Imagine someone sitting at a desk somewhere with their Galaxy S22 Ultra, a phone that they have been carrying in their pocket for a few years after purchasing it from a reputable retailer for well over a thousand dollars. They choose to reset the device’s factory settings. A fresh start. A new beginning. Instead, they receive a locked screen and an order to transfer remote ownership to a business before continuing. A company that no one seems to be able to recognize or get in touch with. In less than a year, Galaxy S22 Ultra owners may file a second lawsuit against Samsung.

This is an odd and unsettling tale, and Samsung’s response to date has made it worse rather than better. According to reports, the company’s stance is basically that it is unable to assist the impacted users. There is no explanation for how these phones were registered with a third party. It’s unclear if this was a security breach that went unnoticed for years, a purposeful arrangement with a business partner, or something else entirely. Just a sort of institutional shrug at a situation where some buyers never really owned the phones they bought, if user reports are correct.

The Phone You Thought You Owned: Inside the Galaxy S22 Ultra Privacy Lawsuit Brewing Against Samsung

Everyone still remembers the GOS mess. The Game Optimizing Service, a feature that Samsung introduced with the Galaxy S22, S22+, and S22 Ultra back in 2022, was intended to prevent overheating by subtly reducing GPU performance and screen resolution during taxing tasks. Since devices do overheat and manufacturers constantly monitor thermal performance, the feature itself wasn’t intrinsically irrational. The phones were marketed based on performance specifications that the GOS was actively preventing them from meeting, Samsung failed to disclose it clearly, and users were unable to disable it. In South Korea, a group of 1,882 clients filed a lawsuit. Four years later, the Seoul High Court issued a forced mediation ruling requiring Samsung to pay compensation. Although the sum was not made public, the conclusion was clear: Samsung had deceived its clients.

When this new problem emerged, that case had just been resolved. To be honest, Samsung’s timing couldn’t be worse. Nearly 3,000 people responded to a PhoneArena survey asking what they would do in the wake of the phantom ownership discovery; roughly 78% of respondents said they would sue Samsung once more. Even taking into consideration that online polls are self-selecting, that is a startling figure. These reactions convey a feeling that is more akin to tiredness than just rage. These are the people who stuck with a high-end gadget despite a single controversy and are now realizing that there seems to be a more serious issue hidden beneath the surface.

The way the privacy issue was discovered makes it especially challenging to ignore. One of the simplest things a user can do is factory reset a phone; it’s a standard procedure when selling a device and a last resort when something goes wrong. The fact that this action exposed a concealed ownership structure implies that the issue had existed for the duration that these phones were in use. It’s still unclear if the company with remote access was actively keeping an eye on anything or if it just had the technical capacity to do so without using it. Legally, that distinction is important, but from a user’s point of view, the problem’s architecture is already concerning.

Samsung is not the first significant tech company to experience worsening product trust issues. After years of controversy surrounding iPhone performance throttling linked to aging batteries, Apple settled a class action lawsuit for up to $500 million. Google has had to pay several settlements pertaining to privacy. These cases exhibit a strikingly similar pattern: a technical decision made within a large organization, a disclosure gap, user discovery, public outcry, and ultimately a legal reckoning. The speed at which two distinct, grave accusations have been made against the same product line in such a brief period of time is what makes Samsung’s situation unique.

It’s also important to consider the larger context. Over the past two years, Samsung has worked hard to establish Galaxy AI as the focal point of its flagship brand, offering privacy guarantees regarding Knox security and guaranteeing that AI data processed in the cloud is erased after use. In a press briefing, this type of language sounds comforting. It is less comfortable in light of S22 Ultra users learning that their phones might have been remotely controlled by an unidentified entity. Once trust is damaged around a particular product, it doesn’t flow smoothly around the barriers the business erects for the subsequent one.

The circumstances surrounding phantom ownership are still largely unknown. In the next few days, Samsung might issue a statement outlining the reasons behind this arrangement and providing a way forward for impacted users. When the explanation is given, it’s also possible that more questions will be raised than answered. It is obvious that the users advocating for a second lawsuit are unwilling to wait for clarification indefinitely.

Repeating the GOS strategy—wait, minimize, eventually acknowledge, and settle—is something Samsung cannot afford to do. The first time around, that sequence took four years. The second crisis for the S22 Ultra came more quickly, felt more intimate, and had a distinct weight. It irritates me when performance throttling occurs. It is quite another to think that someone else has been surreptitiously monitoring, setting up, and gaining access to your phone. Samsung must overcome this obstacle. For now, it’s genuinely unclear if it will.