All US carriers to issue Note 7 “brick” update after all

Update affects less than 7 percent of remaining owners

Samsung has been slowly receiving any remaining recalled Galaxy Note 7 units over the past week since it issued an expanded voluntary recall statement on its support website.

While the company wants owners of both original and replacement devices to hand them in for another Samsung phone or refund, last week it took matters a step further by allowing wireless carriers to brick every Galaxy Note 7 in the US via a software update that will prevent the phones from charging or working as mobile devices.

The update is expected to be released by Samsung next Monday on December 19th but will be rolled out by Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint on different dates in order to give customers a means of communication over the holidays.

Verizon will release update after all

Verizon initially said it would not be taking part in the software update, citing safety concerns while customers are still switching to replacement devices. “We do not want to make it impossible to contact family, first responders or medical professionals in an emergency situation,” the company said in a statement. The company then changed its decision on Thursday, but will only release the update after the holiday season.

T-Mobile will be first to release the software brick on December 27th, followed by AT&T and Verizon on January 5th, and Sprint on January 8th. Going by this schedule, no one traveling to CES during the first week of January should still be carrying a Galaxy Note 7, as the device is now banned on all US flights and is banned from any air transportation in the country.

As of early November, Samsung had already received 85 percent of its Galaxy Note 7 devices through its voluntary recall program and has now recovered 93 percent of them as of last week. Unless the statistics are incorrect, that should leave less than 7 percent of devices still out in the wild at this point, though they can only be used for parts at this point as the batteries will be rendered inoperable following the software rollout.