Samsung introduces 'Repair Mode' for its phones in South Korea

Samsung is going to add a Repair Mode feature to its smartphones, that will let customers hide personal information and files, when they hand their phones in to the service center.

It's usually common practice to factory reset phones and erase data on them before you hand them in for service, this helps keep your data from falling into the wrong hands but also introduces the hassle of backing up your data and restoring it when your phone comes back from the center.

Repair Mode is Samsung's solution to the problem. When enabled, your phone will reboot and lock all your data down using your authentication method. The only available for technicians to see would be the pre-installed apps that came with the phone.

Once your phone has gone through service, you simply need to authenticate and disable Repair Mode to get access to all your files again. For now, this feature will only be enabled in South Korea and will first arrive on the Samsung Galaxy S21 series via an OTA update.