Samsung offers official statement on third-party accessory incompatibility on Galaxy Note 3 and KitKat

The arrival of the Android 4.4 KitKat update on the Galaxy Note 3 brought with it incompatibility of the device with a few third-party cases that were previously working as intended. Well, Samsung has now offered an official statement on the matter to AllAboutSamsung – according to Samsung, the company does want its consumers to use official accessories to maintain a “pleasant and smooth user experience,” but it also rejected that there's any correlation between Android 4.4 and the incompatibility that now exists among some of the third-party cases as reported by users.

Here's the statement (translated):

To ensure a pleasant and smooth user experience with Samsung products for our customers, we recommend that only original accessories from Samsung to use. Of course, customers can continue to rely on third-party accessories. The full functionality of our devices and accessories, however, can only be ensured with genuine Samsung components, since only in this way it is ensured that equipment and accessories are perfectly matched. A correlation between the Android version 4.4 and the supposed incompatibility of third-party accessories does not exist.

Well, that's commendable Samsung, but what about those who now have non-working accessories sitting around just because they wanted to get the latest and greatest version of Android? While there are a few workarounds available for the issue, they are far from perfect for normal consumers. It's possible Samsung made a few changes that unintentionally resulted in incompatibility with accessories like Spigen's S-View flip cover, but again, it's one that is affecting consumers who spent a lot of cash on Samsung's latest phablet, so here's hoping the company itself looks at a solution and implements it soon.

Abhijeet Mishra - Editor-in-Chief

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First Samsung device: SGH-D500

Abhijeet's writing career started with guides for custom firmware for Samsung devices (including the original Galaxy S), and he moved to SamMobile in mid-2013 and worked up the ranks to Editor-in-chief. In addition to phones and mobile devices, his interests include gaming on both PC and console, PC hardware, and spending countless hours on YouTube watching videos on tech, movies, games, politics, and internet dramas.

Phone Android 4.4 Galaxy Note 3 KitKat