Today it's time for Verizon to kill its Samsung Galaxy Note7 units

  There is a bit of a controversy regarding its initial decision to seemingly not send out the final update for the Galaxy Note7, Verizon then changed its mind and announced it would just be skipping the holiday season. The carrier's release date for the infamous update was set as January 5.

  

  That's right. From this point on all remaining Note7 units purchased from Verizon will be receiving the software update that, once installed, will prevent the phones from charging. The message you can see in the screenshot to the left will pop up letting owners know what's about to happen. The new software build version is MMB29M.N930VVRS3APL2.

  AT&T's rollout was also planned for today, but so far it doesn't look like it's started. It might just be a matter of hours, however. T-Mobile was the first to issue the update last month, while Sprint will send it out starting on January 8, concluding the rollout for the Big Four carriers in the US.

  Samsung is currently doing all it can to ensure that it gets back even the last few Note7 units that remain in the wild. In its home of South Korea it will push an update that will limit charging to 15%, as we found out earlier today.

Samsung & BlackBerry Publish Their Android Security Bulletin for January

Each month we talk about Google’s Android Security Bulletin, but these aren’t the only vulnerabilities that get patched.

Google helps OEMs by taking care of the patches which are specific to the core Android platform, but that’s not all there is to it — many smartphone manufacturers add their own skin and some even make major changes to the platform itself so that they can implement the features they want. These changes can also add vulnerabilities, and this is part of why we see other smartphone companies releasing their own Android Security Bulletin each and every month, so we are also seeing BlackBerry and Samsung release their summary of patches for the month of January: On top of the patches Google announced, Samsung is patching over 15 vulnerabilities with their Android security update for January.

Only one of these vulnerabilities has been marked with a high severity level, with the rest being considered medium or low. These have all been privately disclosed, with some dating all the way back to May, but they will be patched in this month’s security update. As with all monthly security updates, Samsung is unable to give us a list of which devices will be receiving the update, nor can they tell us when owners of Samsung devices can expect to see this update pushed to them.

On the other hand, BlackBerry doesn’t give us individual lists to show us what vulnerabilities they’re patching from Google, and which ones they have found specific to the BlackBerry platform. However, they do tend to do a better job when it comes to delivering these updates and have told us that updates are pushed out immediately to those devices that were purchased from their Shop BlackBerry website. Those who purchased directly from a carrier, though, will have to wait until the update is certified and pushed out by the carrier.

Follow the links below for more information:

Samsung - http://bit.ly/2jjTbeJ

Blackberrry - http://blck.by/2hQ2yB2