Your Old Samsung Galaxy Is On Its Way Out

Due to inexplicable and spontaneous bursting into flames, Samsung has had to take drastic and expensive steps with its Galaxy Note 7 to ensure that no one is injured, no buildings are burned down, no airplanes fall from the sky…you get the picture. A few airlines have already banned the devices from use during their flights, and the massive recall effort resulted in the majority of Note users returning their devices for a replacement.

But not everyone did so. An estimated 15% of customers didn’t take part in the refund or exchange program,  and those die-hard risk takers–or perhaps people who had too much involved in their old devices to start messing around with a new one–decided to skip the voluntary swap. So Samsung has a fix for those customers as well: a software update that will limit how full your battery can get when charging.

This software update was already put in place in other global markets, and now the company is bringing it stateside. Within the next two months, the company will begin updating existing phones so that their battery capacity only reaches 60%. As an added incentive, an annoying little pop-up message will come up every time the user charges, turns on, reboots, or wakes the phone. If that doesn’t force consumers to replace it, nothing will.

Interestingly, Samsung’s offer in the recall was for a refund or replacement. Most of the affected consumers opted to get a new Samsung phone, one that didn’t attempt to cook your vehicle from the inside out. A few customers did choose the refund, and it can only be assumed that they made that choice in order to go with a different smartphone brand. While Samsung is taking this drastic measure in order to keep the public safe, this may very well affect brand loyalty from customers who already decided not to swap their devices for some reason.