One UI 6.1.1 update is making some Galaxy S22 series units unusable

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A portrait of the Samsung Galaxy S22 series including the Galaxy S22 Ultra's S Pen.
When Samsung pushed out One UI 6.1 to the Galaxy S22 series back in September, the update added some popular AI features. But a subsequent update, One UI 6.1.1, came with something that we're sure users didn't want. It came with a bug that caused the Galaxy S22 line to experience boot looping or stuttering on the display. For those unfamiliar with the term, boot looping is when a phone is stuck in the continuous cycle of restarting. The phone will turn on, start the process of booting up, and stop suddenly before starting the cycle all over again.

Some Galaxy S22 series users state that their phone restarts and goes through this cycle several times a day while others say that their phone is randomly freezing and crashing. Regardless of which issue is making your Galaxy S22 model unusable, it is, well, making your Galaxy S22 model unusable. And this isn't something that came out of nowhere. Earlier this year when Samsung released One UI 6.1 for the Galaxy S22 line, similar problems started to surface on the phones forcing Sammy to pull the update and re-release it a few weeks later.


Complaints can be seen in Samsung's EU communities forum and we guess there is nothing in the Digital Market Act that says Samsung is not allowed to disseminate a buggy software update. The company has mentioned possible fixes for users to try but things like clearing the cache, or even implementing the dreaded factory reset haven't helped. One Galaxy S22 series user even had a Samsung technician come to his home and suggest that the phone's motherboard be replaced.


Well, that would be good news, right? Yes, but the technician refused to replace the motherboard under warranty because he detected a small crack on the screen that couldn't even be picked up by a camera. As this hapless Galaxy S22 series owner said, "It’s outrageous that a £1300 ($1,625) phone has failed in 23 months, and Samsung’s response is a £500+ ($635+) repair quote for a phone which is laughably now only worth ~£400 ($500) brand-new."

The motherboard theory seems to be the one most bandied about by Samsung's authorized service centers according to those who have called one of the centers after their Galaxy S22 series phone was infected and affected by the update. This appears to be an issue impacting a large number of Galaxy S22 series users powered by the Exynos 2200 SoC in Asia and Europe. If the latter is true, all Galaxy S22 Ultra units should be okay since they all carried the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 application processor regardless which country they were sold in.
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