They Bricked Your Phone and Walked Away — The Galaxy S22 Ultra Lawsuit Changes That

Owning a gadget that was advertised as revolutionary and then seeing it die due to an unexpected software update from the manufacturer is a unique kind of frustration. That isn’t speculative. Hundreds of thousands of Samsung Galaxy S22 users experienced that, and the ensuing legal reckoning has now spanned continents and four years of back-and-forth that, to be honest, Samsung probably hoped most people would forget about.

Early in 2022, it began with a forum post rather than a courtroom. Some users observed that the performance of their Galaxy S22 phones differed between benchmark tests and daily use. There was a big difference. A built-in program called Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, which limited CPU and GPU performance across over a thousand apps, was included with these phones by Samsung.

Device Affected	Samsung Galaxy S22, S22+, S22 Ultra
Defendants	Samsung Electronics America Inc. & Samsung Semiconductor Inc.
Lead Plaintiffs	Nadia Ramnath & Michael Guzman
Filing Date (US)	January 27, 2025
Filing Jurisdiction	New York Federal Court
Korean Case Plaintiffs	1,882 consumers
Korean Court	Seoul High Court
Korean Ruling	Compensation ordered (2026); originally sought 300,000 won (~$200) per user
Triggering Software Update	One UI 6.1.1 (released October 2024)
Core Allegations	Performance throttling (GOS), device bricking, deceptive advertising, warranty denial
Legal Claims (US)	Breach of warranty, negligent misrepresentation, unjust enrichment, NY consumer protection law
Plaintiff’s Attorney (US)	Blake Hunter Yagman, Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes LLP

Preventing overheating was cited as the explanation. Samsung neglected to mention that when a user ran a benchmark, GOS conveniently did not apply those same limits. To put it another way, the scores appeared excellent. The experience in the real world was completely different.

It wasn’t taken quietly by users. In Korea, 1,882 customers had filed a class-action lawsuit by March 2022, and the trial had already started. It’s difficult to ignore the irony: Samsung had spent years positioning itself as Apple’s direct competitor in terms of superior quality and software polish, and now it was in court over what amounted to algorithmic dishonesty ingrained in the operating system. In the end, the Seoul court concluded that Samsung had not been totally honest in its advertising.

Nevertheless, no compensation was mandated in that initial decision. The plaintiffs filed an appeal. In December 2025, hearings were held again. Three mediation rounds were unsuccessful. Samsung will pay after the court finally intervened and enforced a ruling. The initial request was for 300,000 won, or about $200 per person. The case is closed, but it’s still unclear if the entire amount lands. After four years.

In the meantime, the story had gained traction in the US, albeit for a different and perhaps more concerning reason. Nadia Ramnath and Michael Guzman, two customers, filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in New York in January 2025. Benchmark manipulation was not the issue in their case. It was about phones that just stopped functioning.

Despite being marketed as an AI-enhanced system upgrade, Samsung’s One UI 6.1.1 update, which was released in October 2024, caused a wave of Galaxy S22 devices to experience never-ending boot loops. crashes. data loss. Complete failure. Devices left “trapped in an endless reboot loop” are described in the 50-page complaint; this is a striking and instantly recognizable phrase for anyone who has experienced it.

The accusation regarding Samsung’s awareness is what makes the US case so noteworthy. The lawsuit claims that Samsung should have known about the flaw before the update was released, in part because earlier models had experienced similar problems. In spite of this, the company persisted in promoting the Galaxy S22 as a long-lasting, high-performance gadget.

The lawsuit portrays Samsung’s public pledge, which included five years of security updates and four years of significant Android OS upgrades, as a guarantee that gave customers confidence that their investment was secure.

It’s possible that Samsung’s engineers were genuinely unaware of the harm the update would inflict. Another possibility is that a release schedule overrode the warning signs. Naturally, the lawsuit favors the latter interpretation.

The next alleged event is more difficult to defend. Samsung allegedly failed to issue a recall despite a barrage of complaints from users in online forums. did not provide free repairs. denied warranty coverage completely in numerous instances, even for harm caused by the update itself. This is specifically mentioned in the lawsuit: “Samsung’s conduct was aggravated by its refusal to offer a recall, refund, or meaningful support despite widespread and immediate user complaints.”

Over the past ten years, that sentence could have been written about a dozen other tech companies. However, when the device in question was a $1,200 flagship that Samsung was still actively selling, the situation was different.

Here, there is a more general pattern that is worth observing. Samsung has previously come under fire for the discrepancy between its marketing and the real product experience. Samsung Electronics America was accused separately earlier in 2024 of unlawfully tracking and selling viewing data from its smart TV users without their consent. Although there is no legal connection between that case and this one, taken as a whole, they paint a picture of a business that, at the very least, has an uneven relationship with customer transparency.

Trust is vital to tech companies, and Samsung is well-known enough to withstand a few negative headlines. The question is whether consumers’ true feelings when they are standing in a store choosing between an iPhone and a Galaxy are affected by ongoing controversies.

The American and Korean versions of the Galaxy S22 Ultra lawsuit might not put an end to Samsung as we know it. Settlements seldom immediately alter corporate culture, and courts don’t operate that way. However, there is significance in the fact that almost 2,000 Korean customers appealed a first ruling that gave them nothing, endured three unsuccessful mediation sessions, and ultimately persuaded a court to compel Samsung to comply. Regulators, other customers, and possibly even the businesses themselves tend to take notice of that kind of perseverance.