One of the stressful situations for owners of a smart phone is handing it in for repair in a laboratory, while the personal information stored in it may be exposed to the prying eyes of the service workers. Samsung offers a solution in the form of “Repair Mode” that allows locking of personal information and applications, while maintaining access to the settings that allows the continued care of the device.
The new repair mode is activated through the device’s settings menu, under the “Battery and Device Care” option. Before activation, device owners are required to choose exactly which information and applications to lock: messages, photos, user accounts and more. After that, the device will be restarted, allowing access only to the applications and information that were decided to be left open.
In principle, the only way to exit the repair mode and return to normal use of the device is only through a biometric security check or a personal code, depending on the personal security settings. The laboratory workers should not have a way to bypass these protections, unless the user decided on his own initiative to give them the device’s unlock password.
The patch mode is now making its way to users in South Korea, as a software update that will hit Galaxy S21 devices first. During the coming weeks, the update will make its way both to additional devices and to users in other countries.