Angry owners of the LG G4 bought from AT&T are complaining about a mysterious software update that hijacks their phone and automatically installs without the users' permission, even when in the middle of a phone call.
Complaints have surfaced on Reddit, XDA and Twitter about the update, which began installing automatically in the AT&T LG G4 to the surprise of users. Normally, software updates are pushed with notifications to inform the owner that an update is ready to be installed. However, the new update arrived with no notification and immediately got installed, to the ire of many users who realized their phones could be easily hijacked. Some users even say that the update forced the phone to drop calls and reboot without the owner's permission.
"Mine's updating now. Thanks for asking for permission to access my device remotely and take it out of commission when I could have been in the middle of an emergency 911 call," says one LG G4 owner.
It is unclear what the update contains or why it was pushed for automatic installation without users' permission. AT&T and LG first appeared to be pointing their fingers at each other, but AT&T has confirmed to 9to5Google that it is responsible for the update. It also appears that owners of the LG G4 running on other networks are not experiencing the same problem, so the issue is limited to AT&T customers.
AT&T, however, does not classify it as an update but simply "just an enhancement." It is still unknown what the update is for, though. One Redditor, who says he spoke with AT&T customer support, says the representative he spoke to claimed that the "enhancement" was a fix for a bug that prevented Wi-Fi from working over a 5 GHz connection.
"It looks like the update was rather small," the AT&T rep said. "It was a critical update for a Wi-Fi bug. The Wi-Fi connection was not working on a 5 GHz connection, and the bug fix corrected it."
Other reps, however, also told other customers that the update was for improvements in the address book, an update that began rolling out to LG G4 owners on June 5, according to AT&T's support page for the LG G4.
"I talked to some customer service rep at AT&T, and she said this was some enhancement to the AT&T address book," one Reddit user says. "She seemed kind of confused, though, why I wouldn't want a software update. It didn't matter how many times I explained that I have no problems with software updates as long as I get to click yes or ok to begin processing them on my own timetable. She thought I was objecting to having new software or that I thought I'd get data charges or something."
AT&T has yet to make an official statement about how it plans to fix the issue.
Photo: LG | Flickr
