need to tell people that you are not a lawyer. That is the default.
If it becomes a liability, wouldn't the onus be on the network operators for failing to support devices sold within X years?
I think it would be a worse world then the one we live in today where we allow some leeway for exaggerations.
As it is everyone and everything are overly careful of saying anything that might have legal implications. One outcome of that are new laws that are almost incomprehensible.
When manufactures say "We strongly encourage customers to update", we hear "To juice short-term shareholder value, our product will suck more than ever".
The issue is due to the older phone not being fully compatible with VoLTE when roaming on a different network. A lot of older phones only supported emergency calls over 2g/3g which is slowly getting shutdown by networks. https://hackaday.com/2025/11/19/why-samsung-phones-are-faili...
Why Samsung Phones Are Failing Emergency Calls in Australia
https://hackaday.com/2025/11/19/why-samsung-phones-are-faili...
It is crazy to me that phones manufactured in 2016-17 are considered so old they have to be thrown away.
This link actually explains the bug in question, unlike TFA.
Why would an outdated OS prevent emergency calls specifically?
Some handsets do not connect to secondary networks for emergency calls without the update that fixes the problem.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-22/samsung-mobile-device...
If the OS doesn't recognise it as an emergency number then it may fail the call if it believes that whatever network it is associated with won't connect it ("No service" vs "Emergency calls only" indicators etc if you are out of coverage from your SIM's network but within range of other networks).
Emergency calling is supposed to work over any network (even without a SIM card inserted, much less an activated, registered, associated one), but only if the OS tries to dial it as an emergency call.
But this wasn't a new emergency number.
It's not about the "age" of the number at all, devices are mandated to try all available networks when it is a recognized emergency number. In this case, even though the number was indeed a device-recognized emergency number, it failed to try all available networks as mandated. The article mentions Triple Zero several times, but not because that is specifically noteworthy beyond it being the typical emergency number.
For example if your phone only makes emergency calls over 3G and the carrier shuts down 3G, then you will be unable to make emergency calls anymore.
Emergency calls often aren't just normal phone calls. At least in the US, they're required to transmit their location to the operator, and this is the case in many other countries as well. I doubt the technologies are standardized.
It would be surprising if location transmission failure led to complete call failure. You'd think that it ought to fall back to just making a regular phone call.
What happens if I don’t act?
Under the Government’s Emergency Service Call Determination, all mobile network operators are required to block devices from their networks that are not configured to access emergency call services. If your device is on the list of impacted devices, you will have 28 days from when we notify you to update the software or replace your device to stay connected to the Telstra network. After this time, the device will be blocked from accessing all Australian mobile networks.
Can I still use my phone on my home Wi-Fi after it is blocked?
Yes. Your phone can connect to a Wi-Fi network for data purposes only. However, blocked devices won’t be able to make or receive voice calls over Wi-Fi, including emergency calls, or send and receive SMS.
https://www.telstra.com.au/exchange/older-mobile-devices-cal...
I remember an old Android crashed or something. Maybe it still carried that bug?
This is explained if you click through the link to the Samsung post about this issue.
> Australian mobile operators and Samsung have identified a number of older mobile devices that will not correctly connect to an alternative mobile network to make Triple Zero calls when the customer’s primary mobile network is unavailable. These devices need to be updated or replaced to make sure they work reliably in an emergency.
the price you pay for making telephones into computers. i love em but boy do they fuck up regularly.