Samsung Electronics Co., 40,60 0,00 0,00% has begun to rollout a ‘Maintenance Mode’ feature on their Galaxy devices with One UI 5 installed. For now this means the S22, but more Samsung devices will be added in 2023. This privacy feature was first tested this past July in Korea on the Galaxy S21. The purpose of this feature allows Samsung Galaxy device owners needing to have their device repaired to protect their personal data and still allow a repair tech to have full functional access.
Once Maintenance Mode arrives on your phone, you’ll find the option to enable it within the “Battery and device care” section of the Settings menu. It will create a separate account on your phone for a technician to use while working on your device. In addition to protecting your personal information, Maintenance Mode prevents a technician from seeing what apps you have installed. They can use the Galaxy Store to download any diagnostic software they need, but once they’re done, your phone will automatically wipe any new data and apps. When your phone is back in your possession, you can disable Maintenance Mode by authenticating your identity.
I am little confused. While I understand the purpose of this feature, I am not clear as to a situation where someone would need to leave their phone with a repair tech. May be a broken screen, but that should be something that can be fixed without having to leave the device unattended. Being the article talks about downloading diagnostic software, then perhaps it issues with malware and viruses. Something I have never really had an issue with on my phones. All my issues always seemed to be hardware related (swollen batteries), though I do recall my Galaxy S4 would sometimes reboot itself whenever it disconnected from my home Wi-Fi network. That quirk was something I just lived with as I wasn’t using the device while I was in my car. Regardless, this is a nice security feature to have and may be something similar will become native to Android regardless of the maker of the device in a few years.
via Engadget
