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Outdated Samsung handset linked to fatal emergency call failure in Australia
- drcongo 1y agoWhy would an outdated OS prevent emergency calls specifically?
- dietr1ch 1y agoI remember an old Android crashed or something. Maybe it still carried that bug?
- seethishat 1y agoWhat 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-calling-triple-zero- https://www.telstra.com.au/exchange/older-mobile-devices-cal...
- charcircuit 1y agoFor 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.
- aaronmdjones 1y agoIf 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.
- johann8384 1y agoBut this wasn't a new emergency number.
- dundarious 1y agoIt'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.
- joshuaissac 1y agoSome 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-devices-triple-0-telstra-network/105920816 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-22/samsung-mobile-device...
- jerlam 1y agoEmergency 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.
- sowbug 1y agoIt 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.
- shkkmo 1y agoThis 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.
- everdrive 1y ago>"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.
- neom 1y agoIs 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
- NooneAtAll3 1y ago> 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...
- nemomarx 1y agonote "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
- cortesoft 1y agoIt isn't talking about yourself, it is talking about your product
- NuclearPM 1y agoYou don’t need to tell people that you are not a lawyer. That is the default.
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- 6492718572 1y agoThe 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-failing-emergency-calls-in-australia/ https://hackaday.com/2025/11/19/why-samsung-phones-are-faili...
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoWow, 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.
- ljf 1y agoI 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.
- jerlam 1y agoThe fix is just a software update for that phone, it's not on the replacement list.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoAh, ok, that makes a lot more sense, but I still have concerns about how this is a critical breaking fix, affecting so new devices.
- jerlam 1y agoGoogle seems to have a worrying amount of emergency call problems with their Pixel line, so it doesn't seem to be limited to Samsung.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoGoogle claims they've fixed that in the latest update: https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/google-pixel/pixel-bug-fixes-november-2025-update https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/google-pixel/pixel-bug... I was tracking that because I'm a pixel owner, though the one time I've had to phone I've not had an issue.
- skeezyjefferson 1y agothe price you pay for making telephones into computers. i love em but boy do they fuck up regularly.
- tlb 1y agoI'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.
- fabioborellini 1y agoThese 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
- mindslight 1y agocontext: 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.
- hyperdimension 1y agoYeah, I'll freely admit I'm a curmudgeon with respect to technology "upgrades", but we've really lost a lot of solid reliability in our phone systems (landlines at least) Now it feels like an afterthought compared to all of the redundancies they had put in place back then.
- ssl-3 1y agoAye, indeed. I experienced local POTS phone lines for something like my first 35 years. Bad ice storms? Weeks-long power outages? Whatever; POTS didn't care. The only time I ever picked up a real telephone at home and didn't get a dialtone, I wandered out to investigate and saw the wire for the house just laying there in the alley -- apparently, it'd been hooked by a passing truck. They (The Phone Company) had it fixed within one hour after we let them know. (An hour of downtime over 35 years. How many nines is that?)
- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoHandset 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".
- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoWireless 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.
- Scoundreller 1y ago> 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.
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoWhy Samsung Phones Are Failing Emergency Calls in Australia https://hackaday.com/2025/11/19/why-samsung-phones-are-failing-emergency-calls-in-australia/ https://hackaday.com/2025/11/19/why-samsung-phones-are-faili...
- goranmoomin 1y agoI 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.
- tecoholic 1y agoExactly. 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.
- hdgvhicv 1y agoThis morning on U.K. breakfast radio they got a Nokia 7110 out from 25 years ago and sent sms and made a phone call, I was amazed it still worked. (Ok the battery was shagged and it shut down once when it started to make a call, but it eventually worked)
- seba_dos1 1y agoI have recently used my old Nokia 3410 in Poland and the only issue was that it couldn't connect to the Internet via dial-up CSD anymore.
- PaulHoule 1y agoSometimes 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.
- d3Xt3r 1y agoAndroid (or iOS) has nothing to do with voicemail, it's all on the carrier. All "voicemail" is just your carrier redirecting the caller's call to a special number on their end, where an IVR-like system picks it up and processes it. And maybe some added on features depending on the carrier, like SMS or push/app notifications. That's it, there's nothing fancy about voicemail, and all the magic happens on the carrier side. I've owned several dozens of Android phones over the years and been with multiple carriers, never had an issue with voicemail. And no one should either, because it's got nothing to do with the OS.
- PaulHoule 1y agoI dunno. The iPhone has some kind of "visual voicemail" and must use some kind of API to get access to my mailbox to download and transcribe messages... and my iPhone has gone 6 months without the voicemail getting reset whereas it would happen between 6 days and 6 weeks with every Android I had. Could well be the carrier treats me differently or the phone does something that stops periodic or intermittent resets initiated by the carrier.