In late December, Galaxy Note8 owners started to report a bizarre issue with the phone’s battery. If the power dropped too low it couldn’t be recharged, making it impossible to use the device at all once the battery died.
A few days later, Samsung confirmed the bug, claiming it only affects a small number of devices. Still, the company’s already sold millions of Note8s since launching in August 2017, and the issue appears to be plaguing some Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus devices as well. So even a small percentage could mean thousands of people are at risk.
Samsung hasn’t released an official fix yet, but in the meantime there’s a third-party solution to keep your phone’s battery from dropping too low. The Deep Discharge Protection Tool promises to do just that by warning you when your battery starts to drop and shutting your phone off entirely when it hits 12 per cent before you cross the point of no return.
One small caveat is that your phone needs to be rooted for the automatic shutdown feature to work. You’ll still get a series of two noisy alerts as the battery starts to drop, and the developer says they should be loud enough to wake you up if you’re sleeping. They’re also looking into getting the entire program to work on non-rooted Samsung phones.
You can download and install the app from XDA’s developer forums right now. Hopefully, Samsung releases an official fix soon (maybe in its Android 8.0 update), but until then this is your best bet.
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